While a vast majority of her jokes didn’t quite land for the thin-skinned, faint-of-heart, dare-I-say-snowflakes (oh, the irony) in the audience at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Michelle Wolf certainly delivered.
If you find yourself thinking back on the set in the same mindset as the liberal and conservative media alike wondering “who let this ‘offensive,’ and ‘deplorable’ woman who just wants to ‘Impress Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’ in here?” Well, the answer is the White House Correspondents’ Association.
They hired her. As a comedian. To do her job. Unfortunately, they didn’t really do theirs and instead of taking responsibility for their own choice they made this statement throwing Wolf under the bus: “Last night’s program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting, and scholarship winners, not to divide people. Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.” Well, well, well. Maybe you should’ve paid closer attention to Wolf’s set: “Yeah. You should have done more research before you got me to do this.”
Let me quickly digress and provide you with a basic definition.
Comedian: the guidelines for a great comedian according to Adam Conover, and many other late night comics who stood up in support of Wolf, are as follows “1. Be funny, 2. Tell the truth, 3. Make people in power uncomfortable.”
Michelle Wolf’s comedy may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it does its job. It points out the hypocrisies of the WHCD and jeopardizes the facade of chumminess between the politicians and the press. It’s uncomfortable and tense, but who wants a tasteful comedian who performs courtesies and and artificially polite jabs?
It’s not a coincidence that the only characters in Shakespeare’s plays who saw through charades, provided truth in seemingly ludicrous situations, and made careers out of passing character judgements were the jesters and clowns.
As is always the case, the media took advantage of their blatant misunderstanding of the punchline about Sarah Huckabee Sanders to focus on a woman’s looks instead of focusing all of their attention on Wolf’s final line, “Flint still doesn’t have clean water.”
