Dear Friends,
For approximately 310 million Americans, last Saturday night was unremarkable. But for a treasured few in the haute echelons of America's entertainment, media, political, business, and high finance sectors, it was a special evening -- the annual “White House Correspondents' Association Dinner,” an event born during the Coolidge Administration, which has morphed into an unrecognizable spectacle, mirroring, perhaps, the nature of the news media business itself.
A night once reserved for Washington DC journalists and politicos - and invited comics, including the likes of W. C. Fields, Fanny Brice, Bob Hope, and Chevy Chase -- its central feature is now the “star recruitment” game, where news organizations compete with each other for marquee guests of nearly infinite variety - from Sean Penn to Michael Stipe, Felicity Huffman to Lance Armstrong, Bristol Palin to Jon Hamm, Kate Hudson to Courtney Cox, Scarlett Johannson to Shaun White, and much, much more.
As Jerry Seinfeld would say, “Not that there's anything wrong with that.”
After all, a dose of good humor served up by the President himself, a 'live' performance from Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers' with acerbic observations about many in the room, and a night when folks dress up in black tie and Manolo Blahnik's is good for what ails the Judy-and- Johnny One Notes of the nation's capital.
And as you might expect, the evening produced some high hilarity, unless you happened to be, be with, or be near Donald Trump, who with wife, Melania, was the guest of the Washington Post.
Go figure.
Meyers was an equal opportunity balloon-and-boil lancer:
"Matt Damon said the other day that he was disappointed in my performance. Well, Matt, I just saw The Adjustment Bureau..."
“Donald Trump has been saying that he's going to run for president as a Republican - which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.”
“Tim Pawlenty makes Al Gore look like RuPaul.”
“Donald Trump often appears on Fox, which is ironic, because a fox often appears on Donald Trump's head.”
So the high fashion, high humor, and “Hi, how are you” of the WHCA event are all good things.
But what isn't is that the event has become a frivolous star recruitment exercise larded with tainted lucre from the lockboxes of lobbying organizations of various stripes. And that is unnecessary tarnish on a Fourth Estate that has taken some bad licks in the last few years, not least from self-administered wounds.
As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank noted on this Sunday's opinion pages:
“The correspondents' association dinner was a minor annoyance for years, when it was a “nerd prom” for journalists and a few minor celebrities. But, as with so much else in this town, the event has spun out of control. Now, awash in lobbyist and corporate money, it is another display of Washington's excesses.”
TMR's view is that the constantly expanding before-during-and-after of this event constitute a series of “unforced errors,” ones that simply serve to reinforce the negative images folks around the country have of the coziness of the Washington press corps, the Administration and the media, the link between Hollywood and Washington DC, and the pervasive influence of money and the business sector on almost everything in this country.
Any chance this genie might find its way back into the bottle?
Might a few more news organizations join the New York Times in taking a pass on the events?
Stay tuned.
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