Last week former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw chided his former colleagues in the Washington press corps for their childish (my word not his) obsession with celebrity culture at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. The super lame dinner on Saturday night, April 27, only proved Brokaw was too mild in his criticism. Wannabe comedian-in-chief Barack Obama auditioned for his future career as a stand-up comic as a room full of media sycophants rubbbed shoulders with such pillars of public policy as Conan O'Brien, Michael Douglas, Stephen Spielberg, Barbra Sreisand, George Lucas, Sharon Stone, Julia Dreyfus, Kevin Spacey, Katy Perry, and Nicole Kidman. Apparently the real giants of American intellectuals such as Lindsay Lohan and Kim Khardashian did not have time to come this year although both have attended in the recent past.
Obama tried to mimic joking at his own expense like President Reagan used to do but there is a huge difference. Obama's jokes supposedly about himself are really jokes about the flaws of his critics that only inflate his own over-the-top sense of self-importance. In this Obama was perfect for this celebrity-obsessed culture that tries to pretend it is a serious venue for actual journalists who tackle the hard work of real reporting. Authentic humility has no place at all in Obama World but fake humility is highly prized as long as you are good at pretense. One has to wonder how many hours of presidential time were spent on the pressing matter of making a video in which Obama pretends to be that actor Daniel Day Lewis just for a lame skit about a movie about his own life produced by Spielberg. I don't care about how many hours Spielberg spent making the video since he at least does not work for taxpayers who have a right to expect more maturity and less narcissism on the part of a national president.
