Posted on 02/12/2017 12:20:54 PM PST by Kaslin
CBS White House correspondent Major Garrett wrote an op-ed for Sunday’s Washington Post imploring journalists not to skip the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The headline was "Skipping 'nerd prom' now would prove Trump right" -- that journalists hate him too strongly to sit through a dinner with him.
Garrett also pushed back against the Post’s own Margaret Sullivan, who argued that it would be appropriate to cancel the event altogether because the press should not be Mr. Trump’s “prom date.”
"But no self-respecting White House reporter has ever been a president’s prom date, and the dinner isn’t a date at all,” Garrett writes. “It’s a cease-fire with bad wine and crowded tables. And if we, the media, stand Trump up at the proverbial dance because we’re pining for another ‘date,’ we make it that much easier for him to say we’re playing favorites. And in this case, at least, he’d be right."
Garrett decried decidedly non-objective media outlets -- which, by the way, don't have White House correspondents in the Brady briefing room -- taking their ball and going home:
When asked why his outlet won’t be co-sponsoring its always well-attended WHCA dinner after-party this year (and why he says he’s going fishing instead), Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter told The New York Times that his reasons were “Trump” and “the fish.” The New Yorker is scrapping its own, very popular, correspondents’ dinner weekend kickoff party, as well. U.S. News & World Report’s Robert Schlesinger says “The media should go all the way and boycott the dinner entirely this year.”
....Holding the dinner does not confer respect on any president. It aligns one institution, the WHCA, with another, the American presidency. If the dinner were canceled because (gasp!) a president made a few snide remarks about White House reporters, that act of self-regard would say that the First Amendment is negotiable and that emotional well-being takes precedence over professional responsibilities.
As the Post explained in the credit line at the article's bottom, Garrett has been a board member of the White House Correspondents Association. His position is that "consistency matters."
Consistency matters. The New York Times, among other organizations, has for several years chosen to ignore the dinner. Fair enough. Reasonable journalists can disagree. The suggestion, though, that holding the dinner during the Trump era would be an act of debasement, or that the advent of the Trump administration is the right moment to do away with the event altogether, strikes me as precisely the wrong approach. My outlet, CBS News, will participate this year and proudly so. If they back out now, organizations that attended last year ought to explain what is different about this year. Is it Trump? Or is it them? Skipping needlessly hands an evidentiary cudgel to Trump and his acolytes that reporters cannot and will not cover his presidency objectively.
Trump backers would think attendance at the dinner is a very small signal of hostile coverage. There's so much hostile coverage, who needs a dinner to prove it?
Lastly, if "consistency matters," Garrett should explain why George W. Bush was trashed by Stephen Colbert, but Obama gets Wanda Sykes kissing up, or Seth Meyers tag-teaming his attack on Donald Trump. Let's not forget Keegan-Michael Key helping Obama look funny. The proof is already obvious: the WHCA dinner in the Obama years underlined the press were on a prom date with a guy they deeply adored.
Time to bust Major Garrett down to PFC Garrett.
The fact that the article even needs to be written is already proof that Trump is right.
My favorite was the year all the DC glitterati competed to get Kato Kalin at their table.
“But no self-respecting White House reporter has ever been a presidents prom date...
Did he ever see the 0bama ass kissers and swooners at the events during the 0bama administration? Apparently not, or he couldn’t possibly make that statement with a straight face.
Poor Private Garrett.
I sure don’t.
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! THAT “press hates Trump” ship
already sailed on Election night, November 8, 2016,
“Major”.
Could be interesting.....
‘because the press should not be Mr. Trumps prom date”’
And yet, for the last 8 years, the Press and Hollywood not only went to Obama’s Prom, but went to bed with him and left the next morning for that walk of shame, still dressed in their tuxedos and gowns........
The whole thing is a stupid charade. But if he cancels, “thin skinned” would be permanently tattooed onto his legacy. Best to go, have better joke writers (will be tough, but he did it at that priest dinner with Hillary), and somewhere within his monologue deliver the kickintheballs line.
Something like “you know, I don’t know why this has to stay a permanent tradition. Every member of the mainstream media in the room hates half of America. Yeah, I know they hate ME, but I’m just one guy. The sad thing is that they hate a lot of you, my fellow Americans. And they want our readership, our views, but they don’t even make a PRETENSE of delivering honest information! They don’t even try. Their agenda isn’t delivering truth to you Americans. We can ask what their agenda is on another occasion, and for now we can have our fun, but I do wonder whether there is a point to continuing this dinner in future years.”
Then he goes right back to his jokey monologue.
It would be classy and it would be going along, but it would make a yuge point!
I liked him when he was working for Fox News and was kind of sad when he was leaving. I wished Rivera, or Shep Smith would have gone instead
How juvenile. Media afraid our President Trump will choose to start a food fight with them? Citizens are well aware of what the media is, even though they picture themselves as being something other.
Cancel the dinner. Use the time to better advantage.
Love it.
Trump is like feeding a ram jet more oxygen.
The more it gets the faster it goes.
He gets more attention and eats it up.
I am begging President Trump to stay away from this mastubatory event and reorganize his sock drawer instead..
The WH Correspondents’ Dinner should be discontinued. Don’t these MSM idiots realize how bad it makes them look? Trump should definitely skip it.
The broadcasts are more than enough proof.
On the morning of the dinner, Trump should schedule a “major policy address” in Boise, ID, jump on AF1 and force the press vermin to either follow him out there to “cover” it or go to their circle-jerk in Washington.
Who would want to eat with fifth-column leftist media scum and then try to keep it down?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.