I wrote last night about the Washington Post hosting Donald Trump as their guest at this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The responsibility for this decision belongs to the Publisher, Katharine Weymouth. The Trump invitation has stunned many folks at the Washington Post and some are speaking out. Ezra Klein tweeted that it was “embarrassing”, but it was Dana Milbank who went to town on Trump and the entire event. Here is a taste:
On Thursday, the Washington Post editorializes that Donald Trump has been campaigning on “bogus” issues and that he should “cease and desist.” An article in the news pages the same day reports that the great orange charlatan’s “simply wild speculation” has “almost no basis in fact.”
Then, on Saturday night, Post reporters and editors, in black-tie finest, go to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner to host their invited guests, including. . . Donald Trump.
Awkward though the Trump invitation is, it is just one of the many problems with the annual dinner and its satellite events. [snip]
Along the way, journalists wind up serving as pimps: We recruit Hollywood stars to entertain the politicians, and we recruit powerful political figures to entertain the stars. Corporate bosses bring in advertisers to gawk at the display…
Milbank ends with a declaration to skip the event. Yes, Dana has said and done some pretty stupid things over the years, but he deserve some praise for this one.
If he keeps this up he’ll not get any more invitations to village parties. That could only be a good thing and getting “kicked out” of the club will serve to make Milbank a better reporter and columnist.
And now for an Open Thread…
PeakVT
Hell hath no fury like a Villager scorned?
ETA: If it happens. Milbank might get nervous and churn out some beat sweeteners next week.
Villago Delenda Est
Not to mention the minute, but definitely there, possibility of being a respectable human being.
TG Chicago
So we should give Dana Milbank praise for picking an easy target, and shifting the blame to the Correspondents’ Dinner instead of the WaPo publisher?
No thanks.
mcd410x
Go Bolts!!
JAHILL10
Perhaps there is no pure stance from which to attack this if you are in fact in and among the Villagers, but I give credit to Milbank for at least taking a public stance. That’s better than the wink and nod crap most of the “journalists” in DC peddle while pretending to have some professional integrity.
SST
I’m more ambivalent about Milbank’s column. Sure, I like what he wrote. I agree with it. But he’ll be back to his usual bullshit in no time. Remember that article he wrote about how he and his wife were having a tough time with one of the banks (BOA, IIRC) and seemed to realize that bad things were consistently happening to people less fortunate than him? A column or two later he was back to chiding liberals and the House Progressive Caucus for their lack of Seriousness. If this column marks the beginning to a sustained effort by Milbank to not suck, I’ll give him credit. But I doubt it will. So, until then, no.
General Stuck
It goes much deeper than just this annual event and it’s mixing celebrity entertainment with what should be minimalist hallowed halls of the fourth estate without the glamor and focus on the bouncing ball of profit.
Good for Dana, but the rot that is our media needs it’s diseased roots pulled up and replanted in the fertile soil of fearless truth telling in a spare room with a couple of chairs and a microphone and not much else.
It will happen, one way or another. Only question is, whether it comes from a sudden bolt of enlightenment to the American public at the Applebee’s salad bar, or at the tail end of a long soup line.
It seems nothing shames these fuckers, or enough of them to matter. So I hold little hope we will learn without sufficient pain and suffering as a people
Little Boots
you know, at least Louis XIV’s courtiers had the courtesy to retire to Versailles and not pretend to be “us.” When does the Village just disappear behind some curtain and stop pretending to have anything to do with the rest of the country?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
brietbart on maher, claiming that glenn beck heavily edited his statements about sherrod.
my head, its in thousands of pieces, i must call the merry maids in the morning.
Little Boots
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
when they eat their own, is anything left but a wing and a nut?
RosiesDad
The NY Times has skipped (boycotted?) the White House Correspondents Dinner for several years. There is a lot to criticize the Grey Lady for; this is not one of those things.
Arundel
The Trump invitation has stunned many folks at the Washington Post and some are speaking out.
What, in the past two days? No one is “stunned”, they’re just embarrassed at being portrayed as the amoral jackals they are. Believe me, Trump’s invitation went out weeks ago, when they were very happy to entertain his grotesque shit-show. Now that he’s been disproved and shown a horrid racist with new goalpost-moving assertions that Obama is instead a dumb negro affirmative-action baby, of course they’re scrambling for excuses. I for one am enjoying their humiliation at this, I hope Trump demands his place at the podium and gives a scorching speech that will blow us away with its racism, ignorance, and stupidity. Trump is the fat golden hog whose mouth-farts the media has been covering “seriously” for the past two months or more. He is the ultimate degenarate symbol of Beltway decadence and laziness and idiocy, the so-called “journalists” who ever took him seriously. I can’t wait for his speech, and/or the kerfuffle that will happen if he’s asked to decline. He’s the sort of stupid pig businessman the Beltway media seems to worship- go to it, you loathsome hacks. Feel free to further disgrace yourselves.
