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Author Ron Chernow, seen here in September 2017, will be the star of the White House Correspondents Dinner next year. (Michael Rubenstein for the Washington Post)
Say goodbye to jokes at the White House Correspondent Dinner Table for decades: the White House Correspondents' Association announced Monday that biographer Ron Chernow would be the guest speaker at the White House 39, annual event of the black tie in the spring.
Having a serious speaker – Chernow is an esteemed historian who recounted the life of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant, among others – is a break with the tradition of letting a humorous humorist entertain the journalists' ballroom , members of Congress and types of administration.
"I am delighted that Ron shares his vivid and deeply-researched views on US politics and history at the White House Correspondents Dinner 2019," said in a statement the WHCA President, Olivier Knox, SiriusXM correspondent. "As we celebrate the importance of a free and independent news media for the health of the republic, I look forward to hearing Ron place this unusual moment in the context of American history."
The programming followed the controversy sparked by actress Michelle Wolf, who landed Sarah Sanders, press secretary at the White House, who attended dinner and sat at the main table instead of her boss. "It burns facts and then uses this ash to create a perfect smoke eye," said Wolf to President Trump's spokeswoman, who she also compared to "Uncle Tom, but to white women who disappoint other white women ".
[The harshest jokes from Michelle Wolf’s correspondents’ dinner speech]
"The so-called comedian is really" bombarded, "tweeted Trump, who had skipped dinner for the second time in his presidency.
After the announcement on Monday, Wolf tweeted that the association of correspondents "is cowardly.The media are complicit and I could not be more proud."
Chernow's material will probably be much less edgy than Wolf's. "The White House Correspondents Association has asked me to defend the First Amendment and I'm happy to oblige it," Chernow said in her press release. "Freedom of the press is always a hot topic and this seems like the perfect time to get back to the basics."
But he promised to make his performance at the event, which will take place on April 27, at least a little entertaining. "Although I've never been taken for a comedian, I promise you that my history lesson will not be dry," he said.
Since the early 1980s, the dinner featured a comic celebrity group that makes jokes to both the president and the media, and the president takes his turn to the microphone to utter a funny stand-up act. (The two exceptions were in 1999 and 2003, respectively, when Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles played). But this configuration has become heavy in recent years because of the boycott of Trump, who leaves half of the jokes on a target who is not there to give good as he gets. The dinner itself has also been carefully scrutinized for its transformation into a celebrity show in which the sources and the journalists covering them seem to be having fun for a dance party. And in the Trump years, he lost his luster because the president and the Hollywood guys stayed away.
But a WHCD with less laughter – and more attention to the First Amendment and the dinner-funded fellowships – will it be fun? "Frankly, people do not want to put on a tuxedo and come on a Saturday night for treatment," said Frank Sesno, a former CNN correspondent at the George University School of Media and Public Affairs. Washington. first dinner under the Trump administration.
But this year's decision would undoubtedly have been decisive: after the dinner in 2018, several WHCA news agencies threatened to obtain financial support unless the board of directors eliminated the comedy show.
clarification: An earlier version of a title on this post indicated that Ron Chernow's concert was the first time that a comedian had not been performing at the White House Correspondents Dinner for decades. In reality, it is a tradition of several decades, with two exceptions: Aretha Franklin in 1999 and Ray Charles in 2003. The article has been updated.
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