Washington’s Black-Tie Hatefest

I didn’t write about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner yesterday because I figured there was more than enough national outrage to go around.

After all, you couldn’t turn on the news Sunday without hearing about that black-tie calamity. By Monday the internet oozed with expressions of disgust and disbelief.

But it occurs to me that many are missing the bigger picture.

Yes, there’s lots of sympathy being offered to Sarah Huckabee Sanders who sat a few feet away from Michelle Wolf as the “comic” cruelly ridiculed her in front of the Washington press corps, celebrities and politicians on Saturday night. 

And there should be. 

Wolf’s “jokes” were unseemly. Unfunny. And just plain rude.

Since when did four-letter words and abortion one-liners become acceptable at a formal dinner? 

Asking for a friend.

And no, the fact that the president can be vulgar doesn’t excuse this. Stop with the whataboutisms.

Journalists - and I was one for 42 years - like to think they behave better than the people they cover. Reporters believe they have standards even if politicians don’t.

Yet the fact that so many members of the media just sat there in their finery shows that they’re not all that different from the pols they cover. 

They weren’t handcuffed to their seats. They could have departed. And if they’d foreseen the backlash that was coming, some would have decamped to the bar. Instead, they stayed, some laughing, others groaning as the televised filth-filled hatefest went on and on.

The Sanders remarks were crude and mean. So were the barbs aired at Ivanka Trump and Kellyanne Conway.

Proving - if there was any doubt before Saturday - that the so-called sisterhood never has room for women who don’t goose-step to liberal orthodoxy.

Just when some of us thought the public’s opinion of journalists couldn’t sink any lower, the dinner happened.

Don't blame the comic. She was just the hired hand, giving the audience what she believed they wanted.

And it backfired. Spectacularly.