“People feel uncommonly saddened....”
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Oh brother. Their Messiah doesn’t show and it is the end of the world. Saddened?!? What a bunch of lame pussies.
What if President Bush had ditched this event? He had every right to, with the way he was treated by the media. I doubt the marginally talented AssJournalists would have felt “saddened”.
It doesn't matter who the President is, it is that the President is invited every year. Since the Gridiron Club Dinner was started, every President has made sure that he attended at least the first year in his term (I'm thinking Grover Cleveland never attended, but I can't remember that detail at this point in the night). Some, like Nixon notably, never attended again, but they all attended with the first invitation.
The list of Presidents that have attended:
Benjamin Harrison
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
William Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Franklin Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Dwight Eisenhower
John Kennedy
Lyndon Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
James Carter
Ronald Reagan
George Bush
William Clinton
George W. Bush
But apparantly Barack Obama's protocol advisors don't think that is good enough company to keep. So another tradition dies within his first 100 days.