Draft:Michelle Wolf at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner
2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner speech by Michelle Wolf
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Michelle Wolf at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner was the appearance by American comedian Michelle Wolf as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 28, 2018. In a 19-minute roast, Wolf attacked President Donald Trump, his administration, and the Washington press corps. The performance drew widespread media attention and a sharply divided response, with controversy focusing particularly on her remarks about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
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Later commentary frequently described Wolf's set as a turning point in debates over the purpose and tone of the correspondents' dinner. Scholars have also discussed the performance as a case study in the relationship between political comedy, journalism, and gender.
Background
The White House Correspondents' Dinner is the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA), traditionally attended by the president and held in part to support journalism scholarships.[1] Since 1983, the dinner's featured entertainment has usually been a comedian, and the event has often taken the form of a roast of the president, the administration, and the Washington press corps.[2]
In February 2018, the WHCA announced Wolf as the featured entertainer for its annual dinner. At the time, Wolf was known for sharp political comedy, including her work on The Daily Show and her HBO special Nice Lady.[3][4] WHCA president Margaret Talev said Wolf's "truth-to-power style" and support for independent journalism made her "the right voice now".[5]
The dinner took place during a period of strained relations between the Trump administration and the White House press corps. Trump declined to attend for the second consecutive year and instead held a rally in Washington Township, Michigan. Sanders attended the dinner in his place.[6][7]
Speech
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 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner, April 28, 2018, C-SPAN |
Wolf delivered a 19-minute roast that targeted President Donald Trump, his administration, and the journalists attending the event.[8] She opened by acknowledging Trump's absence and then mocked the president as dishonest, racist, corrupt, insecure, and financially weaker than his public image suggested, returning several times to jokes about his supposed lack of wealth. The routine also attacked administration figures including Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, and Vice President Mike Pence, as well as Republican leaders and television journalists.[9][10]
A central theme of the routine was Wolf's criticism of the press corps, which she accused of profiting from Trump's rise while failing to hold him adequately to account. She mocked major news organizations including CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, along with individual journalists and presenters in attendance, arguing that the media had helped create the political culture it now condemned.[11]
The routine also touched on abortion, the Me Too movement, racial controversies, and turnover within the Trump administration. Its most controversial passage concerned Sanders:[12]
I actually really like Sarah. I think she's very resourceful. Like, she burns facts, and then she uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like, maybe she's born with it; maybe it's lies. It's probably lies.[13]
Wolf ended the speech by criticizing the political and media establishment more broadly before closing with a reminder that the city of Flint, Michigan still lacked clean water.[14]
Reception
Immediate reaction
Reaction to the speech was sharply divided. The day after the dinner, White House Correspondents' Association president Margaret Talev said Wolf's performance had not been "in the spirit" of the association's mission, which she described as honoring civility, scholarship, and a free press rather than dividing people.[15][16] President Donald Trump, who had not attended the dinner, called Wolf a "filthy 'comedian'" who had "bombed" and suggested that the event should either be discontinued or substantially changed.[17]
The routine also prompted concern among some broadcasters. According to the Associated Press, managers at C-SPAN Radio stopped carrying the monologue partway through because they believed it risked violating broadcasting indecency rules and could expose the outlet to regulatory penalties.[18][19]
Media and political commentary
Much of the commentary focused on Wolf's remarks about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, particularly the line that Sanders "burns facts" and uses the ashes to create a "perfect smoky eye".[20][21] Some journalists and political figures argued that Wolf had crossed the line into a personal attack; among those criticizing the performance were Maggie Haberman, Mika Brzezinski, and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer.[22][23]
Other commentators argued that the backlash misrepresented Wolf's jokes and overlooked her broader criticism of both the Trump administration and the press corps. In interviews after the dinner, Wolf said the Sanders line was about "burn[ing] facts" rather than Sanders's appearance and said she "wouldn't change a single word" of the performance.[24][25] She added that, while she had expected criticism, she had not anticipated "this level" of backlash, and said she had deliberately aimed the set at an audience beyond the ballroom because she did not want to "betray" her style of comedy. Wolf also suggested that the dinner's organizers should have expected her approach when they invited her to perform.[26]
Writing in The New York Times, James Poniewozik argued that Wolf had been "defending the mission of the White House press", while Masha Gessen in The New Yorker praised the routine's critique of political journalism and called it "the most consequential monologue so far of the Donald Trump era".[27][28]
Retrospective assessment
Subsequent commentary often treated Wolf's appearance as a turning point in debates over the purpose and tone of the correspondents' dinner. In The New York Times, Michael M. Grynbaum reported that CBS News executives considered ending the network's participation in future dinners before backing away from the idea after discussions about possible format changes.[29] In 2019, Emily Heil of The Washington Post wrote that Wolf's set had become central to later arguments that the dinner had "lost its sense of humor".[30]
Wolf later described the performance as "a job I was hired to do" and argued that, if the dinner was not meant to function as a roast, the WHCA should not have hired a comedian.[31] After the WHCA announced that the 2019 dinner would feature historian Ron Chernow instead of a comedian, Wolf wrote that the association were "cowards" and that "the media is complicit".[32]
Later assessments also framed the controversy as exposing tensions between political comedy, press freedom, and the correspondents' dinner's self-image. Writing in Vulture, Nell Scovell argued that the reaction to Wolf reflected a broader media culture war over gender, comedy, and civility in Washington.[33]
Analysis
Scholarly commentary has interpreted Wolf's routine as more than a short-lived media controversy, treating it as a case study in the relationship between political comedy, journalism, and gender.[34][35][36]
In a study of the White House Correspondents' Dinner as a site of journalistic "boundary work", Gregory P. Perreault, Kellie Stanfield, and Shelby Luttman argue that the backlash to Wolf's 2018 performance helped many political journalists articulate their discomfort with the dinner itself. They contend that the comedy format, especially after the response to Wolf's set, came to be seen by many journalists as running against their professional role and the norms of appropriate journalistic practice.[34]
Humour scholar Outi Hakola interprets the reaction to Wolf's performance as exposing gendered assumptions about political comedy. Hakola argues that Wolf's aggressive roast challenged the idea that political comedy is a male space and uses the routine to explore the possibilities and limitations of what she terms "post-gender comedy".[35]
Writing in the European Journal of American Studies, Nele Sawallisch places Wolf's set within the framework of the feminist killjoy, arguing that both the performance and the backlash reflected Wolf's refusal to offer the audience an easy or reassuring laugh. Sawallisch also treats the association's decision to replace the traditional comedian with a historian at the 2019 dinner as part of the broader disciplining of Wolf's transgressive performance.[36]