Anti Federalist
04-30-2017, 10:39 AM
Self anointed elitists and apologists for the State, commiserating with each other.
In my ongoing evaluation of Trump, he gets a gold star for telling these people to go pound salt, by themselves.
For Journalists, Annual Dinner Serves Up Catharsis and Resolve
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/business/white-house-correspondents-dinner.html
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUMAPRIL 30, 2017
WASHINGTON — Toward the end of his comic opus on the press, politics and President Trump, the “Daily Show” comedian Hasan Minhaj looked out at the hundreds of journalists gathered in a subterranean hotel ballroom here on Saturday night and declared, “This has been one of the strangest events I have ever done in my life.”
The lengthy laughter and applause that followed made clear that he was not the only one who thought that way.
No one knew quite what to expect at this year’s edition of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the chummy Washington ritual that became a flash point over press freedom in a year when the White House and its correspondents are anything but friendly. The president skipped the event. Celebrities stayed away. Comedians turned down the gig.
But even as Mr. Trump heckled the proceedings in real time — joking at a Pennsylvania rally about reporters’ “consoling each other in a Washington ballroom” — attendees said the often-frivolous dinner felt oddly profound. Part pep rally, part therapy session, the event became a moment of catharsis for a political press corps that has faced months of unrelenting strain.
Loud cheers and a palpable sense of defiance broke out when the president of the Correspondents’ Association, Jeff Mason of Reuters, declared with sermonlike ferocity, “We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. And we are not the enemy of the American people.” It was the longest ovation of the night.
(Yes, you are, and your coverage of recent events proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. You are nothing more than the mouthpieces for approved government power and expansion- AF)
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, seated on the dais, reminded the room of journalism’s power, and Mr. Woodward articulated the subtext of the evening when he addressed Mr. Trump directly, saying, “Mr. President, the media is not fake news.”
Even Mr. Minhaj — who opened with a blistering takedown of Mr. Trump, noting that the president was “in Pennsylvania because he can’t take a joke” — finished with an earnest ode to free speech. “Only in America can a first-generation immigrant Muslim kid get on this stage and make fun of the president,” he said.
(Yeah, and we'd kind of like to keep it that way, which is why importing half a billion of your fellow travelers from countries where you get beheaded for doing what you do, is not a good idea - AF)
The event “was a line-in-the-sand night, to an extent I didn’t expect,” E.J. Dionne, a longtime Washington chronicler, said in the ballroom afterward. He added that “having Woodward and Bernstein sends another message” — that journalists can, under the right circumstances, topple a presidency.
Promoting the First Amendment was, in the end, the safest possible angle for the Correspondents’ Association, which liaises with the White House on behalf of its members and was wary of blasting the president in absentia. At one point, Mr. Mason recited the text of the amendment onstage, and an introductory video took pains to showcase clashes between previous presidents and the press, demonstrating that the news media’s adversarial relationship with the presidency — which Mr. Mason called “healthy’’ — did not start with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump raised the tension of the evening with his Pennsylvania rally, an event designed to underscore the contrast between tuxedoed Washington journalists celebrating themselves and the blue-collar supporters at his rally — “hard working Americans,” as one senior administration official put it.
Wary of looking biased, many prominent journalists in the ballroom kept a poker face during Mr. Minhaj’s nastier punch lines. (He called Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, a “Nazi” and labeled the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, a racist, moments quickly featured on Breitbart News and other right-wing news sites.)
“I was covering my mouth with my glass,” said April D. Ryan, the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, as she fielded selfie requests on the ballroom floor.
But as reporters fanned out to after-parties, they described the night as a needed tonic, to the celebrity-soaked atmosphere of recent Correspondents’ dinners and the national climate of hostility toward the news media.
Blake Hounshell, the editor of Politico Magazine, wrote on Twitter, “The WHCD may have lost some glitz tonight, but recovered its self-respect.”
The celebrity quotient was notably low. The biggest Hollywood names in attendance included the actor Matthew Modine and Alan Ruck, who played Cameron in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Star anchors like Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and George Stephanopoulos of ABC were missing.
A review of Washington hotels on Saturday afternoon showed plenty of vacancies, even at popular lodgings like the Hay-Adams and the Jefferson. At a fashionable brunch hosted by the media impresario Tammy Haddad, several guests confided that they planned to leave town before the dinner.
Still, Mr. Mason took pleasure in announcing to the packed crowd that the dinner had sold out. And journalists who did attend were greeted outside the event site, the Washington Hilton, by an unexpected sight: a small group of supporters, some from as far away as Boston, who had come to cheer the news media.
“We’re actually here to encourage the journalists,” said Julie Locascio, who lives in the Washington area and held a handwritten sign reading, “Journalists are not enemies of the people but friends of freedom.” As reporters in formal wear walked by, she called out, “We need you in those trenches!”
Howard Fineman, an NBC News analyst and top editor at HuffPost, said he had been surprised to encounter the supporters on his way into the hotel.
“I’ve been coming to this dinner for many years,” Mr. Fineman said at a predinner cocktail reception. “I’ve never actually seen the public come here to tell us keep up the good work.”
