R.I.P., WHCD? Let's Hope.

By Baxter

Here's another thing that we can thank Donald Drumpf for: He may have killed the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

We cats have long despised this silly event, in which alleged journalists kiss up to the power-wielders to whom they are supposed to speak truth. It began to cross over into ridiculousness in 1987, when Michael Kelly, then a reporter for The Baltimore Sun who later was killed in the Iraq war he supported, invited Fawn Hall, Oliver North's paper-shredder, as his guest. The bastardization of journalism's finest mores had begun — but how surprising is that from the guy who also edited (and defended) the liar Stephen Glass?

Okay, we've gotten that off our furry chests. Suffice to say that that kind of thing should have been nipped in the bud 30 years ago, but wasn't. And we're left with the farce that exists today.

So while we're still devastated about the Presidential election, and beside ourselves at the ICE raids and the Russian intrigues and the Muslim ban that have ensued, we're thrilled that the loathsome WHCD also appears to be part of the fallout.

The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and The Guardian are just three of the news outlets that have dropped out (The New York Times hasn't attended for years), celebrity A-listers are taking a pass, organizers are having trouble finding a comedy host, and Samantha Bee, bless her, will hold a competing "Not The" event at the storied Willard Hotel. All because nobody wants to be in the same room with a narcissistic sociopath who has demeaned and derided them and their profession, and pretend that just because he got 77,000 more votes in three Rust Belt states, everything is normal.

This is all just great. May it continue. And may we all follow the thinking and example of Jimmy Carter, who neglected to attend the WHCD in 1978, Ronald Reagan in 1981 (he'd been shot), and Hillary Clinton, who, when someone in the Situation Room pointed out that the Osama bin Laden raid was scheduled for the same weekend, famously said, "Fuck the White House Correspondents' Dinner." We cats PURR.