america
White House Correspondents' Association head Ann Compton announced today that the upcoming WHCA dinner will be headlined by late-night funnyman
Craig Ferguson. Ferguson has the benefit of being totally inoffensive and theoretically funny, unlike former hosts Stephen Colbert and Rich Little, respectively. No one is sure what to expect, though, as no one has ever watched his program. Ferguson became a citizen just last week, and as his first official act as an American, he will act as obsequious court jester to a room full of war criminals feted as heroes, press members groveling before the ostensible targets of their muckraking, and Laura Bush's face's touching if mildly unsettling tribute to the late Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. (After the jump, Ferguson takes his citizenship test.) [
WHCA]
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new york times
Shocker: Non-Sulzbergers distressed by Times management. [WSJ]
Tribune: Begins buyback. [A.P.]
InTouch: Should stick to celebrities. [NYP]
White House Correspondents' Dinner: Show's over. [NYO]
Halberstam: Did stuff forty years ago in Vietnam that reporters should have been doing four years ago in Iraq. [NYT]
white house correspondents dinner
Further scenes from Saturday's White House Correspondent's Dinner:
Sanjaya Malakar, the shy, slender, 17-year-old "American Idol" reject, was at his table when a tall, middle-aged man stopped by to ask for an autograph. The boy's hosts, from People magazine, tried to shoo him away.
"We are trying to let him eat," they explained.
The man protested: "But I'm the governor of New York."
And so Eliot Spitzer got his autograph.
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eric alterman
Earlier we received the following note from one Grant Hickey about recent reports of an argument between Time.com blogette
Ana Marie Cox and adorable liberal blowhard
Eric Alterman: "Just want to say that it's good to know a site which should never be read or taken seriously, given that the writing is apparently made up (I've read much of Mr. Alterman's work, and I'm going to have to side w/him on this one). I'll be sure to let all my friends know to dismiss gawker.com as the same level as the
rumor mags in the grocery checkout stands." Yes! Do let
all your friends know that. We feel the same way about ourselves! And please enjoy reading
this truly priceless (without price!) transcript of their "conversation." Not only does it have a brilliant Pinteresque middle section involving parties and proper names, it's sure got a great ending.
—choire
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christopher hitchens
Not everyone—actually, it sounds more like not anyone—enjoyed this weekend's White House Correspondent's Association dinner. But
Christopher Hitchens was particularly displeased. As
David Carr notes, Hitch cut out early, declaring that:
"The event was disgraceful, so lame and mediocre that it is beyond parody," he said later. "It is impossible to decide which is more offensive: the president fawning over the press or the press fawning over the president. It expresses everything that the public means when they talk about inside-the-Beltway and access journalism."
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arianna huffington
Perhaps no one was more eager to leave the dinner than David Geffen and Arianna Huffington: Geffen and Huffington bolted super early and were already in his jet before the dinner had ended. One person who approached Arianna to chat as she was leaving the dinner got the cold shoulder. "Darling, I would love to talk, but I'm getting a ride back with David on his plane." (Oh, and Huffington's efforts to hide her black right eye with bangs didn't fool everyone. She earned the bruise recently when she passed out and hit her head on a desk.)
How Mariah! How Whitney! How Lindsay! Seriously, in all our years of late night work, we have never blackened an eye by going face-down on the desk. So we say there must be suspects. A) Violent Canadian blogger
Rachel Sklar. B) Backer
Ken Lerer, tired of waiting on Huffpo's new "comedy" site, "23/6." C) A new gay motorcycle-riding husband. D) Michael Stipe. That fucker gets vicious.
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