A few weeks ago, it was announced that the decades-old tradition of featuring a comedian at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was coming to an end. Instead of the typical roast-style jokes that are served up by professional comedians to journalists, members of Congress, and administration staffers every year at the April event, biographer and historian Ron Chernow will be the featured speaker. In a recent press release, Olivier Knox, President of the White House Correspondents Association, said, “I’m delighted that Ron will share his lively, deeply researched perspectives on American politics and history at the 2019 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.”
The hiring of Chernow for this upcoming Correspondents’ Dinner is likely a response to the controversy stirred up by last year’s featured comedian, Michelle Wolf. Wolf’s biting punchlines about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary who attended the event in place of President Trump (who skipped the event for the second year in a row), were polarizing and incredibly funny. Wolf likened the press secretary to an “Uncle Tom, but for white women who disappoint other white women,” and took shots at the frequent distortion of factual information the secretary is now known for. “She burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye,” Wolf joked.
Even though he didn’t attend the event, Trump still took to Twitter to decry the jokes made by Wolf. “The so-called comedian really ‘bombed,’” he tweeted, likely enraged at the jokes made on his behalf. Had he attended, he would have had a chance to respond directly to Wolf and other speakers in his own joke-laden stand-up act.
But, as we know, this would never happen.
Even though Lindsey Graham claims that the president is “funny as hell” in private, I’m inclined to believe the opposite. Publicly, Trump has almost no sense of humor. At a dinner for Al Smith in 2016, Trump turned an occasion for good-mannered jokes into an all-out verbal assault on Hillary Clinton. Trump’s jokes are often cruel and demeaning– they’re intended to wound people and prop up his sense of superiority. As Bret Stephens says in The New York Times, “Good jokes highlight the ridiculous. Trump’s jokes merely ridicule.”
The President, who seems to thrive on positive media coverage, is often filled with rage when he doesn’t receive it. He has often railed against his critics both online and in person because he lacks any ability for self-reflection or depreciation. Threatening to jail a rival candidate or journalist is undoubtedly undemocratic. But so is silencing comedians at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Comedians have long been on the front lines of the battle over freedom of speech and, in my opinion, the decision not to feature one this year is unbelievably disheartening as both a journalist and comedian.
Republicans often rant about how PC culture has ruined comedy, and they perceive an inability among the “snowflake leftists” to take jokes. However, the decision to avoid featuring a comedian at this year’s Correspondents’ Dinner has shown one thing: Republicans are the ones with the real thin skin. •
