
<p>I forced myself to take in every minute of the coverage of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. ; Good God, was it awful!! ; It had its anticipated lean to the left, but not as bad as some in the past.</p>



<p>CNN offered gavel-to-gavel coverage. ; That means while the guests were getting seated and eating their dinners, there was no effort to put anything on camera at the Dinner. ; Instead, we were entertained (?) with an hour or so of anchor folks and panelists talking about the dinner – past and present, but mostly past.</p>



<p>You had CNN’s numbers cruncher Harry Enten giving the red-carpet treatment to … CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. ; Their banter included a who’s-on-first style routine over who is in the situation room – Blitzer’s roost at CNN. ; Enten kiddingly said the show was his situation room. ; They decided that everything was a situation room. ; (I am still not laughing.)</p>



<p>After listening to banal banter for the better part of an hour, the cameras finally shifted to the Dinner – which was even more boring and less enjoyable than the media in constant praise of its own industry.</p>



<p>Tamara Keith, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, gave the same speech I have heard over the years – gushy over-the-top praise for the industry and all the practitioners in the room. Association dinners and award programs always engage in self-praise, but not to this level. ; The audience was fed mush to the point of regurgitation.</p>



<p>Then came the awards, with the same boilerplate speeches from the past. ; The names and faces of the recipients were different, but the flattering introductions were not.</p>



<p>(Back in my Chicago days, I ran a lot of award dinners. ; I had a rule. ; Give the awards quickly and limit the thank you speeches to ten words. ; That is because I understood an underlying truth. ; The only folks interested in the awards are those giving them and those getting them. ; The audience is eager to move on. ; But I digress.)</p>



<p>Finally, it was President Biden’s time to perform. ;  ; Yes, he tried a few self-deprecating jokes that drew a minimum level of polite chuckles. ; He had a few jibes at President Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. ; But mostly, he used his time and teleprompter to give his boilerplate campaign speech.</p>



<p>Ironically, he spent a lot of time addressing American citizens held by hostile regimes in places like Russia, China, Iran, and Syria &#8212; especially journalists. ; Biden repeatedly emphasized that his administration will never forget them and how he works on their behalf daily. ; If this were a Pinocchio movie, we would have seen the nose elongating. ; Come on, man. ; No one is going to believe that malarkey – especially the families of those held hostages.</p>



<p>Just to placate the whataboutism folks, Trump is no humorist either. ; Neither Biden nor Trump has the wit of Presidents Lincoln, Reagan, Obama, or Bush (the second).</p>



<p>This year’s comic relief was presented by Roy Wood, Jr.  ; He got a few laughs … a few polite laughs … a few moans. ; He went very soft on Biden. ; He did not roast the President. ; His most pointed jokes were directed at Tucker Carlson, FOX News, and President Trump.</p>



<p>Wood did have a theme for part of his stand-up routine. ; He brought up scandals as the underlying subject. ; He led off with Trump, but he did take a couple of jibs at CNN’s Don Lemon. ; He brought up GOP Congressman George Santos.</p>



<p>What screamed across the screen, however, is what Wood did NOT jest about. ; The Hunter Biden scandals. ; It was such an obvious omission that Wood lost all credibility as a fair and bipartisan jokester. ; No scandal provided potentially more material for roast-style humor. ; </p>



<p>If he was not going to make jokes about Hunter, Wood should never have made scandals one of his main themes. ; I suspect that his obvious omission brought the Hunter issues to the minds of everyone in the audience – in the room and in telly land.</p>



<p>The post-event wrap-up commentary was more objective than I expected. ; Oh yeah. There was the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell’s panty-dampening praise of President Biden’s mediocre performance. ; Ironically, it was former Biden/Harris 2020 staffer Ashley Allison who thought Wood’s set the right tone with his jibes at both rightwing and leftwing hypocrisy. ; </p>



<p>CNN’s Scott Jennings had the most negative assessment of the Biden speech – arguing that the President was mocking the press when he talked about how he always takes questions. ; Scott emphatically stated that Biden’s claim was more malarkey. ; “He does not take questions from the press.” ;</p>



<p>The best part of the evening was the high points from previous dinners. ; Overall, I would say that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner lived up to its reputation – and that is not necessarily a compliment. ; ;</p>



<p>So, there ‘tis.</p>

White House Correspondents’ Dinner Worse Than Oscars
