Burned Roast

I’m surprised that anybody’s surprised by Michelle Wolf’s hosting of the White House Correspondent’s Dinner roast.  It’s a roast.  That’s the whole idea.  The speaker is supposed to make fun of the guest.  It’s tradition.  That’s what a roast is.

Otherwise, they’d have to call it ‘The  White House Correspondent’s Dinner with no roast,’ and that just doesn’t have the same ring to it at all.

My favorite line was “Mike Pence  is  what happens when  Anderson Cooper isn’t gay.”  She had a few zingers,  but as roasts go, it was pretty mild.
Does anybody remember Steven Colbert’s turn as host (by the way, who  is Michelle Wolf?) when George W Bush was the butt of his jokes but he seriously took the press  corps to task, something along the lines of “That’s not journalism, that’s typing.”  I don’t remember the exact line, it was much smoother than that.

Part of the problem is that this  is such a bizarre, and twisted version  of the presidency, that exaggeration is impossible, and exaggeration is an  important element of insult comedy.  You can’t make fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders for being stupid or fat or having a lazy  eye or lying her ass off as a full time job, because everybody knows all those things.  You can’t make jokes about Trump being stupid and not able to speak English and having to pay for sex and having wee, tiny little fingers because everybody knows these things, and  besides, the big cheeto-head wasn’t even there.

Part of the problem is  that this  administration, this most  comical administration in the history of modern governance, does not,  itself,  have  a sense of humor. Trump  certainly  doesn’t.

We are in  deep shit.