Tonight the annual insufferable event of the season takes place as the White House Correspondents' Association holds its celebratory dinner. The featured speaker will be Saturday Night Live's Colin Jost. Much of the reporting will be about which politicians sat at which table from which news outlet, and of course, the celebrities appearing who are as divorced from the industry as you can get.
In preparation for the affair, a direct message from the Democratic Party was delivered to the gathered mass of journos…who would have been mostly gathered in D.C. anyway, as that is where most are working. Alex Floyd, from the Democrats' Rapid Response Team, sent out a message from the DNC War Room suggesting that it is imperative to have Joe Biden elected—because a Trump victory would mean this could be the end of the WHCA Dinners!
First off, I don’t think he realizes how this makes Trump a more tempting option. Alex should look at the recent polling showing the journalists of this country have a lower approval rating than politicians, and rank only slightly above flesh-eating bacteria. Trump could make ending this dinner a campaign platform and he would nudge higher in the polls.
But the Democrats look positively inept with this message. It comes off sounding as if they are desperate to secure the journalist vote for November. Calm down Alex, you are proselytizing to the converted cult. Did you miss the Uri Berliner column where he showed that the NPR editorial team carries an 87/0 ratio of Democrats to Republicans? That is basically a news industry standard.
But also notable in this decree is that he gives no indication about just why we are to believe Trump would end the Nerd Prom. Trump does not care about this event, evidenced by the fact that he avoided it entirely when while in office. And Floyd here undercuts his fainting couch histrionics further by noting this very detail.
Trump never attended…and the event still went on without him. Why would he imply that journalists are capable of refraining from celebrating themselves? The only time that happened was during the pandemic, and you could sense the paradox felt by the reporters; they wanted to stage their favored event, but they were spending their energy telling Americans they would kill Grandma if they assembled in crowds. Gathering in their rented tux regalia was forbidden by their own narrative. It was a delicious irony.
So tonight the journalists who work hard to boost Joe Biden will spend the night proclaiming how they are charged with holding the powerful accountable (read: Republicans). We will be given lectures about following the truth, being beholden to the facts, and the dire need to fight misinformation from the very same people who push out lies and misinformation on a regular basis.
It is such an important affair involving our intellectual elites I am almost sad that I have to miss it. But there are Stanley Cup Playoff games going on at the same time, and I have standards, after all - something lacking in the news industry of this country.