Pierce: The Forces Were Perfectly in Balance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner
The Forces Were Perfectly in Balance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner
Sarah Huckabee Sanders' job is to embarrass the press. Michelle Wolf's job is to embarrass Sanders.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
APR 30, 2018
...Faced with an administration* and a president* dedicated to poisoning both the spirit and the institutions of free government, and faced with an administration* and a president* dedicated only to looting those institutions that it cannot destroy, the representatives of the elite political media, through the woman at the head of their formal association, Margaret Talev, have determined that bowing to the fauxtrage aimed at a comedian on behalf of the administration*’s paid liar is the proper way to respond to the weekend’s festivities. The commitment to a free press is not common to this nation’s people any more, if it ever was, and it damn sure doesn’t have any fans in this administration*. Anyone who thinks that “a vigorous and free press” and “honoring civility” are equally desirable goals doesn’t love the former enough to deserve the latter...
Mocking the White House Correspondents Association Dinner now has become as banal and obvious as the event itself is, which is a tough bar to clear. But there is something in that statement that turns the screws a little harder. Even in the best of times, which these are not, the White House beat is a death march. In bad times—now, say, or during the Watergate period—the job is almost unspeakably dreary...
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is not your friend. She is, professionally, the enemy. I don’t care if most of the time she’s a combination of Florence Nightingale, Mother Superior, and Cher. When she gets behind the podium, her job is to belittle you and your profession and, by proxy, all of us who practice it. She is a tower of contempt. That she was discomfited on Saturday night because of a comedian is part of what she gets paid for. Discomfiting the likes of Sarah Huckabee Sanders is part of what Michelle Wolf got paid for. The forces were perfectly in balance.
But that statement...Lord, what a mess that is. It devalues what it proposes to defend and it trivializes what it claims is of paramount importance. In an age that demands what Whitman called a barbaric YAWP from all corners of the journalistic community, it is the squeaking of a hamster wheel. Next year, they should have that dinner in Stockholm.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20100406/michelle-wolf-sarah-huckabee-sanders-white-house-correspondents-dinner/
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Thanks, Charlie!
(Haven't heard him on Wait Wait in some time. What's with that?)
