The Washington Post gossips are unhappy that Trump’s second straight rejection of the White House Correspondents dinner is taking all the “buzz” out of the event. WHCA president Margaret Talev confirmed Trump would not attend, but “he will actively encourage members of the executive branch to attend and join us as we celebrate the First Amendment.” Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will sit at the head table to absorb the mandatory Trump-bashing jokes.
Helena Andrews-Dyer and Emily Heil posted a report titled “A guide to the low-wattage White House Correspondents’ Dinner party circuit (thanks, Trump).” In the newspaper, it was “Unfortunately, not fake news: Nerd prom thinks small.”
Long gone, thanks to the possibility of an appearance at the dinner by President Trump, are the Hollywood celebrities and the buzz. Even the cottage industry of anti-parties are a no-go this time around: Comedian Samantha Bee isn’t returning to Washington for her “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” and BuzzFeed, which hosted a much-hyped also-ran party, has been mum on whether it’ll be tapping kegs in 2018.
Add to that the holdover cancellations of the swanky Bloomberg/Vanity Fair, People/Time and Google events (RIP), and the parties surrounding the 2018 correspondents’ dinner just got a lot wonkier.
The world’s smallest violin is getting a furious rehearsal. It’s so bad the NBC/MSNBC after-party will be “hotter” because of the limited options. CNN’s Hangover Brunch the next morning may not be as loaded with media over-indulgers, since the party will suffer from less “buzz.”
It also lacks celebrity buzz because the White House correspondents picked another less-than-hilarious “Daily Show” jokester to mock Trump. All they could find was Michelle Wolf, who thought it was funny to joke that Steve Bannon farted into a jar and married it.
And then there was this tweet, making fun of her name's similiarity to Michael Wolff: "A part I left out of Fire and Fury was how every day Trump would walk in and Bannon would take his little hands, look him in the eyes and say to him, “you is smart, you is blind, you is impotent.” Liberals responded: "Brilliant!"
PS: In the CNN Media Unit's email newsletter, Oliver Darcy quotes an anonymous "former White House official" to kvetch about Sarah Sanders at the head table, which apparently symbolizes a supine press corps:
A former W.H. official emails, flustered by the association's decision to give Sanders a seat at the head table: "They're so stuck clinging to their outdated traditions and conventions that they’re missing the willful, systematic, and effective discrediting of their entire life’s work. But sure, let's send out a press release that the face of that subversion will be at our head table! SHS does as much to undermine the press corps as anyone. They're just so feeble that they have no idea how to handle being under attack -- even a year later they're complicit in just going through all the same motions."