In my ongoing evaluation of Trump, he gets a gold star for telling these people to go pound salt, by themselves.
For Journalists, Annual Dinner Serves Up Catharsis and Resolve
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/business/white-house-correspondents-dinner.html
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUMAPRIL 30, 2017
WASHINGTON — Toward the end of his comic opus on the press, politics and President Trump, the “Daily Show” comedian Hasan Minhaj looked out at the hundreds of journalists gathered in a subterranean hotel ballroom here on Saturday night and declared, “This has been one of the strangest events I have ever done in my life.”
The lengthy laughter and applause that followed made clear that he was not the only one who thought that way.
No one knew quite what to expect at this year’s edition of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the chummy Washington ritual that became a flash point over press freedom in a year when the White House and its correspondents are anything but friendly. The president skipped the event. Celebrities stayed away. Comedians turned down the gig.
But even as Mr. Trump heckled the proceedings in real time — joking at a Pennsylvania rally about reporters’ “consoling each other in a Washington ballroom” — attendees said the often-frivolous dinner felt oddly profound. Part pep rally, part therapy session, the event became a moment of catharsis for a political press corps that has faced months of unrelenting strain.
Loud cheers and a palpable sense of defiance broke out when the president of the Correspondents’ Association, Jeff Mason of Reuters, declared with sermonlike ferocity, “We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. And we are not the enemy of the American people.” It was the longest ovation of the night.
(Yes, you are, and your coverage of recent events proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. You are nothing more than the mouthpieces for approved government power and expansion- AF)
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, seated on the dais, reminded the room of journalism’s power, and Mr. Woodward articulated the subtext of the evening when he addressed Mr. Trump directly, saying, “Mr. President, the media is not fake news.”
Even Mr. Minhaj — who opened with a blistering takedown of Mr. Trump, noting that the president was “in Pennsylvania because he can’t take a joke” — finished with an earnest ode to free speech. “Only in America can a first-generation immigrant Muslim kid get on this stage and make fun of the president,” he said.
(Yeah, and we'd kind of like to keep it that way, which is why importing half a billion of your fellow travelers from countries where you get beheaded for doing what you do, is not a good idea - AF)
The event “was a line-in-the-sand night, to an extent I didn’t expect,” E.J. Dionne, a longtime Washington chronicler, said in the ballroom afterward. He added that “having Woodward and Bernstein sends another message” — that journalists can, under the right circumstances, topple a presidency.
Promoting the First Amendment was, in the end, the safest possible angle for the Correspondents’ Association, which liaises with the White House on behalf of its members and was wary of blasting the president in absentia. At one point, Mr. Mason recited the text of the amendment onstage, and an introductory video took pains to showcase clashes between previous presidents and the press, demonstrating that the news media’s adversarial relationship with the presidency — which Mr. Mason called “healthy’’ — did not start with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump raised the tension of the evening with his Pennsylvania rally, an event designed to underscore the contrast between tuxedoed Washington journalists celebrating themselves and the blue-collar supporters at his rally — “hard working Americans,” as one senior administration official put it.
Wary of looking biased, many prominent journalists in the ballroom kept a poker face during Mr. Minhaj’s nastier punch lines. (He called Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, a “Nazi” and labeled the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, a racist, moments quickly featured on Breitbart News and other right-wing news sites.)
“I was covering my mouth with my glass,” said April D. Ryan, the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, as she fielded selfie requests on the ballroom floor.
But as reporters fanned out to after-parties, they described the night as a needed tonic, to the celebrity-soaked atmosphere of recent Correspondents’ dinners and the national climate of hostility toward the news media.
Blake Hounshell, the editor of Politico Magazine, wrote on Twitter, “The WHCD may have lost some glitz tonight, but recovered its self-respect.”
The celebrity quotient was notably low. The biggest Hollywood names in attendance included the actor Matthew Modine and Alan Ruck, who played Cameron in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Star anchors like Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and George Stephanopoulos of ABC were missing.
A review of Washington hotels on Saturday afternoon showed plenty of vacancies, even at popular lodgings like the Hay-Adams and the Jefferson. At a fashionable brunch hosted by the media impresario Tammy Haddad, several guests confided that they planned to leave town before the dinner.
Still, Mr. Mason took pleasure in announcing to the packed crowd that the dinner had sold out. And journalists who did attend were greeted outside the event site, the Washington Hilton, by an unexpected sight: a small group of supporters, some from as far away as Boston, who had come to cheer the news media.
“We’re actually here to encourage the journalists,” said Julie Locascio, who lives in the Washington area and held a handwritten sign reading, “Journalists are not enemies of the people but friends of freedom.” As reporters in formal wear walked by, she called out, “We need you in those trenches!”
Howard Fineman, an NBC News analyst and top editor at HuffPost, said he had been surprised to encounter the supporters on his way into the hotel.
“I’ve been coming to this dinner for many years,” Mr. Fineman said at a predinner cocktail reception. “I’ve never actually seen the public come here to tell us keep up the good work.”