When Words Become Explosive

By Zamboni

The inside-the-Beltway folks are a tad shocked by President Obama's remarks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night.

We cats think the D.C. gossips should get a life. We found the President's jokes amusing, and we salute his humorously "zinging" tone. (Keep it up, sir.) But the Correspondents' Dinner has become a silly event. In fact, any gathering that features Jay Leno is a silly event.

The much more important Obama speech took place earlier in the day, at the University of Michigan commencement. There, the President took America's demagogues — in Washington and on cable T.V. and radio — profoundly to task.

"Anyone interested in getting [media] coverage feels compelled to make their arguments as incendiary as possible," he said — which "makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate, the one we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response."

On that last point, we cats note with interest that about six hours later, police found an undetonated car bomb in Times Square.

We don't know who planted that bomb. But it strikes us that the President was eerily prescient in this important speech. However, the press has given much more attention to the White House Correspondents' Dinner than to the Michigan address. We suspect that it's because the WHCD was also about them — black-tie-clad journalists who should know better swanning around the Washington Hilton with the people they cover.

Bad form, guys.