A Short, Obligatory Post About The White House Correspondents Dinner

11 May, 2009 by John Hawkins

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I’ve never liked the White House Correspondents Dinner or as people have taken to calling it, “Nerd Prom.” The dinners are implacably hostile to all things conservative, the politicians end up behaving like jackasses about half the time, and the comedians who are invited to perform have every incentive to go way over-the-top to get attention.

This year’s White House Correspondents Dinner displayed all three of those problems. Instead of roasting the President, which is usually what comedians do at this dinner, Wanda Sykes essentially gave him a pass and told some very ugly, beyond the pale jokes about Rush Limbaugh while Barack Obama laughed uproariously. Here’s Toby Harden’s take on it,

I was at the dinner and I began by laughing at Sykes’s gentle teases about the press loving Obama so much they never capture him on film smoking but often seem to get him on the beach.

It was amusing when she quipped that Obama trying so hard to be all things to all men that the next thing is he’ll be seen mowing the White House lawn.

But the speech took a very ugly turn when she laid into Limbaugh.

This is what she said: “Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you’re saying, ‘I hope America fails’, you’re, like, ‘I dont care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq’. He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason.

“He’s not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight.”

She then concluded: “Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that’s what he needs.” Obama seemed to think this bit was pretty hilarious, grinning and chuckling and turning to share the “joke” with the person sitting on his right.

There’s not much room for differing interpretations of what Sykes said. She called Limbaugh a terrorist and a traitor, suggested that he be tortured and wished him dead.

What was his crime? Hoping that Obama’s policies – which he views as socialist – will fail.

Here we have the President who ran in large part on unifying the country laughing uproariously at someone wishing that his political opponent’s kidneys would fail. He’s all class, that guy.

The flip side of this is…. I have to admit that I envy Rush a bit here, too. Millions of additional people are going to tune into his radio show today to hear his response to this and you can be sure it’ll make for a screaming headline that will lead to even more attention and traffic for Rush.

Today is a good day to be Rush Limbaugh.

PS: I think B. Hussein Obama owes Rush Limbaugh a personal, public apology for his boorish, inappropriate behavior at that dinner.

PS #2: Wishing that Barack Obama would fail is like wishing that someone would fail to beat your child to death with a shovel. Wishing that the guy swinging the shovel will fail isn’t the same as wishing your child will fail. In fact, it’s the exact opposite.