Some of Nothing

The Press Corps Fiddles
Monday, April 28, 2008

Much of the press corps kissed their Decider goodbye this weekend at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner with celebrities and marching bands and champaign and everything:

The lasting image of President Bush at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner may be this: bouncing slightly off-beat with a gleeful smile on his face and a baton in his hand last night as he conducted "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band through a medley of patriotic songs.

Leave it to Bush to shake up an event that, after 93 years, has become as traditional, perhaps even formulaic, in its trappings as a recipe: Start with Hollywood glamour. Add heaping spoonfuls of bona fide Beltway celebrity, and stir. Top with the president of the United States. Place in an overly warm hotel ballroom for several hours, then serve.

Oh! The frivolity! Martha Stewart and Colin Powell in the same room? Maybe they chatted over the details of the Pottery Barn rule. Such fun and whimsy to be had! And imagine their glee getting back to "work" just to spend hours and hours and inches and inches drooling over how a mildly controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright, "goes to war". Apparently, Chris Matthews was right, after all: this is Obama's Iraq. I guess it would be too much to ask of this bunch of superficial airheads, who heartily laughs at "No WMD over here" jokes, to consider toning things down a bit in this time of actual war. We know that the last seven years have taught them nothing, but watching them unabashedly bathe in self-congratulation and cronyism is a bit much to take.

Luckily, it looks like Elizabeth Edwards is appalled by their triviality as well and has told them so:

I’m not the only one who noticed this shallow news coverage. A report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that during the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, 63 percent of the campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals. [emphasis mine]

These shocking numbers mean little to people who can't be bothered to cover the well-documented New York Times story about the war propaganda to which we've been subjected for the last seven years. And as for the New York Times, who boycotted the dinner because "[t]hese events can create a false perception that reporters and their sources are pals, and that perception could cloud our credibility," they were called "sanctimonious whining jerks". Well, count me among the "sanctimonious whining jerks" crowd because I support their boycott wholeheartedly. And I will be subscribing to the Sunday edition of the NYT, as a result.

We miss you, Stephen Colbert:

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Nothing New byslag at 3:45 PM