Remember last year when Stephen Colbert addressed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and ripped them a new one for their cowardice at reporting all things Bush?
But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works. The President makes decisions, he’s the decider. The Press Secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know, fiction.
Well, the press club isn’t going to make the mistake of having a relevant, funny, coherent speaker again this year. No, they’re opting for Rich Little instead.
Yes, I said it, ’70s-era impersonator Rich Little. Go ahead, check deadoralive.com if you don’t believe me but the guy is still breathing, and being dragged out of mothballs to deliver those wacky impressions that make the reporters and politicians laugh out loud. Or at least not squirm uncomfortably in their chairs.
While the name is probably unfamiliar to people under 40, Little was a popular Las Vegas performer and guest star on TV variety shows of the 1960s and 1970s. He’s best known for impressions of celebrities (Johnny Carson, Jimmy Stewart, Jack Benny) and presidents (Nixon and Reagan) who are no longer with us…
Which is why, according to Little, he was hired in the first place. “One of the reasons they picked me is because I’m not controversial,” he said yesterday from his home in Las Vegas. “They did get some flak about the guy they had last year. I don’t think they wanted someone political or controversial again.”
In light of this announcement I, for one, feel terrible about all the times I accused the mainstream media of turning away from the facts or weak-sister reporting.
Still, some people are talking about giving the new improved version of the dinner a miss. Like forever.
Another reason to scrap the dinner altogether, suggests Rem Rieder, editor of the American Journalism Review. After the Colbert controversy last year, and an earlier one in which Bush joked about not finding weapons of mass destruction, Rieder wrote that such press-politico events reflect the “smugness” and arrogance of the news media, suggesting that they are “part of a wealthy elite, completely out of touch with ordinary Americans.”
The hiring of “a controversy-free” Little underscores the point, he says: “Do we really need a neon sign to proclaim the coziness of the White House press corps and the White House’s occupant? It’s really hard for me to understand making a decision like this, particularly so close to the WMD debacle. The dinner must go.”
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