On more than one occasion news has been made by comedians at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In past years, Don Imus and Stephen Colbert drew attention for the mean-spirited nature of some of their jokes. This year’s most controversial moment came from Wanda Sykes’ comment that Rush Limbaugh was the 20th September 11 hijacker and her hope that his kidneys would fail.
I watched some of the White House Correspondents' Dinner on C-Span this weekend, but what I found most interesting was something that was broadcast by C-Span to fill the time when the guests were eating. The event was a panel discussion, sponsored by the Writers’ Guild of America, East, which had taken place at the Newseum. The panel consisted of late night comedy writers and the subject they addressed was the relationship between news and comedy.
“So what does comedy tell us about the truth that the news can't? That's the question we're taking a stab at answering," said WGAE President Michael Winship.
During the panel discussion Bill Scheft, a writer for the David Letterman show for 18 years, talked about a segment on the show that I remembered well. Newsbusters blog posted a transcript of Scheft’s comments:
“The moment that I am most proud of having been on the show is when we had John McCain on after, you know, he, you know, bolted on us to go save the economy. When he came back to the show, and he was, at the time he was out on the campaign trail beating the Bill Ayers drone. And I gave Dave a note before we went on about McCain's relationship to Gordon Liddy. And, in the middle of the interview, McCain starts talking about Obama palling around with terrorists and Bill Ayers.”