Tonight is that annual co-opting of the Washington press corps known as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — and this year is the organization’s centennial. Prepare for a deluge of selfies as respected journalists vie for the attentions of reality television stars, while getting chummy and tipsy with the venal hypocrites running our country into the ditch, the very people they should be investigating.
In honor of this anniversary the History channel will be screening a special video tonight commemorating the best of the last 100 years. This will presumably include such hilarious moments as the 2007 President Bush slideshow in which he pretended to be looking for the elusive WMD’s under his desk in the Oval Office; this as American servicemen and women, and countless civilians, were still dying in Iraq. (Video after the jump. It’s at the 5:12 mark.)
The New York Times, for one, finally got uncomfortable enough to send its regrets. Public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote last month in “When Coziness With Sources Is a Conflict,”
Several years ago, The Times decided to stop attending the annual White House correspondents’ dinner — a star-studded Washington schmooze fest. At the time, the Washington bureau chief, Dean Baquet, explained: “It had evolved into a very odd, celebrity-driven event that made it look like the press and government all shuck their adversarial roles for one night of the year, sing together (literally, by the way) and have a grand old time cracking jokes. It just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game.”
So where were the national media as the Bush administration was lying us into war? They were getting their tuxedos pressed and worrying about where their seat would be this year.
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