“Red Carpet For Ugly People”: White House Correspondents Dinner Has Nothing To Do With Journalism
Reading Peggy Noonan got me into a bad mood, and it was just terrible luck that the next cookie on the plate was this earnest Politico piece by Patrick Gavin on the anniversary of the “controversy” over the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. It seems Tom Brokaw has again broken the silence by expressing the quiet angst of the Beltway press corps at the pollution of this hallowed event by Hollywood celebrities:
Tom Brokaw blames it all on Lindsay Lohan.
Last year, Brokaw became one of the biggest critics of the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner after he saw Washington buzzing around and about the troubled Hollywood actress, who was a guest of Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren.
“The breaking point for me was Lindsay Lohan,” Brokaw told POLITICO during a recent interview in his office in the NBC News Rockefeller Plaza headquarters in New York. “She became a big star at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Give me a break.”
Reading the whole article, it’s unclear to me whether Brokaw is primarily concerned about gate-crashing by Hollywood types, or understands that the whole idiotic phenomenon of journalists dressing up like celebrities to schmooze with the rich and powerful people they are supposed to be writing critically about is itself a tad bit sick-making:
“They [the Great Unwashed] were making their own decisions in their own states, in their own communities, and the congressional ratings were plummeting,” he added. “The press corps wasn’t doing very well, either. And I thought, ‘This is one of the issues that we have to address. What kind of image do we present to the rest of the country? Are we doing their business, or are we just a group of narcissists who are mostly interested in elevating our own profiles?’ And what comes through the screen on C-SPAN that night is the latter, and not the former.”
That is exactly right, but it has nothing to do with the admixture of entertainment industry figures in the proceedings. All the borrowed Hollywood glitter does is to make it clearer than ever that if politics is “show business for ugly people,” as the old saying goes, then the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is their red carpet event. Let the stars of E! take over the whole damn thing, and stop pretending it has anything to do with journalism.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, April 26, 2013
“Pouncing On Presidential Coolness”: Meanwhile, Molasses Mitt Slow Jams To Merv Griffin
The right has come up with a new line of attack against Barack Obama: He’s too cool.
You read that right.
Suddenly, it was an act of unpresidential affrontery for Obama to go on Jimmy Fallon’s show. Never mind that presidents and presidential candidates have been doing the late-night thing for two decades, back to Bubba’s sax-playing moment with Arsenio. Never mind that Mitt Romney recited a silly Top Ten list on Letterman and pretended to be reading Kim Kardashian’s tweets. Never mind that George W. Bush went on Oprah. Obama was a bad boy.
“I thought it was really bad, that we had so many issues and problems going on in this country, around the world, and you can’t swing a cat without finding President Obama on a comedy show,” said Fox contributor Dana Perino, Bush’s last White House press secretary.
And there was grumbling about Obama’s comedy stylings at Saturday’s White House Correspondents Dinner. He was too sharp in going after Romney, he shouldn’t have joked about eating dog meat, and so on. (Uh—I can remember when Bush poked fun at not finding those weapons of mass destruction.)
So is hipness now a political liability?
Clearly this is a concerted effort to turn the president’s charm and wit against him. The Republicans are saddled with a somewhat awkward candidate. It’s hard to imagine Mitt slow-jamming the news on Fallon’s show. No wonder Obama deadpanned at the dinner that Romney “asked if he could get some equal time on The Merv Griffin Show.” Romney isn’t even sure whether to accept an invitation from SNL.
All this is reminiscent of a controversial ad that John McCain ran against Obama in 2008, dubbing him the world’s biggest celebrity and likening him to Paris Hilton. (Today I guess it would be Kim Kardashian or Lindsay Lohan, both of whom were at the correspondents’ dinner.) The Republican National Committee has posted a web ad cutting between clips of Obama riffing with Fallon and Romney giving a serious speech, with the tag line #notfunny.
There’s a larger problem here for the Romney camp. Obama, whether you think he’s cool or condescening, is widely seen by the public as a likable guy. Mitt is widely seen as a stiff. That is not going to change. So in a classic case of political ju-jitsu, the conservatives are trying to turn the president’s strength into a liability: Yeah yeah, he’s hip, he’s happening, but what has he really accomplished? Wouldn’t you rather go with the boring businessman who might fix the ailing economy?
I’m not sure that works. But it may be the best card his team has to play if Romney wants to be performing at next year’s White House Correspondents Dinner.
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