May 8, 2009

Who's coming to dinner*

The White House Correspondents Dinner is tomorrow and the invitations have already gone out. If you think you have to be a White House Correspondent to attend, think again.

Fox News has Todd Palin. The Houston Chronicle has Alberto Gonzalez. CNN has Ashton Kutcher and Janet Napolitano. Sully Sullenberger chose to dine with the New York Daily News and George Lucas chose Fortune. ABC News has David Axelrod and Meghan McCain, among others, and the NBC News tables will include Samuel L. Jackson, William H. Macy, and Mike Myers.

Read the complete list of invitees to tomorrow's White House Correspondents Dinner here.

*Updated: Frank Davies at the Mercury News had a story about the tarting up of the correspondents dinner:

"It used to be a rock star at this dinner was the White House chief of staff, not Steve Tyler of Aerosmith," said Carol Joynt, a former TV producer who chronicles Washington society.

She has attended two dozen dinners and seen them evolve from low-key events where reporters chatted up government sources to a series of "circus acts," with strange juxtapositions of power and fluff. "It's become just a mashed-up free-for-all," Joynt said.

MediaNews plunked down $4,000 for a table. The guest of honor was Carol Williams, White House director of media affairs.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of the signs of the apocalypse. Those invites have as much to do with news as the news channels. Where, oh where, are we going to be when newspapers don't exist? How will we explain what Joe Jackson meant in "Sunday Papers"?

Mike Rappaport said...

You could sort of make an argument for most of those folks, but Todd Palin? First Dude? The only possibility is that O.J. Simpson must not have been available.

Anonymous said...

Good use of your money as people continue to be fired.