At the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner, black-tie guests were treated to a performance by The Daily Show‘s Roy Wood, Jr. and some uncomfortably banal jokes by Joe Biden. But since the targets of the jokes were mostly Republicans, they really didn’t have to be funny.
Back before reporters became superstars and made more money than almost anyone who read their drivel, journalists took pride in their craft. They took pride in mundane things like accuracy, balance, and a striving for objectivity.
They didn’t always achieve those goals. But reaching for them defined the post-World War II media generation.
But then TV came along, and most of those goals went out the window. Now, it was drama-driven “news” that took over. Networks needed villains, heroes, and sometimes even damsels in distress. If the news managed to be reported, it was in spite of the drama, not because of it.
Today, they’re not even trying. Today, the necessity of being non-biased and non-partisan has been replaced with the groupthink that advances partisan narratives at the expense of any notion of the truth.
Why? Because the communications giants don’t think you’re smart enough to understand what’s happening. You must be instructed in how to vote, how to think, who to like, and who to hate.
The WHCA dinner is a chance for the powers that be and wannabe to rub elbows with the president of the United States as he tells terribly unfunny jokes about himself and the host — the aforementioned Mr. Wood — slyly tells inside the Beltway stories that even some of the attendees don’t get.
“I think you left some of your classified documents up here,” Wood, the night’s headliner, quipped to Biden as he shuffled some papers on the dais at Saturday’s dinner.
“Last year, your favorite Fox News reporters were able to attend” the dinner “because they were fully vaccinated and boosted,” Mr. Biden said, in a nod to his coronavirus response strategy. “This year, with that $787 million settlement, they’re here because they couldn’t say no to a free meal.”
“And hell, I’d call Fox honest, fair, and truthful,” he told the crowd gathered in a cavernous ballroom in Washington as well as a national television audience watching at home. “But then I could be sued for defamation.” When some groaned, he quipped, “It ain’t nothing compared to what they do to me.”
Banal, unfunny, even cruel. That’s our Joe.
Mr. Biden also went after CNN. Just five days after the financially struggling network fired Mr. Lemon following comments that a woman in her fifties is past her prime, the president ribbed, “CNN was like, ‘Wow! They actually have $787 million? Whoa!’”
At another point, Mr. Biden managed to jab both Fox and CNN while deflecting questions about his age as he seeks re-election. “You might think I don’t like Rupert Murdoch,” the 80-year-old president said of the 92-year-old Fox impresario. “That’s simply not true. How can I dislike a guy who makes me look like Harry Styles?
I confess to being forced to Google Harry Styles to figure out who he was. It’s still not funny.
“You call me old?” Mr. Biden went on. “I call it being seasoned. You say I’m ancient? I say I’m wise. You say I’m over the hill? Don Lemon would say that’s a man in his prime.”
Any idiot can see that his jabs at Fox were far more personal and poisonous than his deflected criticism of Don Lemon and CNN. I guess this is Biden’s idea of “fair and balanced.”
The RNC pointed to one of Biden’s self-deprecating jabs that hit too close to home.
BIDEN: "In a lot of ways, this dinner sums up my first two years in office — I'll talk for ten minutes, take zero questions, and cheerfully walk away." pic.twitter.com/KCwT1Q0d7r
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 30, 2023
I confess to not understanding political humor these days. Both sides are far too personal, too cynical, and too determined to “score” political hits rather than simply make people laugh. Comedians in the past — the Smothers Brothers, Mark Russell, George Carlin — were able to make their point without being cruel or hyper-partisan.
Is that really too much to ask?
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