The Correspondents Do Not Do Well On Their Own

I just read an article covering the White House Correspondents' Dinner which was held last night in DC.  The report tried to paint the dinner as a success, but even so it called the gathering "somber".  That is hardly a word used for a success.  President Trump did not go to the dinner this year; instead he held a huge rally in Harrisburg PA.  His speech there was carried live on all of the news networks and it preempted the live coverage of the correspondents' dinner that had been promised on at least one of those networks.  It is not difficult to see why the event was somber.  For one thing, most of the Hollywood celebrities who came in past years weren't there.  If the President wasn't going, neither were they -- even though they constantly bash the man.  I guess these celebrities thought it was more important not to be seen at a second rate dinner that to push their politics.  Another clear indicator came when the article announced some of the big names who did attend.  The first one on the list was (gasp!) Madeline Albright.  My guess is that fewer than ten percent of Americans could identify who that is even if they were shown her picture and told her name.  Finally there was the defensive tone of the evening.  The head of the organization which sponsors the dinner actually got up to say that the media is not fake news and is not the enemy of the American people.  If he really has to say that, he understands that most Americans have seen behind the curtain and understand that big swaths of the media are just that:  fake news.

Trump says that maybe next year he will go to the dinner.  I hope not.  There's no need to glorify the Washington media elites.  They do enough of that for themselves all year.  Maybe they could have a yearly meeting to atone for the damage they do the rest of the time.