Gawker has posted the guest list for tomorrow’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I would call the gathering, to use a fine British slang phrase, a dog’s dinner, but then we BJers are all responsible pet owners who feed our dogs a well-balanced diet.
Those sensible progressives who’ve been less than entranced by certain of Dennis Kucinich’s “more emo leftist than thou” political gambits can now enjoy the schadenfreude of the Washington Times table:
Dan Snyder
Donovan McNabb
Mike Shanahan
Bruce Allen
Rick Perry
Ben Nelson
Dennis Kucinich
Thad McCotter
Jack Evans
Robert McDowell
Andrew Breitbart
I’m guessing they invited Donovan McNabb expressly to keep Perry from eating Cleveland’s second most notorious ecological disaster as an hors d’ouevre, or possibly to fish His Elfishness out of the pool of Breitbart’s spittle.
Alas, it is almost certain that Jack Evans is not the professional wrestler…
some other guy
OMG he’s sitting at the wrong table! lolz
What is this, middle school?
burnspbesq
That has to be a spoof.
This, however, is not. I’m as Catholic as the next Catholic, and I should probably be offended, but this is pretty stinkin’ funny. And completely NSFW.
http://thedailywh.at/post/560050246/lights-out-tim-minchin-and-fraser-davidson-give
beltane
Well that should be interesting. It almost sounds like a scene from a surrealist European film. Almost worthy of Luis Buñuel.
Warren Terra
I can understand neither why they’d want Kucinich at their table nor why he’d want to be at their table. I’m with burnspbesq in calling spoof. Or at least I’d rather believe it’s a spoof than that it’s real.
(Well, there is I suppose one obvious, if crass, reason they’d want Kucinich at their table, assuming guests are accompanied – but I’d thought she was supposed to be more liberal, and less likely to take crap from conservative blowhards, than he was.)
Mark S.
Why do I hate this event so much? I’m not one of those people who think the press has to be 100% adversarial, but this suckup to power gala leaves me feeling like one of the farm animals seeing the pigs and the humans partying together at the end of Animal Farm.
Morbo
@Mark S.: And then there’s Jay Leno. That’s the last straw, Obama.
Warren Terra
@Mark S.:
(from)
Violet
Pretty Boy Perry and His Elfishness at the same table? Bwahahahaha! Someone out there has a good sense of humor.
Mark S.
To keep the Orwell theme going, here’s my Room 101.
JGabriel
I’m betting they invited Kucinich just to goggle his wife.
.
SpotWeld
The “The New Yorker” got Tracey Morgan… okay, that’s going to be epic.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mark S.: You will pay for that, you bastard. Watch this.
Sarah
My dog is usually fed dog food, but, occassionally, he eats a twinkee.
EdTheRed
Jack Evans is the council member for Ward 2 in DC. He’s a Dem, but hey, free food!
Linda Featheringill
I DO like the title, “His Elfishness.” Cute.
JGabriel
@SpotWeld:
That’s less surprising than it initially sounds. 30 Rock is probably the most New Yorker-like show on the air.
.
burnspbesq
@JGabriel:
Naah. If she gets a decent dress and some hair-and-makeup help, Scott Brown’s kid is going to blow them all away. No other woman in the room will be 22 years old, six feet tall, and in the kind of shape you have to be in to play D1 basketball.
http://bceagles.cstv.com/sports/w-baskbl/mtt/brown_ayla00.html
beltane
The CBS table has Rahm Emanuel and Eric Cantor. Cantor has better watch out.
The only table with a remotely interesting list is the Huffington Post’s. I wouldn’t mind having a few drinks and listening to Bill Maher. Too bad Sarah Palin won’t be sitting with him.
freelancer
OT –
The GOP tone deaf FAIL parade marches on:
Warren Terra
@Mark S.:
I don’t think it’s online, but the “That Mitchell & Webb Sound” sketch on Room 102 was fantastic. In the absence of a full version online, there’s some description where it gets mentioned in TVTropes:
Another good joke in the sketch is the large number of inmates who succumb with the shout “Do it to Julia!” – because apparently Julia’s a very popular girl.
JK
I would call the gathering the Cheap Babylonian Whores Dinner.
Omnes Omnibus
@JK: That is unfair to cheap Babylonian whores. I think you owe them an apology.
Joshua Norton
The good news is they’ve perfected a faster way to serve K-Lo’s dessert.
Cupcake Canon
Noonan
I’m fully expecting Breitbart’s next column to include a reference to sitting at a table with McNabb as proof that he likes black people.
scudbucket
OT – BP is worried that the spill-rate may increase to 6 million gallons/day.
Violet
@burnspbesq:
Disagree. She’s weird looking on camera. I remember her from American Idol. She had plenty of hair-and-makeup assistance there. Didn’t help.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Kucinich played quarterback on his high school football team. Maybe he wants to sit at that table to try to get a contract with the Racialslurs.
JGabriel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Exactly. Cheap Babylonian whores give good value. Er, I mean, so I’ve heard…
Anyway. The point is that most of the White House Correspondents: don’t.
.
maus
I didn’t know Kucinich was a Moonie.
