CSotD: Juxtaposition of Perception
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Last weekend, I wrote about satire and how nobody really wanted to defend Hustler Magazine but they recognized the need to defend the First Amendment.
This weekend, we have a more complex issue at hand, as exemplified here by the contrasting responses of Ann Telnaes and Steve Kelley to Michelle Wolf's monologue at the WCHA dinner.
And if you wonder how a professional journalism organization could blunder into such a predictably ghastly mess year after year, perhaps this message from the president of the White House Correspondents Association to its membership will demonstrate the problem:
I also have heard from members expressing dismay with the entertainer’s monologue and concerns about how it reflects on our mission. Olivier Knox, who will take over this summer as our president, and I, recognize these concerns and are committed to hearing from members on your views on the format of the dinner going forward. Last night’s program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners, not to divide people. Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.
This pretty much sums up the WHCA's combination of self-importance and irresponsibility.
Maybe something went wrong, maybe nothing went wrong, but the idea that a group which is accustomed to editorial oversight would simply hire and turn loose a comedian without any vetting is mindboggling.
I'm not suggesting anyone should have gone over her actual script, but some conversation about overall tone might have been appropriate.
If nothing else, I think there are rules about working blue, starting with the difference between a business banquet and a nightclub.
When people kinda hafta show up, you kinda hafta stay within certain boundaries.
The other issue in working blue is that you can't make a lame joke hilarious by adding f-bombs, genitalia and graphic references to sexual intercourse.
And a joke should make sense: I suppose some women may stash coins in their vaginas — though I've never seen anyone reach under her skirt to make exact change — but I'm quite certain you can't circumsize someone's neck.
It's not the vulgarity so much as the lack of meaning. I also found this G-rated joke to be a head-scratcher:
You guys gotta stop putting Kellyanne on your shows. All she does is lie. If you don't give her a platform, she has nowhere to lie. It's like that old saying: If a tree falls in the woods, how do we get Kellyanne under that tree? I'm not suggesting she gets hurt; just stuck. Stuck under a tree.
She had a good point about Conway being a useless, dishonest guest. But then she wandered off into an unintelligible morass, because it's only vaguely like that old saying and she didn't actually have a joke about that old saying.
Wolf did that constantly: She'd start down a potentially interesting alley and then lose focus, veer off and make no point beyond the introductory gag.
The occasion demanded more.
It may be unfair to compare every WCHA speaker to Colbert's landmark 2006 appearance, but he didn't just toss insults. He plunged the knife all the way in, with critical analysis of his targets. Colbert invented "truthiness" well before anyone started bleating about "fake news."
The piggies squealed then, too, but it was easy to defend his piece, in part because it was brilliant and insightful, and in part because, a dozen years ago, the piggies didn't invent things about which to be offended.
If you haven't been following this trend, defending Sarah Huckabee Sanders against insults about her appearance is something of a cottage industry for the rightwing troll factory, and they've gone viral on some pretty innocent observations, including one in which the writer simply pointed out that, unlike most of the supermodels Trump surrounds himself with, Sanders looks like somebody's mom.
And, though you'd never know it from the squealing of the wounded piggies, Wolf's targets included not just Trump and his crew but the Democrats, Rachel Maddow, print journalism, MSNBC and the media in general.
The closest thing to an insult about Sarah Huckabee Sanders' appearance was this bewildering gag:
Every time Sarah steps up to the podium, I get excited because I'm not really sure what we're going to get: you know, a press briefing, a bunch of lies or divided into softball teams. “It's shirts and skins, and this time, don't be such a little bitch, Jim Acosta.”
Maybe that means she looks like a gym teacher. Or a lesbian.
Or that she should get stuck. Stuck under a tree.
Anyway, the Washington Post helpfully compiled an annotated text of the monologue in which they explain the gags, using dashes to avoid the naughty words.
And nothing makes a joke funnier than an explanation.
Mike Norton predicts that things will get back to normal, after poor Sarah takes a personal day to get over the trauma of having been called a liar with beautiful eye makeup.
My takeaway is that I agree with Telnaes that the damage done to our country by the blatant, repeated dishonesty emanating from the White House Press Room far outweighs any perceived insults in Wolf's monologue.
I've certainly heard White House flaks mouth the company line over the past half century or so, but I've never seen the sneers she adds, and I think that, most times, when a bare-faced lie is challenged, the response has been "I'll get back to you" and not a flagrant doubling-down.
Sanders reminds me of the classroom prig who not only reminds the teacher to collect the homework but volunteers the information on who had a cigarette behind the bus garage. And I'll bet she was.
Which has nothing to do with her looks.
But the fact is, feeding the conservatives' irrational, selective view of news coverage — as exemplified in Kelley's cartoon — is, in my mind, a bad idea.
So what is the mission of the WCHA? To defend journalism, or to be celebrities?
Look, the piggies are going to squeal regardless of what you say or do, and so, if the WCHA feels the need to apologize for Saturday night, it's less about Michelle Wolf than it is about them.
Time for the White House Concubines Award dinner to come to a halt, or go private.
Step off the red carpet and adopt the ethics of real journalists.
Meanwhile, I'm starting a GoFundMe to buy Sarah a supply of Pantene.
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