When most people think of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, they don’t. Because they have never heard of it. If they do, they think of a bizarre award show for reporters with comedians delivering insults.
But it gets worse. As I wrote earlier, the WHCD is really the hub for an obscene media orgy when it’s supposed to be a scholarship fundraiser.
The theme of the Correspondents’ Dinner this year (and every year) is the First Amendment. So the Beer Institute held a Toast to the First Amendment with lots of free booze. And if you really love the First, you can join CNN at the Playboy party with bunnies and more booze. “We’re here to celebrate the First Amendment and freedom of the press,” Hugh Heffner’s son said.
It began with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) hosting “WHCD Kickoff Cocktails”. The mega-agency had been famously at the center of Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein #MeToo scandals and was dubbed by Rose McGowan as a “company of pimps that sent so many into the monster’s lair.”
This is what the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is actually about and it has less to do with the First Amendment than Don Lemon posing with Playboy bunnies. The Dinner is an excuse for D.C. jornos to stumble drunkenly through parties, network, mingle and say nasty things about President Trump.
After the backlash, the WHCD is going to try to be serious, by inviting Ron Chernow.
The focus will be on bashing Trump from a position of media piety, lectures about the First Amendment, lots of Obamaesque, “Who we are” invocations. And then the WHCD will probably revert to what it was all along.
Because while the lefty establishment occasionally tries the high ground, it can never seem to actually stay there before jumping into the mud.
So I’m assuming Seth Meyers will be doing it next year.
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