I report I just read said that Trump slammed former NYC mayor DeBlasio, which the crowd didn’t much care for. His reply: “I don’t give a shit. That’s not comedy, that’s the truth.”
Keep it classy, Donny.
Yeah, he is seriously misreading the room. It’s supposed to be light-hearted, and the “jabs” they give are supposed to be good natured. Everybody laughs, even the one getting mini-roasted.
He’s such an ass.
I was shocked at how little people know about politics. Alex Wagner interviewed some union workers. They were all rather clueless about the economy and what exactly it is that government does. The Reagan message is still alive: the gov’t merely interferes. They are not going to employ him or his buddies. They fund roads and bridges etc and the contractor they work does the contract with the FEDS, or some contractor further up the chain. I put together the media angle to this lack of interest/ news sources that reach people. Did not note FOx this time. Politics: a view from the prairie: Information overload
Ok so from what I read before the event Cardinal Dolan was less than happy with her preferring to go do, like, useful campaigning. But really that’s like the NYT being pissed that they don’t get first crack for interviews. As was said…
And there’s a certain individual who we know to this day rages that his family deserves but is denied “Proper Respect” from the social/cultural establishment. But as pointed out, said individual decided to be his usual mean nasty petty self even in this environment.
I guess I always think of the Al Smith dinner as similar to the White House Correspondents’ dinner. It is an opportunity to show that can give and take some low level roasting and that you have a sense of humor. If she’s going to the trouble of having a beer with Colbert then I thought she might go to the dinner. It’s not so important in and of itself but Trump being there means he can roast her without pushback.
Was anyone allowed to make jokes about the notoriously thin-skinned Trump at the dinner?
Jim Gaffigan got off a couple. Of course, he roasted everybody, Harris included.
I caught a clip and saw Gaffigan mentioning that this might be the second Trump election where grabbing “kitties” might be a factor for voters.
BTW in certain quarters, this is being reported as “Gaffigan completely demolishes entire Democratic party!”
Nobody cares about the White House Correspondent’s Dinner either, outside of the beltway elite. Harris’ job right now is to get elected. Going on Colbert helps her reach an audience that might help with that. Going to fancy-pants charity dinners to hobnob with the upper strata of cosmopolitan society doesn’t.
A significant part of the few minutes I saw were trans-bashing “jokes”.
It’s also on youtube, for anybody unable or unwilling to deal with xitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APl-FERJSY8 . on same line to avoid discourse yelling at me, I hope, by preventing it from embedding.
I was unable to post this earlier; sorry if it now doesn’t show up what it’s replying to. I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that it’s xitter links in the thread that makes threads stop working for me. The video linked is Harris responding to hecklers.
I’m really sorry to hear this. It used to be the one evening where mean-spiritedness was left at the door—an “all in good fun” affair.
I’m pretty well convinced that people have cared about exactly two of the White House Correspondent’s Dinners and both of those were after the fact. 2006, where Colbert shredded both Bush and the press, and 2011, where Obama angered the crap out of Trump while simultaneously knowing that the raid to get Bin Laden was on.
I do think this is an October where neither campaign can really pass up free media. Especially since it’s clear there are no more debates and so it’s a month of practically nothing but campaign stops and so much advertising everyone tunes it all out.
Then in 2007, to avoid a possible repeat of truthtelling or edginess in any form, they brought in Rich Little (I assume Red Buttons or Imogene Coca were already booked).
As for 2011, I know everyone raves about Obama landing punchlines, but Seth Myers was really the one who slayed that night. He ruefully referred to himself as “Captain Butterfly Effect” when it came up in one of his monologues a while back, and he ain’t wrong.
But back to Al Smith…for whatever reason this feels like somewhat entitled behavior on the part of the organizers. “Both candidates must, it goes without saying, come and bend the knee.” It reminded me of how Billy Graham would always show up for a photo op with the new president; most were fine with it but I imagine he’d smugly warn of evangelical approbation should they say “Nah, got my own spiritual advisor, thanks.” Though I know it’s not supposed to be an explicitly religoius affair, the intertwining of the Catholic church and NYC politics is inescapable.
I’d modify this to read “pass up free media if they have nothing better already planned”
Free media is well and good but if they have a non-free media event lined up that will reach many more voters, especially voters in swing states, they need to do that instead. And that seems to be what the Harris campaign chose to do.
Trump showed up, but to do a bit of my own sanewashing, he’s already known to have an unorthodox attitude towards what comprises effective campaigning.
Sounds similar to eight years ago when people were baffled why Hillary was not landsliding.
Of some interest might be Matt Yglesias’ musings that some racial depolarization of the electorate might actually be to the Democrats favor if it means picking up a couple percentage points of the white vote in swing states.
The American people will get what we want. If we prefer Trump, that’s what we’ll get. It’s not really that complicated. I think Harris will win, but if she loses, there may not have been anything she could have done differently – maybe America just wants Trump back and nothing, not incoherence, fascism, and even apparent breaks from rationality on stage will change our minds. We’ll find out in 3 weeks.
Precisely this. The most precious resource Harris has right now is her time. Everything she does with her time has an opportunity cost in terms of what she could have been doing elsewhere. And earned local media in swing states is much more valuable right now than video of her chuckling at milquetoast zingers and eating rubber chicken.