"'Did none of you learn anything from the Gridiron Dinner? Nothing,' Mr. Noah said, referring to another elite Washington gathering in April, after which dozens of attendees tested positivefor the coronavirus. 'Do you read any of your own newspapers?' By Wednesday, Mr. Noah’s chiding remarks at what he called 'the nation’s most distinguished superspreader event' were beginning to appear prophetic as a growing number of attendees, including a string of journalists and Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, said they had tested positive for the virus."
From "Virus Cases Grow After White House Correspondents Dinner/Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was among the attendees reporting coronavirus infections on Wednesday" (NYT).
This is a Washington Post reporter:
Welp. So I, too, got covid — and it sucks. It could have been the WHCD dinner I was covering or the surrounding events (also covering). Dinner had testing requirement, events did not. And now I’ll be missing a major international work trip I really wanted to do. https://t.co/5l7JxVweXC
— Jada Yuan (@jadabird) May 4, 2022
Quipped Trevor Noah, about Kyrsten Sinema, at the White House Correspondents' dinner, quoted in "Trevor Noah roasts lawmakers on both sides of aisle in correspondents’ dinner remarks" (The Hill).
Noah had criticised West while presenting The Daily Show, saying of West’s numerous recent posts about ex-wife Kim Kardashian: “What she’s going through is terrifying to watch … What we’re seeing is one of the most powerful, one of the richest women in the world, unable to get her ex to stop texting her, to stop chasing after her, to stop harassing her.”
West responded by rewriting the lyrics of Kumbaya to “koon baya my lord”, a twist on a word used by some to describe a Black person who rejects or undermines their own ethnicity.
I don't think The Guardian is explaining the offensive term correctly. Compare this essay from the Jim Crow Museum.
But I think you can tell that West was arguing that Noah's advice — to adopt a peaceful nonthreatening demeanor — is racist. Noah himself is black, and West is mocking him for being black while telling a black man not to manifest anger.
"I’m referring to President Barack Obama’s roasting of Trump at the 2011 dinner. Obama 'lampooned Mr. Trump’s gaudy taste in décor,' wrote Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns of The New York Times. 'He ridiculed his fixation on false rumors that the president had been born in Kenya. He belittled his reality show, The Celebrity Apprentice.' And what was the result? 'That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world,' Haberman and Burns continued in their 2016 article. 'And it captured the degree to which Mr. Trump’s campaign is driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and bragging: a desire to be taken seriously.'... As president, Trump boycotted the WHCD.... Today, I suspect that many Republicans would viscerally recoil at the notion of a GOP president self-flagellating for the amusement of people unwilling to give him a fair shake.... Booking Trevor Noah [to host this year's WHCD] screams out-of-touch progressive.... The WHCD is an antiquated relic that does more harm than good. We should have just let it fade from our collective memory, rather than trying to resurrect this monster."
From "Nobody Missed the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. Why Bring It Back? WHO IS THIS FOR? It’s is a grotesque, self-congratulatory, backslapping event for the elites, by the elites" by Matt Lewis at The Daily Beast.
"Reporter spotted chugging her coffee is hero of impeachment hearings"ADDED: From the Goodman column:
"120-year-old photo sparks Greta Thunberg conspiracy theories"
"Goodwin: Why Dems are so worried after latest round of impeachment hearings"
"Surgeons cut pounds of petroleum jelly out of ‘Popeye’ bodybuilder’s biceps"
Vindman was a strong witness, but a strange one, too. He presented himself as an Alexander Haig-like “I’m in charge here” figure, when he was actually far down the pecking order.IN THE COMMENTS: tim maguire asked (about the coffee drinker):
His inflated sense of self-importance seemed to be key to his alarm over the phone call. As he put it, he believed “that if Ukraine pursued an investigation in the 2016 elections, the Bidens and Burisma, it would be interpreted as a partisan play” and Ukraine would lose bipartisan support...
