Sunday, Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan called for an end to the annual White House Correspondents Dinner.
She didn't mention her similar-themed February 2017 column, likely because she filled up Sunday's allotted space lamenting that the event handed an absent President Donald Trump a PR victory, and with a howler about the performance and alleged integrity of the establishment press.
Give Sullivan credit for this prediction she made last year:
Saturday night's event, marred by "comedian" Michelle Wolf's disgraceful monologue and the mostly warm reception it received — and which targeted Trump administration members with personal insults no one should have to publicly endure, and which would be a career-ender for any comedian who similarly targeted leftists — should be that tipping point.
In 2017, Sullivan was relieved that Trump, and apparently others in his administration, didn't attend last year's event, and played martyr on behalf of the press:
The Trump administration doesn't have, and didn't have, a "blacklist." If it did, CNN's Jim Acosta would surely be on it.
Sullivan falsely and hysterically characterized the administration's decisions to allow alternative media outlets to attend White House press briefings, and to remove undeserved first-question privileges the Obama administration had granted the Associated Press. (Predictably, the AP reacted like a bunch of spoiled brats.)
In her Sunday column, Sullivan fretted over how Trump capitalized on the disgraceful event:
... Trust in the mainstream media is low, a new populism has caught fire all over the Western world, and President Trump constantly pounds the news media as a bunch of out-of-touch elites who don’t represent the interests of real Americans.
The annual dinner — or at least the optics of the dinner — seems to back him up.
"Seems to"? Saturday's event confirmed to the world that the U.S. news media is indeed "a bunch of out-of-touch elites." That's why, in one important sense, we shouldn't want this annual event to end. It would be useful to get an annual confirmation of media arrogance.
Continuing:
And while Trump rarely sets a good example for anyone, his decision to hold a campaign-style rally in Michigan on Saturday night might be an exception.
Trump got to look like a man of the people, a guy who talks the language of autoworkers and waitresses.
Journalists — whose purported mission is to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” — were meanwhile partying with their sources at the Washington Hilton.
Sullivan's false "blacklist" claim in her 2017 column played right into her laughable portrayal of media heroism Sunday:
Journalists do not present false stories. When they get something wrong, they correct it.
They do their best to be impartial, and — contrary to what the president told his supporters — they aren’t out to get him but to merely cover him. They are not the opposition party.
The Federalist.com's Mollie Hemingway, who was also busy Sunday taking apart a fundamentally dishonest New York Times Magazine "hatchet job" about Devin Nunes, had the best response:
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
