This is perhaps a sop to the reinstatement of Jim Acosta, or is it simply because the WH thinks it should be able to bully the media on anything … or are the conservatives in the WHCA gaining more sway. It’s more likely that the White House is concerned that too much comedy is writing itself in this administration.
From Chevy Chase to Wanda Sykes to Stephen Colbert, comedy has been a long-time tradition at the White House Correspondents Dinner. But on November 19, the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) announced that there would be no comedian at the 2019 White House Correspondents Dinner. Instead, the Association will be featuring historian Ron Chernow—and comedians are not happy about it.
[…]
Visiting Twitter on November 19, Michelle Wolf posted, “The@whca are cowards. The media is complicit. And I couldn’t be prouder.”
“Daily Show” correspondent Roy Wood, Jr. was equally outspoken about the decision, telling The Daily Beast it was a “sad day for jokes. I would call the people who made this decision a bunch of snowflakes, but then, we’d just be called snowflakes for calling them snowflakes.”
[…]
W. Kamau Bell (host of CNN’s “United Shades of America”) has also spoken out about the WHCA’s decision to not feature a comedian in 2019. On November 19, Bell tweeted, “After the way the WHCA & many journalists talked about Michelle Wolf, it was official thatno comedianworth a damn would take this gig.”
If they think this will get Trump to attend, this could be even worse for him, since Trump’s recent rally-mania and lie fest prior to the midterm elections does resemble the last days of the Harding administration.
“The White House Correspondents’ Association has asked me to make the case for the First Amendment, and I am happy to oblige. Freedom of the press is always a timely subject and this seems like the perfect moment to go back to basics,” Chernow said on the news. “My major worry these days is that we Americans will forget who we are as a people and historians should serve as our chief custodians in preserving that rich storehouse of memory. While I have never been mistaken for a stand-up comedian, I promise that my history lesson won’t be dry.”
Trump won’t be satisfied until he can ridicule CSPAN or the low-rated WHCD coverage in 2019, call dinner “boring,” and demand that it be abolished on threat of confiscating everybody’s passes. Salted earth is the MO of this vindictive, tiny man. https://t.co/izEQqs3MIt
