Politico reports that Obama will not be attending the Gidiron Club Dinner. Thank God!
The official line from the Gridiron Club — a society of Washington reporters, columnists, and bureau chiefs — is, “We understand.”
But really, they don't.
from Politico:
“I don’t think he understands the implications of not coming to the club in the first year. It’s not your ordinary state dinner. I think it would be helpful for him and his relations with the Washington establishment to come to the club.”
Beyond bruised feelings among the pundit class, Obama’s snub is a revealing cultural moment.
Gridiron has for decades been an inner sanctum of Washington’s political press corps. The club’s mostly aging members were considered highly prestigious because they said so — and because they had the ability to summon the capital’s political elite to a spring frolic of skits and songs.
I say, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
There is perhaps nothing, and I mean, "NOTHING!", that trivialized the Iraq War and the press's role in it more than Bush looking for WMD's at the White House Correspondants' Dinner.
Was that Funny? Was thousands of Americans' and Iraqis' deaths for a search for WMDs funny?
Was more than a trillion dollars of money spent on no WMDs funny? They all laughed!!! I don't know if Americans did!
Oh, I'm sure Judy Miller was laughing.
But I gotta say, I don't like the humor.
The only WHCD that I enjoyed was Stephen Colbert's, when he tore Bush a new one, and declared Helen Thomas as the only reporter worthy of praise.
I don't think there's much funny today.
And the White House Correspondants are still not Helen Thomas. When they become so, a President should attend their dinner.
Although I worked for Obama, I will puke if I have to witness the frivolity of those who have a role in guiding this nation.