Tag Archives: White House Correspondents Dinner

national news

Pictures tell a graphic story of crassness

Spoiler alert. The pictures attached to this blog are offensive. I’ll concede that instantly. I apologize for them. But they do serve to speak to a hypocrisy that swirls around the criticism of a comic who delivered some offensive remarks to the White House Correspondents Dinner.

I am one of Michelle Wolf’s critics. I disliked the tone of her remarks to the correspondents dinner. I’ve made my case already, albeit to mixed reviews among those who have read them.

But I will concede as well that they were downright quaint and pale compared to what those on the other side of the political divide have said about those with whom they disagree.

Does this excuse Wolf’s monologue? No. It doesn’t. My hope would have been that she could have remained on a higher road while skewering the president and his White House staff.

Still, the hypocrisy of the indignation emanating from the right and the far right is, um, quite ironic.

Don’t you think?

national news, political news

Wolf crossed an important line of criticism

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I’ll admit readily that I did not know who Michelle Wolf was … until Saturday night.

The comedian took the podium at the White House Correspondents Dinner and proceeded to offend a lot of Americans with her crude, profane and tasteless remarks.

I am one of those who found her to be (a) not funny and (b) oblivious to the bounds of good taste.

I addressed the unfunniness of her shtick with a blog post I published last night. I got some pushback from my social media network of friends who think Wolf merely dished out a sample of what has come from Donald J. Trump since the moment he entered the 2016 presidential campaign.

With that, I want to address briefly the serious line that Wolf crossed with her comments at the correspondents dinner.

She went where serious comics shouldn’t go. She criticized the appearance, for example, the appearance of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had the intestinal fortitude to sit through the entire evening of inappropriate ridicule.

Wolf also was shockingly profane, dropping at least one F-bomb that I heard (before I changed the channel). She also used a term to describe the female anatomy that used to be forbidden on national TV; see the late comic George Carlin’s legendary routine on “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.”

The pushback from my social media network misses, in my view, another fundamental point. It is the tendency to go low when others go low. Why in the world couldn’t Michelle Wolf stay somewhere near the high road in criticizing presidential policies? She didn’t. She decided instead to slither straight into the gutter where Trump and many of his cronies continue to wallow.

Wolf’s comments told me plenty about her and not a damn thing new about the objects of her scorn.

Am I a “suck up” to Trump, as one of my social media friends suggests of those who are critical of Michelle Wolf’s routine? Not for an instant. I am not defending the president’s policies, or the lies that his allies tell on his behalf.

I will, however, stand behind my own view that there really are certain boundaries one shouldn’t cross when delivering political criticism. Sure, Donald Trump crosses them all the time. That doesn’t give anyone license to respond in kind.

I guess now, though, we’ll get to watch Michelle Wolf bask in her 15 minutes of fame.

entertainment news

She’s not funny, man!

Maybe I had a longer day than I thought. I might be more tired than I imagined.

I tried to watch a comedian yuk it up at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Then I turned to another channel on my TV.

Michelle Wolf was touted as a “hilarious” comic. She was going to bring the house down at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., as the headline act at the annual event.

Donald Trump wasn’t there. That’s fine. He likely won’t attend an event meant to honor the media. Or, as Trump has called them: The enemy of the American people.

This idiot, Michelle Wolf, rang hollow, cheap, tawdry and decidedly not funny to my ears.

Hey, there’s no accounting for taste. I’ll just say that I have no problem with off-color jokes. I like them as much as the next red-blooded American male.

But this clown, um, is not funny.

With that, you don’t have to take my word for it.

You can see Wolf’s monologue for yourself, probably as early as Sunday, on YouTube. You can look it up.

If you think Wolf is a hoot, well … good for you.