White house correspondents dinner - A critical analysis

May 2, 2016

There have been hundreds of articles about the recent 2016 event, in a way Barack Obama's initial farewell speech to the world. The articles about his words and those of his selected comedian Larry Willmore, were evaluated on the laughs and that most important element for media success, edginess.  Before embarking on this essay, I did a search for other "critical theoretical" evaluations of this event. There was this one by Frank Rich of the N.Y. Times of the 2007 dinner, mostly focusing on how it breached the distance required between Press and Government needed to do incisive probing reporting.   And this broader criticism from The Christian Science Monitor of the same year.

This is a difficult essay to write, as we all are awash in a sea of entertainment. Since the panorama of emergent events is so complex, so multi-determinant, so out of the control of individuals -- we may as well turn the march of events into laughter, and show that we are all good sports who can enjoy a joke.  Mass movements are the products less of individuals reaching their own conclusions than of contagion.  This is the nature of panicked crowds being suffocated or lynch mobs doing their deeds with boisterous abandon.  It is why political pundits talk about a campaigns momentum, people wanting to be part of a crowd, even when it's invisible.

Obama's legacy should not be that "he killed" metaphorically with his jokes, since part of the responsibilities of the Commander-in-Chief, is real killing.  Larry Willmore, alluded to this:

"But I have to say, it’s great, it looks like you’re really enjoying your last year of the presidency.Saw you hanging out with NBA players like Steph Curry, Golden State Warriors. That was cool. That was cool, yeah. You know it kinda makes sense, too, because both of you like raining down bombs on people from long distances, right? What? Am I wrong?" 

The President smiled, displaying a hint of an impulse to respond, but the image that remained was the broad smile.  He was trapped in the spirit of the evening; this man who has been given the awesome authority to reign down death, something he sees as a responsibility in the face of a lethal enemy. He could not break the mood of the elite having a grand old time, and nothing like considering the reality of the business end of this sanitized method of killing was going to be allowed to break the mood. 

A friend I was discussing this with pointed out that there is a more outrageous example of the excesses of this annual event.  This one was President George W. Bush being the main character in a mordant parody of perhaps the worse "error" of judgement in recent history, the claim of certainty of existence of WMD in Iraq.

It was a 30 second video riff shown in his 2004 speech pretending he is searching the oval office, saying for each area he looked, "no it's not under here" as the audience laughed hysterically.  This video intersperses his mock search with  brief segments of the atrocities that we committed in Abu Ghraib, shown here to illustrate how easily his "comic" routine would be used to foment hatred against this country, generalization to be against the entire non-Muslim world. We all are still paying dearly for this riff  that spread around the world

A President of the United States may be blessed with a natural sense of humor, but never should be put into a position where comedic sensibilities override the awesome responsibility of the office.  If a President is to play to an audience, it is to the people of the United States as the leader of this country and the entire world.

What did get some serious press wasn't Obama's smile at being reminded of his use of lethal drones, but these final words of Larry Willmore:

Thank you for being a good sport, Mr. President, but all jokes aside, let me just say how much it means for me to be here tonight. I’ve always joked that I voted for the president because he’s black. And people say, “Well, do you agree with his policies?” And I always said, “I agree with the policy that he’s black.” I said, “As long as he keeps being black, I’m good.” They’d say, “What about Iraq?” “Is he still black?” But behind that joke is a humble appreciation for the historical implications for what your presidency means.

When I was a kid, I lived in a country where people couldn’t accept a black quarterback. Now think about that. A black man was thought by his mere color not good enough to lead a football team — and now, to live in your time, Mr. President, when a black man can lead the entire free world. Words alone do me no justice. So, Mr. President, if i’m going to keep it 100:

Yo, Barry, you did it, my nigga,  You did it.

This video describes a question to the Presidential press secretary about Wilmore's use of this word, and how the President felt about it, which was fine.  It's telling that the subject of making a joke of his use of lethal drones didn't raise an eyebrow, just as Bush's riff on the non-existent WMD that triggered violent death and destruction with no end in sight. .  What got the country's attention was, as described in the press, "the use of the N-word" (see addendum)  Mass slaughter of innocents is no big deal if it's presented in good fun, but use of an epithet for a race is a genuine sin, complete with proscription against reproducing the actual word, just as Muslims feel about a depiction of their prophet.  

The word is so satanic that it overshadowed what Willmore was really expressing, which was a very personal statement, that I understand as this:  "When we were children, being black meant we couldn't even head a football team, and you have demolished all of this.  Those days the echo of "nigger" was heard by the mob of hooded bigots about to slaughter one of us.  Now a hateful word for us is forbidden, yet I say it boldly in the new meaning that you have made possible, as a sign of  great affection and appreciation for what you have done for our people.  And for me, this transcends anything else.  So I express  it in a way that has a different meaning, ......."My nigger, my friend, you did it."


Other elements, such as Obama's ridicule of "The Donald" went unquestioned, as if it were the same as his previous taunts at earlier dinners of this man challenging his natural born citizenship.  His cartoon image of him flashing on the big screen ignored that he is now the presumptive candidate for one of our two parties that define our national democracy.  While the elite crowd in attendance of both parties generally revile him, to ignore that an overwhelming majority of primary voters, and potentially a majority of citizens may want him to be president, at the very least, makes his being fodder for juvenile jokes less than appropriate.  Obama is still the President, and as such must defend the process, which includes anyone running to gain the presidency by the will of the people.

