The Decline of Decency——————–
A commentary
By J. F. Kelly, Jr.
Most of the furor over this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner has died down by now but it shouldn’t have. The event should be forever remembered as a low point in public behavior, particularly on the part of the journalists and guests who laughed and applauded rather than walking out in protest of the smut that was served up as entertainment by comedienne Michelle Wolf. Why would the WHCA even bother to hire a comedienne with so many clowns already available in the audience? They could have, for example, had them stage a mock press conference with all those incurably liberal Trump haters asking their usual asinine and repetitious questions which is comical enough.
The event should also be remembered as the final WHCA dinner. And if they continue to be held, no self-respecting Republicans should lower themselves to attend. I don’t usually approve of boycotts but why would any decent person want to sit through an evening of dirty jokes?
In addition to being foul-mouthed, abusive and possessed of an unpleasant, squeaky voice, Ms. Wolf was not even remotely funny. Her performance was about as pathetic as Alec Baldwin’s monotonous and boring act on Saturday Night Live trying to imitate Donald Trump by extending his lower lip in a bizarre manner. Saturday Night Live has also ceased to be funny or entertaining with its endless criticism of the president.
What irritates me most is the arrogance of so many celebrities, including minor ones like Wolf, who seem to assume that any audience they face will agree with their views and biases. I don’t mind so much that they are biased. Most of us are. It’s that they seem to assume that you share theirs and that even if you don’t, you will respond with applause. They’d consider themselves poorly-used if they were booed or heckled.
There have been the usual apologies for this behavior from the usual sources. Freedom of speech has been invoked and, of course, entertainers and celebrities have a right to their opinions. But do they have a right to inflict them on those they are supposed to be entertaining? Ms. Wolf at one point compared the president’s daughter to an empty box of tampons. It was noted that Donald Trump was also known to have made some nasty remarks about women. That doesn’t excuse her. This isn’t contest to see who can be the most vulgar. We all knew that Mr. Trump was no choir boy. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him because of his temperament and crude, sometimes vulgar speech. He deserves the criticisms but not the comparisons to Ms. Wolf because she set a new low.
In America, it seems to be a race to the bottom in terms of decent behavior and discourse. But there’s no need to race. We’re already there. As Clark Griswold said to his wife in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, back when comedians were actually funny, “Worse? How can things get any worse? Look around, Ellen. We’re at the threshold of Hell!”
It won’t get any better, either, until we develop the courage to just stand up and walk out, change channels or otherwise communicate to the offenders, “What makes you assume that I’m just going to sit here and listen to this garbage?”
May 29, 2018