Newsflash: The nascent fascism of the Republican Party and its journalistic enablers isn’t actually a good topic for a celebrity roast

A psychologist friend who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s has this to say about the sordid imbroglio now playing out regarding Michelle Wolf’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner:

At this point these political roasts are a bad cultural relic.  The complaint used to be that they illustrated too much coziness between the media and political classes. But that complaint still reflected some underlying shared beliefs: that in the end we’re all on the same team (even if that team was “the Elitists”); that agreement that truth matters and an independent press searching for that ultimately strengthens the team; and that things are going well enough to be able to joke about foibles.

I don’t think any of that applies now. The teams have split more widely, fundamentally despising each other, and one of those teams is inching closer to fascism. I doubt near-fascists in particular enjoy satire and irony, and humor tends to backfire more generally when it’s seen as an enemy attack.

I agree with Scott that the WHCD is a gross event that should be eliminated.  Even in the Before Time, it was a prime example of a backscratching, celebrity-obsessed in-group culture that was and remains inimical to actual journalism. And although I thought Obama was a good president, one thing I never liked about him was how comfortable he was and remains with that culture.  He was just a little too obviously pleased to have made it into the realms of the good and the great, as if what America needed most at the moment was for a black guy to be let into the national equivalent of the Porcellian Club.  (As C. Wright Mills pointed out sixty years ago in The Power Elite, “the point is not Harvard, but which Harvard?”).

And of course Donald Trump is president today because, among other reasons, he really really wants to be in that club too, even if trying to get in required ruthlessly exploiting racist ethno-nationalism to force his way through the door.