Little Boots
I miss Colbert.
Mark S.
Ha! That horse is out of the barn. The real problem is that it’s hard to relate to the common man when you’re making seven figures.
Nellcote
After writing such heartfelt columns it will be interesting to see if Capehart and Robinson show up for dinner with Trump.
Steve
Is this worse than the year someone invited Paula Jones?
Allan
@Arundel: I don’t believe Trump has been invited to do more than sit at a table with (relatively) decent people who will pretend that he isn’t covered in feces.
Trump will have to sit there and pretend to take the jokes at his expense from the podium with equanimity.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve: Yes.
azlib
This all part and parcel of journalism becoming entertainment. Trump is entertaining, so it is no surprise he would be invited to the dinner, regardless of all the lies he told about Obama’s “birther problem”.
The editorial board of the Post can rip him a new asshole in an editorial, but they will still mingle with him at a party because he is still an important entertainer. They see no conflict whatsoever. It is all just “entertainment” and cannot possibly do any harm.
Cat Lady
This dinner would be the right time for Obama to call in an airstrike, or just to be sure, nuke them from space.
ETA: When a whore calls out other whores for being disgusting whores, it’s time for a
Mark S.
I was looking at Bobo’s retarded blog and found this gem: People who favor redistributionist policies are angrier, more racist, and have shittier marriages than serious people who want to end Medicare. I’m surprised the study didn’t state that liberals also have smaller dicks and live in their parents’ basements, but perhaps that’s being saved for a later study.
Villago Delenda Est
@Little Boots:
Actually, even doing that didn’t save their worthless asses in the end.
I’m really looking forward to SPaT’s ringside commentary as she knits away when the tumbrels glide up before her as the Village Idiots are dealt with in a proper Jacobin manner.
Cat Lady
@Cat Lady:
conflagration. Burn it all down to the fucking ground, Milbank. Go out with a bang.
Chad N Freude
If this is truly an Open Thread, I can link to this paean to TSA (Wait! That should be pee-on.) A TEXAS REPUBLICAN says TSA has got to be reined in. We may have passed through the wingularity and are now in WOW (Wingnut Opposite World).
ETA: At least it’s a break from discussing the Press and Politics Mutual Fellation Society.
MikeJ
[whispered]You’re such a dick[/whispered]
Mark S.
@Mark S.:
Oh, and this study (authored by one of the Volokh boys) is entitled: What Drives Views on Government Redistribution and Anti-Capitalism: Envy or a Desire for Social Dominance?
BruceFromOhio
Old compost out, new compost in. Its the back yard, but it also sounds like DC.
Good thing the stuff in the back yard comes with beer.
BruceFromOhio
@Cat Lady: When a whore calls out other whores for being disgusting whores, it’s time for a
a … a ..? A what? WHAT? Pray tell.
jwb
@Mark S.: Mock Bobo all you want, but don’t help him out by giving him links.
hamletta
I am all for encouraging good behavior on the part of Mr. Milbank. He teeters between Villager and not, but I believe is heart’s in the right place.
He did a live blog at the GOS years ago, back when he was a feisty WH reporter. All the questioners wanted to hold him responsible for the WaPo’s sins instead of asking him about his own work, which was pretty damn good at the time. It was a trainwreck.
And yeah, I remember @dickwhisperer and “Mad Bitch Ale.”
The latter gave me the idea to do a retort with my mom’s friend who’d recently been bought out at the WaPo, with us in ratty bathrobes and pink curlers: “It’s 5:00 somewhere, honey. I’m havin’ me a Misogynist Pigbastard Pilsner!”
delphi_ote
@General Stuck: “It seems nothing shames these fuckers, or enough of them to matter. So I hold little hope we will learn without sufficient pain and suffering as a people”
I used to have this attitude, before 9/11. Then I learned that pain and suffering just makes people make even worse decisions. If we hit a tipping point, I think we’ll only get less rational as a people.
mcd410x
GO GRIZZLIES! Hells, yeah!
Chad N Freude
@Allan:
Fixed, in the interest of accuracy.
hilts
These dinners (WHC, Gridiron, etc) are a fucking abomination. Between the royal wedding and the WHC Dinner, the MSM his hit the motherlode of shallowness and superficiality.
This morning I was channel surfing to find news and all I found were a bunch of pampered prima donnas gushing over the brilliant and transcendental quality of the royal wedding. When I clicked on CBS, I saw Harry Smith doing a stand-up amid piles of rubble and I felt relief that at least one news outlet had decided to leave the Windsor family nonsense to its competitors and focus on something that matters. As soon as Smith finished his sentence, he threw it back to Katie Couric who announced that she’d have more coverage of the royal wedding after a commercial break. This bit of cognitive dissonance reminded me of the saying that the role of a journalist is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. These gushing prima donna assholes aren’t worth a warm bucket of urine.