Adding to the surreal quality of the hearings is a crucial fact that gets too little attention: Trump’s policy toward Ukraine has been far stronger than President Barack Obama’s. Providing Ukraine with antitank weapons to counter Russian invasions is a direct slap at Vladimir Putin, a move Obama rejected because he feared it would provoke Putin.
Why is that a thing? He testified for a long time. The people behind him are going to do stuff. I could see if she picked her nose or let loose a particularly large yawn, but drinking coffee? That’s pretty normal.It's "a thing" because people get so bored and dull during long formal proceedings that something spontaneous gives joy. This is what I'm talking about when I say I am inspired. It means that we seemingly inert Americans are not sitting still and inertly receiving the program. We are thirsting for humanity — and when we feel we are down to the last drop, we invert the big cup onto our face with jaunty enthusiasm.
... Trump and his supporters [have mounted] vigorous attacks against his critics, demanding they apologize.To be fair, Noah is not an American citizen (I don't think). But Americans are listening to him, and he's on American TV purporting to deliver comic commentary on American government and politics, and he is communing with viewers who, he assumes, cherished a hope — a downright unpatriotic hope — that American President is in league with its Russian enemies.
During his CBS show, Colbert appeared to bend to the pressure... “I have said one or two things about Donald Trump, like how he’s a terrible president, so I’m just going to bite the bullet and say it,” Colbert told his audience. A camera zoomed in dramatically on the host’s face, ready to capture the monumental moment.
“Mr. President, if you’re watching, and I know you are,” he said, pausing to take a deep breath, “I’m sorry that you’re a terrible president.”
Over on Comedy Central, [Trevor] Noah begrudgingly admitted that “The Daily Show” also needed to apologize to Trump. “Mr. President, we’re sorry we called you a Russian-pee-loving-pumpkin-headed-colludasaurus,” Noah said. “Portions of that name were not accurate.... It’s a little bit like coming down the stairs on Christmas morning... You were hoping for a brand-new BMX, but instead you find Santa’s dead body, burnt because your parents forgot to turn off the fire.”
And Jimmy Fallon of the “Tonight Show” did have a new episode Monday, but not really: It had no fresh comedy or monologue and its point seemed to be to serve as an extended infomercial for the new Samsung phone used to shoot it outside of the usual studio.Oh. Boring.
French former reality TV star Martin Medus... said: 'You're a f****** racist. Those people are French and p***** to always be reminded of their background. They fight hard to tell people they are proud French people and yet you disrespect them calling them African. Are the Lakers an African team?'
Elise Frank added: 'So basically, Trevor, all the African-Americans in the US are just Africans, right? Know that as a french of Algerian, German and Spanish descent, I find it insulting. We are all french, we are one people. Ask the players,they'll tell you they're proud frenchmen!'
One man said: 'This is so racist to think that because they are black they are not French. They claimed their love of France. You denied them the right to be French? Is this what you want to deliver to all afro americans also? 98% of the players were born in France. Only two players were born in Africa, but they came at the age of two. So they've grown up in France.'
Gail: When there’s a choice about whether a politician or a lawman is going to get to play the hero, lawman usually wins. I suspect Comey will go down in history as the hero who stood up to a crazy president. Although in a fairer world he’d also be remembered as the guy whose overdramatic press conference got us said president in the first place.1. I think "If Trump is a pig, Comey’s a prig" was a much spiffier and more obviously true line than "When there’s a choice about whether a politician or a lawman is going to get to play the hero, lawman usually wins," but I can see why the Collins quote was chosen to appeal to NYT readers.
In an interview with ABC News over the weekend, [James Comey] went into detail with a critique of Trump’s tan. Trevor Noah wondered aloud whether Comey could be undermining his own credibility.And just before that, in "James Comey’s Attacks on Trump May Hurt a Carefully Cultivated Image":
“You see, now that’s funny, but that doesn’t sound like an impartial lawman. That sounds like a guy who got fired from White Castle talking trash about his old boss — that’s what it sounds like. It’s like, ‘Man, that dude smelled like onions before he got to work!’”
