Media professionals have long worried about the impact the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner would have on journalism. The concern is that news organizations appear to be too friendly with the politicians they cover. But what are the implications for comedy?
A high-ceilinged hotel ballroom filled with TV anchors and network executives is a tough stand-up venue, but no more so than an awards show. Trevor Noah was more interesting at dinner two years ago than he was at this year’s Grammy Awards.
The killer comics, including Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and Wanda Sykes, took on the task because it’s one of the most high-profile live comedy sets of the year. And there’s one really great performance (Stephen Colbert), a few very good performances (Seth Meyers, Larry Wilmore), and a really thrilling performance (Michelle Wolfe) who made the comic the next year. Replaced with historian.
This year’s Colin Jost set doesn’t belong in that pantheon. Without Weekend Update partner Michael Che by his side, he came out with a quieter, more vanilla air, less confident than usual. There were long silences between jokes, his eyes darting from side to side, he took an occasional sip of water, and at least once acknowledged that there was no laughter in the room. His jokes were more about wordplay than any particular or novel point of view. “We have some incredible news organizations here,” his scathing joke begins, “and some trustworthy news organizations,” he concludes.
He focused much of the blame on former President Donald J. Trump. “Now that O.J. is gone, who is the best candidate for VP?” he asked. “Diddy?” Like Biden, Jost has always benefited from low expectations. There’s no such thing as a handsome person who’s funny, right? However, he grew into his role on Saturday Night Live, proving to be a particularly strong straight man adept at comedy of embarrassment. In one bizarre moment when he said Robert Kennedy Jr. could become the third Catholic president and C-SPAN’s cameras cut to President Biden (the second) applauding, he I understand the timing. Jost a beat later backtracked on Kennedy’s chances, saying, “As it says on the vaccine card, he’s not going to be vaccinated.”
For the third year in a row, President Biden’s age had a big impact on his comedy, even on his own set (“Technology wasn’t invented when he was in high school,” Jost said of Biden). Two years ago, Biden joked that he was friends with Calvin Coolidge. Last year, he mentioned his “friend Jimmy Madison.” The president took a slightly different, more confrontational approach this time. “Age is an issue,” he said early on. “I’m a grown man fighting a 6-year-old.”
Can jokes help ease the problem? It doesn’t hurt. Ronald Reagan addressed his concerns about his age with humor, joking at one dinner party that he was there when the wheel was invented. People tend to overestimate the power of comedians’ jokes and underestimate the power of politicians’ jokes. Both Trump and former President Barack Obama built bonds with voters through their sense of humor. Mr. Biden is less funny than his two predecessors, but his tongue-in-cheek digressions have a towel-like warmth that’s a key part of his appeal. That’s why appearing on Howard Stern last week was a smart move that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago.
Trump never showed up to a correspondents’ dinner during his tenure in the White House, showing his inability to laugh at himself. President Biden often seems to try to lure him with mockery (he called him “Sleepy Don”), and he has shown some pretty convincing behavior that he enjoys being made fun of. ing. Of course, it helped that his dinner comics, Noah and Roy Wood Jr., only mildly attacked him. But compared to Jost’s jokes, their performances were Bill Hicks-like polemics.
Jost’s most powerful moment came at the end, when he delivered an emotional eulogy for his recently deceased grandfather, a firefighter and Biden supporter, and then defended the virtues of civility. This serious discussion was appropriate for a political convention or a civics class, but it was unusual to hear it in this setting. A stand-up comic’s healthy honesty can be more chilling than any transgressive joke. But we live in scary times. Jost said early on that he was honored to be here at what could be “the last White House Correspondents’ Dinner, judging by the polls in battleground states.”
In a recent podcast interview with The New York Times, Roy Wood Jr. told Asted W. Herndon that Correspondent’s Dinner job was “one of the unique events in stand-up comedy, one of our “It’s a true reflection of where the country is right now.” That’s exactly the moment. ”
If that happens, the public mood will become tense.