Chad N Freude
@efgoldman: I too
Actually, I appreciate the compliment. Thank you. Now back to our regularly scheduled rudeness and sniping.
Chris Wolf
Trumps reaction to the inevitable Trump jokes will be worth the price of his invitation.
Chad N Freude
@Chris Wolf: You’ve got to be kidding! He will take them as compliments and recognition of his supreme importance in the Grand Scheme of Things and bask in his narcissistic glory. Oh, wait. Maybe that is the priceless reaction
Steve in Sacto
Sorry, but this encompasses everything that’s wrong with Village. Milbank #fail.
Chad N Freude
Ok, you made me laugh out loud. Are you happy now?
asiangrrlMN
@Chad N Freude: Depends on the joke. Man’s got an awfully thin skin.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@efgoldman: Hi, ef!
Having watched the rest of LOTR, I think they turned the music down just a hair in The Two Towers and ROTK. It had its moments. Leitmotivs are cool, I guess. Pace, your excellent daughter.
Never been much a Wagner fan. The period of music history from the death of Beethoven up to Debussey (the music I grew up listening to)seems like a long, tiresome, melodramatic whinge.* (I reserve the right to volta face on this as my tastes migrate)
*excepting Schubert, whom I dig.
ETA: Oh, blast! You’ve gone to bed.
Comrade Luke
FYI – this post was cut off in the RSS feed. I don’t know if a setting was changed or what, but I thought I’d let the powers that be know that it was an excerpt instead of a full post in the feed.
arguingwithsignposts
Wait, Dana Milbank is lecturing the villagers?
Code Blue – irony has been murdered – again – in the hallway.
Yutsano
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
That’s because it was, if you stayed in the German-Austrian musical axis. The real sweet part about this period was the rise of nationalism and the expression of more native and non-traditional tonal schemes. Witness the soaring openness suggesting the white fields of Finland that marks a Sibelius symphony, or Mahler turning a children’s song into a long depressing lament appropriate for a funeral dirge. And don’t forget Dvorak. Also the American composers were starting to find their footing during this era as well. But if all you knew was Wagner, all you got was bombastic overused melodies and 18 hour opera cycles that need serious editing. That and Wagner personally was a racist anti-Semitic asshole. There was a reason he was you-know-who’s favorite.
Villago Delenda Est
@Yutsano:
Didn’t know that Voldemort (oh, stop it, Ron!) was a Wagner fan.
freelancer
@Yutsano:
Yuts! How ya be?
Yutsano
@freelancer: I made it through the week more or less intact, I discovered the marvelous relief that is the epidural steroid injection, and I seem to have pissed off my
Galtian overlordkitteh royally because she’s totally ignoring me tonight. Other than that life is a bowl of cereal at midnight. Et tu?freelancer
@Yutsano:
Oh. Didn’t know you were having med flareups. Sympathies. Life with the folks at the moment have been trying, but rewarding in that I’ve become the XO for my grandmother’s cancer care, but amongst all the family shit going on, I feel like I’m serving them well, and being a shoulder to lean on. I keep telling myself it’s all gonna be worth it.
Jewish Steel
Yutsy: Word to that. I do have a soft spot for Smetana.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Yutsano: I’m fond of Brahms, too. Gotta admire a guy that not only wrote his Requiem in the vernacular, but also forgot to mention Christ. Must have been an oversight.
hilts
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
Don’t overlook Saint Saens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsD0FDLOKGA&feature=related
Yutsano
@hilts: Indeed.
batgirl
@Arundel:
He was disproved from the very beginning since Obama had already released a state authorized valid birth certificate. But it took the release of the “long form” for many in the village to get embarrassed and STFU.
For example, why didn’t Bob Schieffer go off on Trump before the release of the “long form?”
SRW1
” the great orange charlatan”?
Donald Trump would like you to know, Dana, that this was uncalled for.
forked tongue
I am surprised no one else mentioned this weird moment from Milbank’s piece:
Did some editor delete the following sentence, in which Broder then laughed so hard his false teeth flew across the room?
Elizabelle
Katharine Weymouth is a disaster of a publisher. She seems to be going after the wingnut audience, for $$$$.
She is destroying her grandmother’s newspaper.
She needs to be fired. To spend more time with her family, or whatever.
sukabi
color me cynical, but Milbank will be back pimpin for the pols before the ink is dry on his last column… and to think otherwise is to ignore his history, and the power of the cocktail weeney.
Just Some Fuckhead
Haha. Good luck with your new low paying journalism career, DickWhisperer.