A Piffany About “Nerd Prom” And The Problem With Mainstream Media Today
Stephen Colbert, shown skewering the Bush Administration in front of President George W. Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents Association dinner
What kind of nerds ask the most famous or infamous people in society to get dressed up and hang out with them, just to prove they’re cool?
The highest-profile hell gig a comedian can accept in the United States is not hosting the Academy Awards, no matter what you may think (Chris Rock merely showed up to present an award this year!); but rather, delivering the keynote address to the White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner. Otherwise known by media insiders as #NerdProm.
Most comedians die horrible deaths behind that podium, as their jocular jabs at the assembled media members often receive stone-cold silence. The TV reporters and their bosses did not gussy up in evening gowns and tuxedos to be mocked mercilessly, even if they enjoy laughing when the targets are their competitors or the politicians they cover.
They enjoy watching the Presidents of the United States poke fun at their image and their relationship with the press.
And they most of all love getting A-list, B-list or tabloid-favorite celebrities to sit with them over catered food and drink at the Washington Hilton.
Begun a century ago, the dinner hosted its first performers in 1944, Bob Hope among them. Richard Pryor performed in 1968; George Carlin, 1970. Comedians only began taking center stage at the WHCD in 1983.
Mark Russell, Rich Little, Mort Sahl, Dick Cavett, Jay Leno, Yakov Smirnoff, Bush impersonator Jim Morris x2, Sinbad, Paula Poundstone, Elayne Boosler, Al Franken, Conan O’Brien, Franken, Jon Stewart, Ray Romano, Leno, Darrell Hammond, Drew Carey, Leno, Cedric the Entertainer, Stephen Colbert, Little, Craig Ferguson, Wanda Sykes, Leno, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, O’Brien, Joel McHale, Cecily Strong, Larry Wilmore, Hasan Minhaj and Michelle Wolf have all had a crack at the gig.
After Wolf’s performance melted the snowflakes in the Trump administration, the dinner turned to a historian in 2019, before taking the next two years off due to the pandemic.
They’re set to return this Saturday with Trevor Noah.
If anyone made their career by taking the gig, it was Stephen Colbert, still in his first season as host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, in character as caricature of a conservative blowhard. But in front of President George W. Bush, Colbert satirized the shortcomings of the president and his administration, despite or perhaps to spite the atmosphere in the hotel ballroom.
If there’s another WHCD you remember, perhaps it’s the one with President Barack Obama where Keegan Michael-Key showed up as the president’s “anger translator, Luther.” But more likely, it’s 2011 that sticks out.
As I remarked then, the most baffling fact is this: Trump didn’t plan on attending the dinner that night in 2011.
Thing is, Trump hadn’t even planned to be at the Washington Hilton on April 30, 2011. He’d wanted to go to Steve Wynn’s wedding instead, where Clint Eastwood would serve as best man; cutting the trip short after a Friday-night party with Sylvester Stallone and Hugh Jackman before flying to D.C., at the invitation of…checks notes..The Washington Post. Pre-Bezos. Lally Weymouth, journalist and daughter of longtime Post publisher Katharine Graham, had invited Trump to this particular ball.
The Atlantic gleefully kept track of which celebrities got invites to which tables that year…
PAUL Abdul. heh heh.
What a strange group of people who wouldn’t normally ever want to be seen together, and none of them are even patting themselves on the back with any awards?!
Where are the nerds, again? How is this prom? What’s even the point?
When Trump decided to skip the event, Samantha Bee and her Full Frontal staff put on an Emmy-winning event as counter-programming: Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Bee said the president should sit accountable once a year. Once a year? Aren’t press conferences and pools and the White House press corps supposed to do that every day?!
So why have this dinner at all? If the point is to celebrate and commemorate the power of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to reward and inspire young journalists, then how does #NerdProm do that, exactly?
The WCHA dinner fails both nerds and proms.
If you want a real NerdProm, go to Comic Con.
If you need an excuse to cozy up to celebrities as well as to the most powerful politicians and institutions, then what was the point of your media organization? A dinner celebrating freedom of the press, and keeping power in check — this event stopped fulfilling that mission long ago. Notwithstanding the plaques and remarks made earlier in the evening.
The same journalists and celebrities who bemoan allowing Rudy Giuliani to compete on The Masked Singer or Sean Spicer on Dancing with the Stars? They’re not all that dissimilar to those who turn up their noses upon seeing Joe Biden on Parks and Recreation or Michelle Obama on black-ish. Though those two groups may disagree on much else. The whole thing is part and parcel of a larger, systemic, cultural dumpster fire — where reality TV has become politics, and governing has become reality TV. Everyone’s a fame whore, cashing in on our need to live vicariously.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and their ilk merely play politics as if actors in the reality TV melodrama of “Real Politicians of D.C.,” and enough of us want to keep tuning into their sideshow to prevent their elected cancellation.
And so the White House Correspondents Dinner, the Gridiron Club dinner, the Al Smith dinner, and other events like it welcome them all, only to inspire more bad behavior among too many who think they can gain entry into their exclusive clubs.
In the end, the joke was on us all along.
From The Comic's Comic 
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