The feted White House Correspondents’ Association dinner has returned after a two-year pandemic pause.
While some of the pageantry will be familiar, “Nerd Prom” will be different in 2022 compared to the past.
BIDEN MUTES DISPLAY OF CLEMENCY POWER AMID PRESSURE FOR MORE EXECUTIVE ACTION
This year’s dinner, headlined once again by a comedian at the traditional Washington Hilton, will honor press corps members, including those killed covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and WHCA student scholarship winners.
Simultaneously, the 2,500-plus news executives, correspondents, and special guests will be required to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination and a negative same-day test result. Dr. Anthony Fauci has already said he will not attend the event, citing COVID-19 concerns after Vice President Kamala Harris contracted the coronavirus.
As late-night host Trevor Noah, Saturday’s featured performer, and President Joe Biden fine-tune their punchlines, here are three memorable moments from previous WHCA soirees since its 1921 inception:
Comedian Michelle Wolf’s “perfect smoky eye” joke about then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Wolf’s 2018 routine roasting Sanders, dispatched by the White House in former President Donald Trump’s stead, and the Trump administration more broadly was deemed so controversial that C-SPAN Radio stopped broadcasting her 19-minute remarks midway through for fear she was violating decency standards. One line, in particular, was criticized for focusing on Sanders’s appearance, which Wolf denied.
“I actually really like Sarah,” Wolf said. “I think she’s very resourceful. She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like, maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”
Wolf was condemned by the WHCA, and numerous outlets, such as CBS, threatened to boycott future dinners before the WHCA promised to revamp the event moving forward. Twelve months later, historian and author Ron Chernow was invited to present the keynote address at the last pre-pandemic fete.
Former President Barack Obama’s dig at Trump
In his 2020 memoir, Obama downplayed speculation he encouraged Trump to embark on a political career after poking fun at him during the 2011 dinner over his birther conspiracy theories and The Apprentice gig. Trump was in the audience as a Washington Post guest.
“We all know about your credentials and breadth of experience,” Obama said at the event. “For example, no, seriously, just recently in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice, at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks.”
“And there was a lot of blame to go around, but you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership, and so, ultimately, you didn’t blame Little John or Meatloaf — you fired Gary Busey,” he added. “And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well-handled, sir. Well-handled.”
Obama, similarly known for his 2016 “Obama out” microphone drop, announced the next day that the Navy SEALs had killed al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in a Pakistan raid.
Craig Shirley, a biographer of former President Ronald Reagan, denounced Obama’s comments as “bad taste,” comparing him to Reagan and Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.
“The best speeches are the ones putting themselves down like Reagan and Clinton and Bush I,” he said. “The worst ones were those by Bush II and Obama, who were too insecure to make fun of themselves.”
George W. Bush, who was famously ribbed by first lady Laura Bush in 2005, once referenced the Iraq War “when thousands of young American boys were dying for America,” Shirley recalled.
“There was also the time when Don Imus, as the chief entertainer, took the Lewinsky scandal a bit too hard,” he said of the radio personality. “And everyone, including Clinton, cringed.”
Late-night host Stephen Colbert rips George W. Bush as “a simple man”
Colbert, in his Comedy Central Colbert Report character, skewered Bush in 2006, saying he and the former president were “not so different.”
“I’m a simple man with a simple mind,” Colbert said. “I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by.”
“I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least,” he continued. “And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”
Colbert’s reviews were as harsh, with organizations such as the New York Times declining to mention him afterward.
Entertainer Larry Wilmore tested other boundaries a decade later when he referred to Obama as “Barry” and his “n****” in 2016.
Historian David Pietrusza remembered Conan O’Brien’s 2013 turn, during which he mocked the media writ-large, in addition to former President Gerald Ford’s 1976 “I’m Gerald Ford and you’re not” fumble.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“This is all just one high school cafeteria: Fox is the jocks, MSNBC is the nerds, bloggers are the goths, NPR is the table for kids with peanut allergies, al Jazeera is the weird foreign exchange student that nobody talks to, and print media, I didn’t forget you — you’re the poor kid who died sophomore year in a car crash,” O’Brien said. “Cheer up, we dedicated the yearbook to you.”
