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Hundreds of people attend the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2017, when guest speaker was comedian Hasan Minhaj. (Marvin Joseph / The Washington Post)
On Saturday night, in the Washington Hilton Ballroom, tuxedos will be pulled to the back of the closets and an entrance with the texture of a dish sponge. There will be drunken journalists and badtail talks.
But the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, an annual springtime rite that has flourished since the 1920s, as reliably as Washington cherry trees, will lack some of its essential features. In particular, the President: Donald Trump, for the third year in a row, refused the invitation of the journalists who cover him, making him the first commander-in-chief since Ronald Reagan not to attend the ceremony, which missed the event because he had been shot several weeks later. before.
There will be no celebrities either. The Hollywood imports, too beautiful and sparkling, that have raised the silly crowd for decades have remained largely apart from dinner since Trump took office.
The last element of the grumpy traditions of dinner to be removed this weekend? To laugh.
The dinner has long featured a professional comedian telling jokes about the badembled reporters, the types of administration and the president. The president usually goes to the podium to do his best, grilling the reporters who cover him and inflicting some zingers who self-deprecate.
As president of the White House Correspondents Association, SiriusXM Washington correspondent Olivier Knox was responsible for the selection of this year's shows. And he takes full blame – or credit, from everyone's perspective – for knocking out the dinner. "I felt the dinner needed to be reset," he explained, explaining his choice for the keynote address of the evening. This is not a bady actor or cast member of "Saturday Night Live," but a well-known historian and biographer, Ron Chernow, who claims The Relevance of Culture is his over 800-page biography. Alexander Hamilton who was the base of the hip-hop Broadway "Hamilton".
Knox, like many members of the organization that organizes the annual dinner, wanted to end the celebration and return to the event its original roots, even if they were not. They were not dull. "It had come to the point where it was more likely that you would meet a sitcom star than a sound engineer," he said.
[[[[Thank you, Mr. President, for making Washington's most lavish dinner as drab as it should be.]
The controversy sparked by last year's comedian, former Daily Show correspondent Michelle Wolf, in the memory of the White House journalists who staged the event was of course controversial. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who attended dinner and sat down at the main table instead of her boss, Wolf crackled, "She's burning the facts and then she's using this ash to create an eye of perfect smoke. Trump spokesperson with "Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women".
Trump, as one might expect, had made a nasty tweet about the speech ("the so-called comedian was really" bombed "," he wrote.) Even some reporters have retreated, while WHCA President Margaret Talev removed the badociation from Wolf's equipment, calling it "not in the spirit" of the evening in a letter to the members. The media, that is the publishers who finance the event and the scholarships for which it raises funds by buying tables, are spiky. Newspaper executives, including Politico and The Washington Post, urged board members to abandon the actor's tradition.
And the controversy surrounding Wolf may not have been a one-off affair: many observers claim that comedy in the context of dinner with the media is hard to lead to a time when political humor is turned into a weapon and where even laughter may seem like a partisan act.
"The expectations of the political elite regarding the nature of political humor have changed," said Jody Baumgartner, a professor at East Carolina University, who gives a course on political humor. . "You have to bring in someone who is ready to hit really hard, otherwise it would fall flat."
He notes that modern political humor is more inspired by the tradition of the former "Daily Show" animator, Jon Stewart, who combines liberal activism with his lines of force, rather than the sweetness of late-night comics like Johnny Carson or even David Letterman, whose goal was to create laughter rather than advanced politics. "Comedians now see themselves as political activists," Baumgartner said.
"I've always thought Jon Stewart had killed correspondents' dinner," said Steve Clemons, editor of The Hill newspaper and a veteran of more dinners than he can count on. "Because after him, there was nervousness in the comedy at dinner. . . and all that became really politically charged. "
The absence of the president also made the traditional joke off the mark. And it's not only him, Trump would also have asked members of his administration to boycott Saturday's event. Trump played to his base at the White House correspondents' dinners, organizing rallies well outside the Beltway for his followers, which he plans to do again this year. It was a kind of counter-programming to the black-robed crowd in Washington, emitting jokes equating his administration with "Game of Thrones" or calling Trump "chief liar" (both excerpted from "Daily's" correspondent). Show, "Hasan Minaj Monologue 2017).
[Trump administration members to skip the White House correspondents’ dinner, too]
And Trump, unlike former presidents, seems to lack a fun bone. Former FBI director James B. Comey said in interviews that he had never seen the president laughing.
"Humor is largely synonymous with weakness," said Dan Glickman, former Secretary of Agriculture (and winner of the "Funniest Celebrity in Washington" contest). "You say you're funny or crazy, and he's just incapable of that.It's not funny.Many of his remarks are aimed at daggers on other people – where he can be funny is at the expense of Other people. "
Journalists, too, do not laugh a lot these days when it comes to jokes about them, noted Clemons, highlighting the administration's attacks on the press, eroded confidence of the public in Fourth Estate and violence. against journalists around the world. "We can be a little thin, I do not think the media has ever been targeted in this way," he said. "Journalism is at the forefront of our role and our place, and I do not think we feel as safe as before."
There have been exceptions to the dinner menu that makes you laugh all the time. In 1999, in the context of the dismissal of Bill Clinton and the early attack of personalities invited, the organizers tried to "give some dignity to the debates" by dismissing the actor in favor of a representation of the Queen of souls, Aretha Franklin.
It was a time when comedy could have felt dangerous in Washington. But unlike two decades ago, the feeling might not just disappear.
"It's a shame," said Glickman. "Because humor can be a great unifying experience if it's done right – but it's hard to do it anymore now."
Read more:
The expected powerhouse for dinner White House correspondents this year? Basically just Jay Leno.
President Trump will not attend the "boring" and "negative" dinner for White House correspondents
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