At White House Correspondents Dinner, fake remorse over Biden mistakes

Imagine a neurological disease that changed your perceptions in subtle, damaging ways. Stubbing your toe would bring pleasure. Rotten meat would taste delicious. Deadly cold would feel comfy. Meanwhile, a gentle neck massage would make you feel sick, and fresh food would taste disgusting.You wouldn’t last long with such a disease.But our society is facing something similar.The news media, which are supposed to act as a sort of nervous system for the body politic, instead give us misinformation. The national equivalent of stubbed toes and rotten meat gets media praise and approval, while healthy things are treated as vile and wrong.The latest example comes from Saturday’s much-diminished annual dinner of the much-diminished White House Correspondents’ Association, whose self-appointed members meet annually to give themselves awards and congratulate themselves on their brave truth-telling.This year went badly.The WHCA dinner, which DC journalists call their “nerd prom,” once featured famous comedians as headliners.Presidents would reliably attend and put up with being “roasted” — usually more harshly for the Republican ones than for Democrats — as part of a Washington ritual. It was important to look like a good sport, so that the press would think well of you.But this year, there were no comedians, no president, and not even much in the way of senior administration officials or important members of Congress. The poor DC press corps has reached that Washington nadir of not being worth sucking up to. Given their penchant for calling Trump Hitler and smearing his aides and supporters as Nazis, trying to come off as nice guys probably seemed pointless anyway.Celebrities, too, were missing. Last year, the journalists got to mingle with Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost, Chris Hemsworth, Rachel Brosnahan, Keri Russell, and Rufus Sewell. This year, the stars stayed away. Nobody knows better than Hollywood when you’re a loser, and nobody shuns ...