Why I’m Boycotting the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

It’s a good sign that I didn’t recognize anyone during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner broadcast until halfway through. In the previous eight years Hollywood celebrities parachuted into the nation’s capital to strut up a red carpet and mingle with various tuxedo-clad political barnacles. That kind of hobnobbing woefully gives hope to impressionable student council presidents that if they work very hard and spend six hours a day on LinkedIn, they too may one day sit at the cool kids’ table with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Fortunately that’s over now. Donald Trump, a man so intensely unlikable that satellites spontaneously redirect their orbits to avoid him, has rent asunder the unholy alliance between politicians and coolness. Celebrities skipped this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner to attend Samantha Bee’s rival Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner instead. The president refused to let journalists lob verbal tomatoes at him, so instead visited a rally in Pennsylvania to promote his ambitious agenda of getting more Americans to wear bright red hats.

This year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner looked less giddy than years past; more of a vocational awards ceremony than a nexus of pundits and starlets. In that capacity balance may have been restored to the Force. Donald Trump, loudmouth authoritarian though he is, kicks up mushroom clouds of hostility every time he interacts with reporters. So at least for now, journalists are antagonists to government—as they should be.