For decades, James B. Comey cultivated an image of purity as a lawman who stood above politics and politicians. Then came the book tour.If I go any further back in the NYT archive, I get the word in the Western sheriff context, so I'll just note that there seems to be a new tic, calling Comey the "lawman." Perhaps there's some ideation that the sheriff is in town or that Trump feels like the Wild West and needs taming.
With the release of his memoir this week and a set of high-profile media interviews to publicize it, Mr. Comey... has veered onto risky terrain, shedding the trappings of a high-minded referee and looking instead like a combatant in the country’s partisan battles.
Mr. Comey’s description of the president as an unethical liar “morally unfit” for office; his call for voters to decide Mr. Trump’s fate at the ballot box in 2020; and even his observations about Mr. Trump’s appearance — his “orange” skin, his too-long ties, his hands — are stark departures from the law-enforcement mission of his old agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The problem is not that Trevor Noah tells offensive jokes. It’s not even that he routinely breaks The Daily Show's covenant of speaking truth to power in favor of speaking truth to fat chicks or Thai hookers or, as the Washington Post’s Wendy Todd points out, black Americans who give their kids names that Noah disapproves of. The problem is that Noah’s jokes are so annihilatingly stupid.Jeez, they're swarming this poor man. A giant dope? Isn't that insult dopey? I read the article, and it seems that Noah's problem is he needs better joke-writers. I'd say: He's getting "The Daily Show"'s joke-writers, so the question is only how he looks, how he delivers the jokes, and how he manages the interviews. If you're not going to rest on the ground that his old jokes were so offensive that he can't be the face of the brand, what's the problem? He's a giant dope? That makes zero sense. It's as if the writer — Jessica Winter — doesn't know that there are writers. That's annihilatingly stupid.
[On "The Tonight Show"] Noah joked that black people are misidentified as African Americans. “They’re not African, but we’ll play along,” he said, adding, “Many of them really try to connect with Africa, you know? Some of them have these African names. They’ll be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s my girl Wanda, yeah, yeah. Yeah that’s right, that’s Dashiqua, or dat’s Taniqua.” Noah emphasized all this “hilarity” by using stereotypical B-Boy hand gestures to drive it home — because this is how all black people communicate, obviously. Leno’s predominantly white audience ate it up....
Not only did Noah get away with these routines, now he’s being rewarded for them. And the sadder thing is that the next time we have this “there aren’t enough people of color in the late night arena” conversation, people will point to Noah and say, “See, we gave you another one.”
[Noah] grew up in Soweto, the son of a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father, whose union was illegal during the apartheid era. “My mother had to be very clandestine about who my father was,” Mr. Noah said. “He couldn’t be on my birth certificate.”According to the NYT, Michele Ganeless, president of Comedy Central, "said that Comedy Central... drew up 'a shortlist' of possible successors 'and Trevor checked off every box on that list and then some.'" That doesn't make sense. If the "list" is a list of "possible successors," how could one person on that list check off "every box on that list and then some"? Obviously, there's some other list. Presumably, it's a list of things Comedy Central thought would be plus factors. I guess being female wasn't one of them. Ganeless seems to have unwittingly stated that Comedy Central really wasn't hoping to put a woman in the anchor seat. Either that or gushy puffery about Noah caused her to say something she didn't mean to say.
By the time he started performing stand-up in his 20s, Mr. Noah said he had long been taught that “speaking freely about anything, as a person of color, was considered treason.”
"No, seriously, I've been holding my arms like this since I got here. I never thought I’d be more afraid of police in America than in South Africa. It kind of makes me a little nostalgic for the old days, back home."So, get ready for jokes against America told in a not-American accent. I guess, not American was on the Comedy Central checklist of plus factors that Noah checked off (and then some). Yeah, I know, you don't have to get ready because you don't watch "The Daily Show." I don't either anymore. I used to watch every day. I still record every show, but I can't remember the last time I felt like clicking on the recording. Maybe I got tired of Jon Stewart's incessant yelling in disbelief. How could America be so awful? But does that mean I want to hear Noah's mellifluous murmuring about how awful America is?
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