Remember Margaret Sullivan? She is The Washington Post media columnist who wanted to retire the term "fake news" when it boomeranged on liberals after it had been embraced by the mainstream media. Now Sullivan has another crusade in which she wants to cancel something. The White House Correspondents' Association dinner.
Although Sullivan supported The New York Times withdrawing from the dinner several years ago when she was their Public Editor, she did not call for its outright cancellation. It is way more than obvious that her real reason for her sudden urge to cancel the dinner outright is that Donald Trump is now President. And the recognition of that disturbing fact for them is something that Sullivan and her fellow liberal journalists simply can't tolerate at the WHCA dinner.
Here is Sullivan making the case in her February 5 column for the dinner cancellation now that it would mean President Donald Trump staring down at the MSM from the dais.
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Once merely embarrassing and ridiculous, the annual White House correspondents’ dinner is poised to tip over into journalistic self-abasement.
It’s time to stick a silver-plated fork in it.
It's time now that Donald Trump is president as Sullivan is about to make more than obvious.
Now, given President Trump’s disparagement of the news media as Enemy No. 1 — “scum,” don’t you know — the idea of this show going on is an even worse idea.
...And Vanity Fair and the New Yorker announced that they were canceling their usual parties. Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter said he’d go fishing in Connecticut instead of hosting the magazine’s usual hot-ticket after-party.
...Asked why this year was different, Carter answered simply, “Trump, and the fish.”
...For journalists to make nice with an administration that has trashed and blacklisted them conjures the abused wife who sends the cops packing, puts a little extra makeup over her bruises and hopes things will get better soon.
And for those who still doubt that Trump is the real reason for Sullivan's call for cancellation of the dinner, an encore:
The press shouldn’t be Trump’s enemy — a construction that serves his political purposes. Nor should it be his prom date.
The column finishes with Sullivan's plea:
Cancel the dinner now.
The best part of her column is actually the readers' comments calling Sullivan's not so ulterior motive into question:
NOW the media worries the Correspondent's Dinner is 'poised to tip into journalistic abasement'? Please.
When President Obama said "Almost all of you voted for me," to raucous applause, not a single member of the traditional media worried about the optics. When the president was fawned over, lauded, and praised to a degree never before seen, not a single member of the traditional media worried about optics.
Now that a president is calling out the media, the press suddenly want the event cancelled? Please.It's more than a little hypocritical to all of a sudden get religion on this when it's Trump's turn; the rear-kissing during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations was just as unacceptable.
Exit question: How long before Margaret Sullivan discovers that the ritual of the ceremonial first pitch by the President at the beginning of the baseball season to be unseemly?
