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When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia. Mark Steyn
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April 30, 2012

Obama dogs it at #WHCD

I somehow managed to get through the entire weekend without giving even a passing thought to the White House Correspondents Dinner, that noxious nexus of Hollywood and Washington. But this is fascinating. John Hinderaker:

Politically, the most interesting phenomenon last night was the dog jokes. The President himself made three jokes about eating dogs. This represents a victory for new media and especially for Jim Treacher, since liberal news sources like the New York Times and Jon Stewart had studiously tried to pretend that the dog controversy didn’t exist. Obama and Kimmel evidently recognized that Twitter made such pretense impossible. (The New York Times, however, is still holding out.)
They pretended so hard that some libs didn't even get the joke. Mark Steyn:
That represents an amazingly swift victory for the man who, all but entirely via Twitter, injected the topic into the public discourse – Jim Treacher.

Indeed,  as The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta wrote:
My favorite DC/world disconnect at #WHCD dinner lst nite was when frmr politico now in NY asked why Obama kept talking about eating dogs.
It’s not really a “DC/world” disconnect so much as a housetrained media/freelance bloodhound disconnect. If you rely for your news on the poodles of the Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc, or the self-neutered attack-dogs of the late-night comedy shows, you would, like Ms Franke-Ruta’s friend, have been utterly in the dark. Jim Treacher forced the President and his palace guard to break their own embargo. Or as he put it:
I win.
Good for him.
Ditto. Or as "Jim" "Treacher" also put it, "Just more proof that we don't need @ABC News anymore."

By the way, don't underestimate the power of Twitter. Michelle Malkin saw its potential and created Twitchy to help you sort through it all.

Back to the WHCD, file the following Jimmy Kimmel joke under "many a truth is told in jest":
Everything that is wrong with America is here in this room.
But he may be exaggerating, just slightly. Were Bill Maher and Al Sharpton there?

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Oh brother.

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1 comment:

  1. I tried watching the president's talk, but couldn't get through it all. I ended up watching Bush's 2006 talk, when he stood side-by-side with look-alike Steve Bridges - very funny speech that seemed to have garnered more laughs than O's.

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1921276117304287501

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