Before recording of the White House were ended after Watergate, we can sometimes listen to a President with his pals talking freely, joking about them cheap Jews and dumb colored people and bombing the shit out of the bad guys -- all over a glass or two of whisky.  It was a release from every word that they said being evaluated by interests all over the world, with one wrong phrase costing political capital, and maybe a career.

At a certain level of prominence, there are things that are only to be said in private, since anything that is said by a President becomes public news all over the word in minutes.  When the talent to entertain prevails over actual governance, and the somberness of the office, we trivialize such decisions.  Yet they affect real people, men women and children whose existence will be shaped by this person who is now being an entertainer, who is in the limelight, ironically, because of this authority and the trust that the electorate bestows upon him, whether deserved or not. 

We revere Abraham Lincoln because we believe he agonized over the decisions that he made.  When the decision was thrust upon him of war or dissolution of the States, he chose a brutal war based on a vision of a better future, bringing widespread suffering that is beyond our imagination.  How different would his place in history be if he had a dinner, a celebrity roast, to attend rather than a play at Fords Theater.  Would he have laughed at the owners of the Plantations running for their lives, or the liberated slaves who never were going to get their promised forty acres and a mule.  Would that have gotten laughs and garnered praise for his being edgy?  As the writers of our Constitution knew, A President in many ways, as both head of government and head of state, has some elements of a monarch for his term of office.  When even for a single night once a year, the respect for the office is subordinated to garnering laughs, something vital is jeopardized.

It's just not worth it.
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Addendum:
 Here's Larry Willmore's talking about this last line on his T.V. Program.  He sort of conveyed the sentiment that I concluded above, but since he did not bleep the N word, as every other video had, he pointed out that the word he used was not nigger, which is an insult, but nigga, which is a different "conjugation." and a sign of affection.  If interesting in this subject in more depth, read this essay,

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Additions After Donald Trump took office,  From N.Y.Times article

In 2011, Mr. Trump, then a civilian and a guest at the dinner, sat stone-faced as he was mocked relentlessly by President Obama and Seth Meyers for having promoted the false theory that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States.

Mr. Obama said of Mr. Trump at the time: “Now he can get to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened at Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

Mr. Trump lashed out the next morning, in an interview with The Times, saying Mr. Meyers had “no talent” and acknowledging his discomfort — “I am not looking to laugh along with my enemies” — while also speaking at length about possibly running for the presidency.

         




     

Fuel for conspiritory Jew haters in Merrik Garland as Justice

This was a letter sent to two eminent historians 

I'm in the middle of reading "The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives and Antisemitism" and appreciate your telling a story of events in the rare mode of historiography, since consciousness -- from elites to the masses ---is focused on the present, the current elections, values and social stresses that underlie them.  In the Western world, and this country in particular, antisemitism seems an artifact of past times, and the mere raising of the subject outside of academic circles is suspect.  

This is expressed in this article in N.Y. Jewish Week,

“It is a remarkable testament to America that a fourth Jew can be nominated to the court and that his religion is not an impediment,” said Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Committee.

If confirmed, Garland would fill the seat held by Antonin Scalia, who died last month.

Stern said he believes it unlikely that Garland’s religion will “generate substantial opposition from those who would say there are too many Jews on the court. Nobody is threatening violence against the Jews, as happened in Europe when they thought the Jews were too powerful. … It’s unprecedented in the long history of the diaspora that you have an institution as powerful as the Supreme Court and that there could be four members who are Jewish when Jews constitute less than 2 percent of the population.”

This articles is saying, "We have arrived, and this disproportionate representation on the high court is cause for celebration.

Let's jump forward an unknown period, and assume that there has been a series of Supreme Court decisions that, from the conservative perspective, has fostered the murder of millions of unborn babies and impeded the teaching of Gods holy message.  And, it can be pointed out that these cultural changes have been made by a cabal of five un-elected Justices, of whom 80% are, ethnically at the least, of the Jewish religion.

Those, such as the writer of the above article, choose not to visualize that Jew hatred, something that has existed in various forms for millennia, could surface again.  There are hundreds of jurists with credentials comparable to Merrick Garland who could be nominated for this position with similar juresprudential and partisan values.  Many with a Protestant background, a majority of American citizens with not a single Justice on the Supreme Court, as Antonin Scalia pointed out in the Obergefell decision 

While I do not believe that President Obama gave this much thought, and just worked the political calculus of this nomination, it behooves others to look at the possible adverse consequences.  When someone attempts to discern the reality of "Judeo-Bolshevism" whether it be more accurately a canard or a phenomenon, the first pass is the proportion of Jews in the revolutionary leadership.  For those who want to revive Jew hatred, they need go no further.   That revolution evolved from complex evolving historical causes, while the Supreme Court is structured, lending itself to citing of anomalies of religious-ethnic representation and influence.

I am sending this to two scholars who have explored this area in great depth. I see this as a time-bomb, that while unlikely ever to explode, there being no valid reason for it to ever exist.  While it is unlikely that Mr. Garland will be confirmed by the Senate,  it would be preferable if his withdrawal were made without any reference to the issue that I raise.  There are more anodyne explanations that would suffice.

I do not have the ability to do more than share this with you two individuals, with your status in the intellectual and Jewish community providing a path to ultimate access to Mr. Garland.  Historians, by exploring the past have a unique insight into what can be the shape of the future.  And few adverse outcomes are so easy to prevent as this nomination.

Regards

AR

Since writing this Sonia Sottomeyer answered a question after a speech including this: "I, for one, do think there is a disadvantage from having (five) Catholics, three Jews, everyone from an Ivy League school,"