Barack Obama brought down the house with his jokes at a White House Correspondents dinner. In one, he took aim at someone with whom New Yorkers are quite familiar.
Said Obama: "In the next 100 days I will meet with a leader who rules over millions with an iron fist, who owns the airwaves and uses his power to crush all who would challenge his authority in the ballot box." Then the president paused before he added: "It's good to see you, Mayor Bloomberg."
The president took shots at other people, including the Clintons, Dick Cheney and Vice President Joe Biden. But his jokes were within the bounds of good taste.
There is definitely a place for political humor in our democracy. But, when it goes over the line of good taste, it loses its edge. Thus, at the same dinner, comedian Wanda Sykes took a swipe at right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh. Said she: "Rush Limbaugh hopes the country fails? I hope his kidneys fail, how 'bout that?"
"Somehow, Ms. Sykes got laughs with this material and draws no fire," News columnist Mike Lupica noted. "It is all supposed to be about the setting or so we are told."
The White House Correspondents dinner is a major social event in Washington. People go there to see the big shots and to be seen. Some journalists are so into this scene they may forget their function is to scrutinize the official actions of the politicians they're breaking bread with and not to fraternize with them.
We have a similar group in New York to which I belong, the Inner Circle, and, for many decades, we convene each spring and put on a show satirizing the mayor and his people. Since the days of Mayor John Lindsay, mayors have rebutted our skits with their own show, supported by actors and actresses from the Broadway stage.
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Somehow, we've kept the line between government officials and reporters at these affairs. We don't sit with the politicians. We have our own dinner before the dinner. And, while we try to be affable off the stage, we don't get too close to any of the movers and shakers (I hope). Tickets are sold for the dinner and much of the proceeds go to charity.
Yet there's always the danger of what I would call incest. To get too lovey dovey with these political guys is to run the risk of not doing your job. Some reporters in Washington brood about the danger of losing access to the big wheels if they are too hard on them. Certainly that's not true of the best of us, in Washington or anywhere. But an incestuous relationship with the pols is a danger journalism schools should teach their students to avoid.
I had a mentor when I was a cub reporter on the now-defunct newspaper, the World-Telegram and Sun. Bert MacDonald, the city editor, said: "Covering New York is like you have a whole bunch of rat holes. You station a cat (a reporter) at each rat hole.
"But the trouble is, if you leave any cat at any one rat hole too long, he's apt to make friends with the rats."
