I only wish I were making this up:
Rich Little won't be mentioning Iraq or ratings when he addresses the White House Correspondents' Dinner April 21.
Little said organizers of the event made it clear they don't want a repeat of last year's controversial appearance by Stephen Colbert, whose searing satire of President Bush and the White House press corps fell flat and apparently touched too many nerves.
"They got a lot of letters," Little said Tuesday. "I won't even mention the word 'Iraq.'"
[...]
"They don't want anyone knocking the president. He's really over the coals right now, and he's worried about his legacy," added Little, a longtime Las Vegas resident.
Gee, I don't remember the White House press corps being that nice to Clinton, do you? (UPDATE: More on the flip.)
UPDATE (hat tip to Will Bunch, who is a real prince): The WHCA says this morning it didn't give Little any explicit instructions not to bash Bush:
But Scully replied: "I cannot be more clear that we never mentioned Iraq, we never gave him any guidelines," says Scully, who is also a senior producer at C-SPAN. "The only thing we told him is that we want to follow the policy of the Gridiron Dinner, which is 'singe, don’t burn'."
So either Rich Little lied then, Mr. Scully, or you're lying now.
Admit it: You never thought you'd get caught. Too bad for you that everyone wants to hear about the White House Correspondents' Association's cowardly efforts to make sure they never get deservedly reamed out in public ever again by the likes of Stephen Colbert.
The funny thing is that if this had happened twenty years ago, nobody outside of Rich Little, the WHCA and the readers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal would know about it.
But this is 2007, baby!
If you've been to DailyKos in the last twenty-four hours, you know about it. (And not just from my diary, either.)
If you've been to E&P in the last twenty-four hours, you know about it.
If you've been to AmericaBlog in the last twenty-four hours, you know about it.
If you've been to Eschaton in the last twenty-four hours, you know about it.
If you've been to Attytood in the last twenty-four hours, you know about it.
And that's just the sites that I know have mentioned it. There are many others, I'm sure.
Welcome to the Web, WHCA. We hope you enjoy your stay.