And why do they have a table, anyway? I thought they were kaput as a newspaper.
burnspbesq
Does Obama get to speak at this? If so, those idiots had best beware, because he is a pretty good amateur standup comic if given decent material to work with.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/07/obama-roasts-rahm-emanuel_n_142259.html
Jared
A nit: isn’t it “dog’s breakfast?” :-)
Pasquinade
I’d like to see Betty White (CBS table) share some time with Palin, or Ashley Judd (CNN table).
Not sure this isn’t a spoof: Justin Bieber at People table.
Anya
I hate this useless event. Obama should have declined. That would’ve made the press cry.
Also, what’s up with all the celebrities? Does that mean Joan Rivers will be covering the red carpet for CSPAN?
Origuy
@Jared:
That was my thought. Google vote:
dog’s breakfast 87,800
dog’s dinner 38,300
dog’s lunch 4,400
dog’s supper 1,310
dog’s brunch 1,090
I threw in the last just for fun. I was surprised how many occurrences there were. Most I saw were variations on the metaphorical meaning. “Supper”, on the other hand, appeared to be referring to what was put down for a dog.
Mike Kay
Too Funny!!
Talking Points Memo bought a table. Ya gotta buy a table to attend this event(the cash goes to charity).
Gee, who knew they had such a nice revenue stream.
The list is hilarious: Darren Starr (Sex in the City/Melrose Place/ Beverly Hills, 90210), Zbig, Scrowcroft, and Denis McDonough (NSA staff). Josh might as well have included Pee Wee Herman
I wonder who John would invite if Balloon Juice bought a table. I’ d nominate Megan Fox, Tina Fey, Tunch, Lilly, Tunch Ilkin, a liquored up John Riggins (“loosen up, Sandy [day o’conner], baby”), Jay Leno, Conan, Elizabeth Edwards, Rielle Hunter, RAHM!, and Jane Hamsher.
Mike Kay
O’reilly and Beck will not be attending this year. I guess they still pissed that Obama and Wanda Sykes killed, last year.
licensed to kill time
@Jared: Meaning of dog’s dinner:
Dressed or displayed in an ostentatiously smart manner.
Origin:Dog’s dinner’ is first cited in ‘C. L. Anthony’s play ‘Touch Wood’, 1934:
“Why have you got those roses in your hair? You look like the dog’s dinner.”
Why a dog’s breakfast is synonymous with mess or muddle and dog’s dinner with smartness isn’t at all clear. It appears that the two phrases were coined entirely independently of each other.
(ETA: that’s all a block quote I couldn’t be bothered to do up right)
Mike Kay
There’s some real knockouts on this guest list.
Scarlett Johansson
Julianna Margolis
Maggie Rodriguez
Mariska Hargitay
Kathryn Bigelow
Julie Bowen
Ashley Judd
Ali Larter
Jessica Simpson
Clinton must be pissed he didn’t attract such talent.
Brachiator
McNabb was probably a replacement for Ben Roethlisberger.
Mnemosyne
@Joshua Norton:
Blasphemer! You are a blasphemer, destroying innocent cupcakes so. For shame, sir.
Americanadian
@Mike Kay: Is Bill going to be there tonight? And if he is, how many dirty looks will Hillary have to shoot him over the course of the night?
Mark S.
@Anya:
I was wondering the same thing. Do any grunt reporters get to go to this thing, or is it just a celebrity circle jerk?
t jasper parnell
@Jared: You know I thought that too; but look the phrase up on this internety tubish thingaboob and found out that a Dog’s D is the opposite of the same Dog’s B.
toujoursdan
I listen to enough BBC Radio 4 to know that a “dog’s breakfast” is a big mess. (They use it on Radio Australia and Radio New Zealand too.)
A dog’s dinner is to dress ostentatiously. See: Phrases.org.uk: Dog’s dinner
Joe Buck
Why do official Washington, as well as bloggers of all stripes, delight in making fun of Dennis Kucinich for being short, when he and John McCain are exactly the same height (5′ 7″)?
Kucinich looks so short because he married a beautiful, six foot tall woman.
Jaim
I would shoot myself in the face repeatedly before sitting down to eat with Andrew freaking Breitbart.
Mike Kay
@Joe Buck: McCain is actually shorter. His medical records list him as 5′ 6″.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/966875,healthymccain052308.article
while mccain has always been a media darling, bloggers of all stripes, delight in making fun of his age, ie how out of touch he is, such as his complete lack of computer knowledge, the lime green speech, the cheese isle press conference.
Mike Kay
@Joe Buck: McCain is actually shorter. His medical records list him as 5′ 6″.
while mccain has always been a media darling, bloggers of all stripes, delight in making fun of his age, ie how out of touch he is, such as his complete lack of computer knowledge, the lime green speech, the cheese isle press conference.
michiganhunter
The most offensive of these events of all time was when Bush showed the video looking for the missing WMDs for laughs, after tens of thousands of people had died in the hunt for those mythical weapons. The craven press just laughed when they would have done a public service going all Mussolini on him. Maybe nobody had a rope, but it’s certain nobody had any balls or morals. Not even a boo yelled at Boy George the Pretender.