print“Thanks, POTUS, For Breaking Up The Annual Correspondent’s Circle Jerk” is the current essay now on the Daily Caller. An excerpt:
As a newly elected president, Donald Trump was quick to take one of Washington’s institutional pillars down a peg. By snubbing the 2017 annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD), the president deflated what should have been more appropriately called the Sycophants’ Supper. Would that it was the last such supper. For now, the POTUS’s slap to this gathering of sycophants this past weekend will have to do.
Like nothing else, the annual Correspondents’ Dinner is a mark of a corrupt politics. It’s a sickening specter, where some of the most pretentious, worthless people in the country—in politics, journalism and entertainment—convene to revel in their ability to petition and curry favor with one another, usually to the detriment of the rest of us in Rome’s provinces.
Those gathered at the Annual Correspondents’ Dinner, or its Christmas party, are not the country’s natural aristocracy, but its authentic Idiocracy. No matter how poor their predictive powers, no matter how many times they get it wrong—in war and in peace—the presstitutes always find time for this orgy of self-praise
And they’re all on the same circuit, beavering at sculpting celebrity personas. Anchors at major networks hangout on late-night shows, where presidents and first ladies hobnob, too. Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” may be a vaudeville of giggles, goofiness, and mind-numbing banter. But providing bread and circuses for Booboisie comes with a “responsibility” the dancing, prancing, androgynous Mr. Fallon takes seriously. To his tomfoolery, Fallon once added a spot of promotion for ObamaCare (March, 2014), to honor Michelle Obama’s visit to the set. Fallon’s lead was a signal to Sister Act. FLOTUS launched into her own agitprop for her husband’s healthcare juggernaut on that show.
Meanwhile, “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central is a professional Shangri-La for the cast of characters at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. This year, the downright mirthless “Daily Show” donated one Hasan Minhaj as its circus clown to amuse the sycophants. I hope he came for free, for Hasan is worthless as a funny man. Not a funny bone in his body.
Hasan’s idea of verbal swordplay: calling The Donald “liar in chief.” The quip has 9,650,000 results on Google, most of them unrelated to hackneyed Hasan. “Liar in chief” goes back to 2011 and before, and has been applied to every president and candidate since 2011.
Hasan’s “originality” came together in lines as, “I would like to say it’s an honor to be here, but that would be an alternative fact.” He also invented a new form of satire: the sermon on The Hill. Interspersed with kvetching—“No one wanted to do this so, of course, it landed in the hands of an immigrant, [t]hat’s how it always goes down”—was a string of clichés on the press’ duty to do a better job. For “our democracy,” you know.
The press is meant to be roasted at the WHCD. Were I a Muslim ostensibly roasting the press, like Hasan, I’d lampoon how present company covers my peaceful religion. But to do that, Hasan would have to be clever, creative, and willing to say what everyone is thinking but is too afraid to say. He’s none of those.
Someone who’s all of those things is Anthony Jeselnik. Here’s a demonstration, for future mediocrities to emcee an event like the annual Correspondents’ Dinner. It’s courtesy of the gifted (and gorgeous) Mr. Jeselnik, whose rape and Holocaust jokes are obviously more irreverent than his digs at Islam. (Smart. The offended cohort won’t KILL YOU.) To the president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council: …
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