White House Correspondents’ Dinner: A Wake for Journalism

Washington, D.C. — The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was founded to honor journalism — the First Amendment — the insane, glorious idea that free people deserved to know when their leaders were screwing them. But that was a different century. That was before the Dinner became a half-lit cocktail wake for a profession that can’t tell a corpse from a candidate.

I arrived at the Hilton already two bourbons deep and smelling faintly of resignation. Good journalism demands proximity to the truth, and in this case, the truth reeked of chardonnay, Ambien breath, and plastic centerpieces rented by the hour. No president this year, again. No comedian either. No comedian dared show up to this funeral. Just a ballroom full of liberal stenographers clinging to their access passes like the last life vests on a ship they damn well helped sink.

The tension was so thick you could butter it and serve it on a Ritz cracker. CNN anchors huddled with BuzzFeed interns like refugees on a lifeboat made of expired credibility. NPR producers traded cautious war stories with MSNBC hosts, each trying to out-virtue-signal the other without spilling their sponsored Sauvignon Blanc. A man from Politico pitched me on a story about “the renaissance of accountability journalism.” I told him there was ketchup on his tie. It was blood, metaphorically speaking.

Halfway through my fourth drink—or maybe my fifth, hard to tell with the pace I was keeping, Axios’ Alex Thompson slurred his way up to a microphone to accept an award and blurted the confession everyone in the room had known but dared not say. They had “failed” to report on President Biden’s declining mental health. Failed? No. Failure implies an attempt. These people didn’t fail. They chose. They colluded. Hell, they didn’t just fail — they shoved it into a broom closet, slapped a “Top Secret” sign on the door, and stood there whistling Dixie.

Watching Thompson squeeze out an apology was like watching an arsonist tearfully regret forgetting to water the plants before setting the house on fire. The applause that followed was limp, confused — the sound of an industry realizing that the only thing more embarrassing than getting caught is having to pretend you’re sorry.

Without a comedian to swing the wrecking ball, the room sagged into a swamp of bad networking and worse jokes. No humor. No danger. Just the slow drip of an establishment that traded its eye teeth for press credentials and free shrimp. The Correspondents’ Dinner wasn’t a gala anymore. It was a hospice ward. Journalism wasn’t dying — it was already dead, embalmed, and propped up at the buffet table next to the stale crab cakes.

The laughter was gone. The glamour was gone.

Even the open bar seemed ashamed of itself—like it knew nobody here deserved the mercy of a blackout.

When the waiters cleared the tables, there was no applause, no music, just the awkward clatter of forks on porcelain and the hushed murmurs of PR reps scheduling spin sessions for Monday morning. As I stumbled outside into the thick, indifferent D.C. night, I scrawled a few last words into my notebook:

“BREAKING: Media discovers integrity is nonrefundable. Attempts store credit.”

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner used to be a night when journalists laughed at power. Now it’s a night when they apologize to it—quietly, drunkenly, and without a hint of the old rage that once made them dangerous. Tonight wasn’t a celebration. It was a mercy killing. And I came to make sure the job got finished.

God help me, I love it so.

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