“Do you know the one I gave?”. The unforgettable lead with which comedian Eugenio started his jokes in the 1980s and 1990s applies perfectly to the correspondent dinner Joe Biden presided over Saturday night (early yesterday morning in Spain) at the Washington Hilton. A traditional act in White House history that had been knocked out for the past three years by the coronavirus pandemic and received by the president as a recent candidate for re-election, in the election race that will take place next year. “You may think I don’t like Rupert Murdoch. That’s not true. How can I not like someone who makes me look like Harry Styles?” The first ‘do you know the one I gave?’ of the president during the banquet delighted the guests. Murdoch has just turned 92. Biden is 80 and last night he decided to face them in front of a media outlet that constantly reports Americans’ reluctance for someone his age to run for president for another four years. “I understand that age is a very reasonable thing,” he admitted to journalists before pointing out: “You say I am old, I say I am wise.” He returned to the subject several times. Like when he praised the 1791 amendment to the Constitution protecting free speech and called its author, James Madison, “a friend.” References to the Fox network and its recent turmoil also abounded, most notably the firing of its announcer Tucker Carlson, a reference to the most aggressive of Trumpism, and the deal with electoral measurement company Dominion, which obliges the communications company to give him a little more. pay $700 million for defamation related to false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election. The Fox journalists “are here because they couldn’t say no to a free meal,” Biden joked as comedian Roy Wood Jr., invited to the stage, threw a cape at him by noting that after Carlson’s firing, “millions of Americans will be left without knowing why they hate Trump.” Kamala Harris, between NBC News correspondents and White House politician Kelly O’Donnell and Eugene Daniels AFP The White House Correspondents Association event was attended by 2,600 guests. What was less, as usual, were correspondents and journalists covering the administration’s political information. On the other hand, businessmen, editors, publicists, VIPs, and movie, music, and sports stars galore (John Legend, Liev Schreiber, Enes Freedom, and Brittney Griner, the WNBA player detained in Russia and released last December in a prisoner exchange). Also in attendance were prominent politicians such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schummer, and the engaging figure of former White House health adviser Anthony Fauci. At the start of this legislature, the eighty-year-old ‘covid tsar’ decided to leave his official position to pursue his passion for research. Even actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sent a taped message praising the journalism profession. All this, much celebrated. Endowed with great closeness and sympathy behind a mountain of muscle, “Arnie” is part of the tableau of leaders halfway between politics and Hollywood that Ronald Reagan premiered, but with a sense of friendly neighborliness he never displayed. The Attorney General, William Barr, talks about the details of the dinner with former adviser to Donald Trump’s previous administration, Kellyanne Conway Reuters. registered the presence of Bob Hope. Ozzy Osbourne, Jay Leno, the couple formed by Demi Moore and Ashton Tucker, the Kardashians, Ellen Degeneres (recently out and who ended up kissing her partner Anne Hache in front of Bill Clinton) and Barbra Streisand, who had a long talk with Colonel Colin Powell on homosexuality in the military. Very uninhibited, George W. Bush took the stage with comedian Steve Bridges, portrayed as the Republican leader, at the banquet in 2006. Clinton also had his own ‘copy’ and even had to overcome his shyness and play the safoxon. The ‘celebrities’ of Clinton and Obama The tradition of the dinner was established in 1924. For many years it was a semi-formal act of rapprochement between the government and the press. Even small films and documentaries were shown. As the years progressed, it began to take on a more social tone, emerging during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, inclined to surround themselves with Hollywood stars, singers and fashionable social figures. Both turned the ritual with the press into a ‘cool’ catwalk. There were also compromising situations. Journalist Michael Kelly lived in 1987 and 1988 with Fawn Hall, Oliver North’s Secretary of the National Security Council who helped destroy compromising Irangate documents, and Donna Rice, whose affair with Gary Hart destroyed the promising Democrat’s presidential race ruined. However, the presence of “celebrities” disappeared during Donald Trump’s tenure. The dignified guests preferred not to have their picture taken with him. This circumstance contributed to the failure of a banquet that the Republican leader himself twice refused to attend, while a third time prevented comedians from taking the stage. If anyone had to speak at the presidential dinner, it was him. Some sources claim that the tycoon’s distaste for this tradition began in 2011. Back then, he was a popular character for his program “The Apprentice” and for casting doubt on Obama’s American roots. So that evening he became the butt of the African-American president’s jokes, who even showed his birth certificate. “No one is happier to put an end to this birth certificate thing than Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the things that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing? What’s really going on happened in Roswell?” joked Obama. George W. Bush and comedian Steve Bridges, astonishingly typed, at dinner in 2006 AFP Last Saturday there was no lack of anti-Republican irony. Biden represented himself at the Washington Hilton as Dark Brandon, a fictional character spawned from his 2021 opponents, who sang “Fuck Joe Biden” in public and was mistaken by a TV host for the chant “Let’s go Brandon”. to a popular American pilot. From then on, memes multiplied about an alter ego of the president named Dark Brandon, a sinister type of the dark internet, who has been brought into their territory by the Democrats. The black-glassed hero Brandon is today a hero with the face of Biden and the lightning bolt of Superman who fills all White House tenant merchandising, from mugs to T-shirts, and which the stakeholder himself has included in his election application. Last night, in the image of his alter ego, Biden put on his black aviator glasses for the press, the same ones that stop Brandon’s ability to shoot lightning with his eyes. Besides, they gave him an amazing resemblance to the late editor Stan Lee, the legendary creator of Marvel characters like Spiderman or The Fantastic Four. Elon Musk tweeted that NPR (the American public broadcaster) should be closed. The best way to make NPR go away is for Elon to buy it.” The Biden gags continued into an enjoyable evening. He and his wife, Jill Biden, thus renewed their attachment to an essential act on Washington’s political agenda, who, however, was quarantined by the coronavirus during the early years of his tenure. In fact, the couple skipped dinner in 2022 and went only to the part of the speech as a preventative measure. When numerous guests were found to have contracted covid, probably because they had spent the night with some porters in a poorly ventilated room, but it has also brought the president closer to journalists, as he is one of the few American leaders who spends the least amount of time on press conferences or interviews, a trend that, however, has gradually changed since the war in Ukraine and now with his electoral postulation “I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready, but Mickey Mouse beat me up and got there first.” fetched. He joked about the lawsuit between the governor of Florida and the Disney Corporation. But he got serious when he talked about Trump. Faced with the tycoon’s anger at the media, Biden condemned: “The free press is a pillar, perhaps the pillar of a free society. It is not a criminal.” Tribute to journalists Evan Gershkovich, pictured, and Austin Tice AFP Amid the respectful silence in the room, the president recalled two journalists: Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Moscow who had been charged by Russian authorities. was held under espionage charges, and photojournalist Austin Tice, kidnapped in 2012 when he went to cover a story in Syria. The reporter’s final footage comes with a video in which he appears blindfolded surrounded by a group of men armed with rifles and a grenade launcher. His family is convinced that the Syrian authorities have ordered his arrest. “I work every day to bring them home. As a nation, we should never give up hope that things can change,” Biden said, before addressing the families of the two journalists present in the room. “Please keep believing,” Biden told them. jokes was already over.
Source: La Verdad
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