Last night was the White House Correspondents Dinner, which is a thing we do again now that we have a president who isn’t scared of jokes. The evening was hosted by “Daily Show” correspondent Roy Wood, Jr. and if you’re anything like me, you forgot about it entirely and went out last night instead of staying at home and watching C-SPAN. Whoops!
But hey! You still can, thanks to the magic of YouTube.
Or you can cheat and just watch all of the highlights.
President Joe Biden got some good ones in (not that we think he actually wrote them himself, but his delivery was good!).
“I want everybody to have fun tonight,” he said, “but please be safe. If you find yourself disoriented or confused, either you’re drunk or Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
He also made a cute little Dark Brandon reference, complete with Aviators.
Wood got a little dark himself — pointing out that not only are drag queens not invading schools to groom anyone’s children, but that perhaps the bigger problem is that those kids are a lot more likely to get shot up when they go there. FAIR POINT.
While criticizing “anti-CRT” nonsense as an attempt to erase Black people from school history classes, Wood took a dig at Clarence Thomas.
“Anti-CRT policies are an attack on Black history and an attempt to erase the contributions of Black people from the history books. […] A lot of Black people wouldn’t mind some of that erasure, as long as that Black person is Clarence Thomas.” he said. “Do you understand how rich you have to be to buy a Supreme Court [justice] — a black one, on top of that! There’s only two in stock. And Harlan Crowe owns half the inventory. We can all see Clarence Thomas, but he belongs to billionaire Harlan Crowe. And that’s what an NFT is.”
A particularly compelling moment for me, personally, was when Scandoval got a mention.
bravo tv pump rules GIF by SliceGiphy
“Tonight, we are all unified under one thing, and that’s scandal,” said Wood. “Scandals have been devouring careers this year. The untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job … but to Tucker’s staff, I want you to know that I know what you’re feeling. I work at ‘The Daily Show,’ so I too have been blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a fake-news-program. Tucker got caught up. Got caught up like that dude from ‘Vanderpump Rules.'”
At one point, when Scandoval was trending every day, I actually considered doing a quick explainer video for you guys with my sister — but really all you need to know is that it’s basically like a Dory Previn/Andre Previn/Mia Farrow thing or a Debbie Reynolds/Eddie Fisher/Elizabeth Taylor thing or just a regular skeevy guy (Tom Sandoval) cheating on a woman (Ariana Madix) with her good friend (Rachel ‘Raquel’ Leviss) thing. Lisa Vanderpump (we like her) and Ariana Madix (we also like her) were actually in the audience as guests of the Daily Mail, which makes this even more enjoyable.
A particularly good point made by Wood was that “All the essential, fair and nuanced reporting, it’s all stuck behind a pay wall,” while “say what you will about a conspiracy theory, but at least it’s affordable.” Which, uh, seems like a thing to definitely worry about going into a major presidential election. Especially when Twitter, one of the last places to easily get free and formerly likely-to-be-accurate news, is now being run by a conspiracy-minded, Trump-loving manbaby.
Wonkette, notably, is not behind a paywall, so donate if you can to keep it free for everyone else!