WASHINGTON – They’ll be no comedy act at the next White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with historian Ron Chernow booked as the featured speaker instead.
The last dinner created quite a a ruckus when comedian Michelle Wolf went after White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was seated near her on the rostrum.
“I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. Like she burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies,” Wolf said at the time.
She went on to ask, “Like, what’s an Uncle Tom, but for white women who disappoint other white women? Oh, I know, Ann Coulter.”
Journalists and politicians in the audience were split on the appropriateness of Wolf’s jokes. President Trump – who’s skipped the dinner twice – labeled it an “embarrassment.” He called Wolf “filthy” and said she “totally bombed.”
The dinner is scheduled for April 27.
Chernow, whose Alexander Hamilton biography became the basis of the musical “Hamilton” and whose book “Grant” is being developed into a movie directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, is set to deliver a lecture on freedom of the press.
“As we celebrate the importance of a free and independent news media to the health of the republic, I look forward to hearing Ron place this unusual moment in the context of American history,” said White House Correspondents’ Association president Olivier Knox in a statement on Monday.
“While I have never been mistaken for a stand-up comedian, I promise that my history lesson won’t be dry,” Chernow said.
The WHCA has reined in the dinner in the past.
In 2007, impersonator Rich Little was hired as the main act. The year, before comedian Stephen Colbert roasted President George W. Bush’s administration with the president onstage, likening it to the Hindenburg disaster.
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