White House Correspondents' dinner - symptomatic of what is wrong with America and Washington

For two days in a row (or has it been three?), the top news stories in Google News have been about the White House Correspondents' Dinner. To me, this obsession is symptomatic of what is most wrong with America and Washington. The media and Hollywood are the two biggest institutions that do the most to misrepresent and distort reality in America and Washington. The emphasis on celebrity, glamor, gossip, drama , innuendo, scandal, paranoia, and titillation do a great injustice to average Americans by simultaneously misrepresenting what is important as well as distracting people from what is important.

 

This obsession with entertainment and frivolity while the rest of the nation struggles with various forms of economic distress and six million Americans are still looking for work for several years now, is quite appalling, not to mention outright disrespectful.

 

You would have thought that at least they would have tried to tone it down at least a little bit, but no, they simply go over the top again, reemphasizing the "out of touch" aspect of both the media and Hollywood, not to mention the politicians and even professionals in Washington who willingly go along for the joy ride.

 

There actually is a lot of good in Washington, but this annual dinner manages to emphasize the worst aspects of the character of the elite in America. The good news is that it is only one evening and next week things will be back to "normal."

-- Jack Krupansky