Time for Something New at the Correspondents Dinner?

Political Washington (an oxymoron, I know) is still buzzing today over Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Dinner and the comedic stylings of its featured speaker, Michelle Wolf.

President Trump boycotted the event for the second year in a row, but administration luminaries including Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and counselor Kellyanne Conway were on hand and served as targets for some of Wolf’s sharpest lines.

The routine was hilarious to many, insulting to many others. Wolf got pretty personal in her jabs at Sanders, though her language was nowhere close to as coarse as that Trump has used to describe journalist Megyn Kelly and one-time rival candidate Carly Fiorina.

Trump Tweeted on Monday that the dinner was “a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country.” The correspondents association president has issued what seems like an apology.

Wolf says she “wouldn’t change a single word.” And her comedic colleagues are rallying to her defense. Here’s how Seth Meyers saw it:

The annual dinner is supposed to be a one-night truce between the president and the people who cover him, a chance to celebrate their shared belief in the importance of press freedom and to have a few laughs at each other’s expense.

But it’s evolved into a glitzy spectacle that reinforces the suspicion among millions of Americans that the Washington press corps is out-of-touch with life outside the Capital Beltway.

Add to that the facts that Trump seem to lack both a sense of humor and respect for press freedom, that he has repeatedly called journalists “enemies of the people,” and that he skipped Saturday’s dinner for a rally where he told supporters that reporters “hate your guts,” and you just might conclude that it’s past time for the correspondents to change the format.

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