They let him wander around in public again, this time at the Radio & Television Correspondent’s Dinner:

Didn’t it used to be that the President and Vice President would go to these things and do their little comedy routines, and most of the jokes would be self-deprecating? Well, these guys use it as a yet another opportunity to malign their critics.

Kind of like Obama did last year at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last May. Wouldn’t it have been nice if he’d actually mocked himself, instead of just ripping on anybody who dared to disagree with him? I thought so at the time, and now I’m recycling it from my old blog because I feel like it:

Transcript of Obama’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner Speech from an Alternate Universe Where He’s Capable of Making Fun of Himself and Not Just Taking Thinly Veiled Shots at His Detractors

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Good evening. It’s good to be here. It’s been… [checks watch] …wow, over 3 hours since I last gave a speech on TV. Starting to go through withdrawal.

Great to see everybody here tonight. So many good people. We’ve got Joe Biden here. Sheriff Joe. Just look at him. Smiling and laughing like he has any idea what’s going on. There ya go, Plugs, flash those choppers. You paid enough for ‘em. “Just make sure they match the hair I bought, Doc.” Folks, I hereby declare everything from Joe’s neck up a man-caused disaster.

I kid because I love. Joe’s a good man, good family man. Lovely daughter. You know, Ashley Biden was planning to take the Amtrak down here tonight, but she got distracted at the station by all those huge rails.

But hey, who am I to talk about family problems? I’d read you the list of all my half-brothers, but it’s longer than the stimulus bill.

You guys heard about my half-brother Samson, right? Yeah, when he was heading over here for my inauguration, he ran into a… well, a bit of a problem in England. Got kicked out. Turns out they’d already met their weekly quota on child molesters. Oops!

Another big difference between George Bush and me: His brother used to run a state, and my brother was run out of a country.

And don’t even get me started on my Auntie Zeituni. I’m the first president to deal with so much hassle from an alien since Independence Day.

Speaking of the news, interesting item today: A Saudi judge has said it’s okay to slap your wife if she spends too much. [mock-dramatic pause, leans into the mic] And you still wanna know why I bow to them?

Boy oh boy, I’m in for it now. Should I look? I’m gonna look. [looks over at Michelle] Oof. Yeah, I know. I know. You gotta believe I love you, baby, but next time could you maybe wear the four-hundred-dollar shoes to the homeless shelter? You’re killin’ me out there. [to audience] Oh, man, that was not a good look. I am not looking forward to the ride home.

Well, it beats making her laugh. Every time she slaps the table, they have to bring out a new table. Know what I mean? [flexes biceps, snarls] But I tell ya, I’ve loved her from the first moment Skynet sent her back in time to kill Sarah Connor.

Anyhoo. Look at all these lovely people here tonight. Helen Thomas. I know you’re out there, hot thing. Stand up, stand up. Oh, you are. Okay. Now, I’ve got a little surprise for you, Helen. A lot of people have taken to calling tonight’s event the “Nerd Prom.” And in that spirit, I’d like to announce… Helen Thomas is Queen of the Prom! Give her a big hand, folks.

Quick, Helen, look up! Just kidding.

Andrew Sullivan, there he is. And Todd Palin, good to have you here. You know, I heard these two had a little altercation earlier. I’m a little unclear on the details, but apparently it ended with Andy getting dragged away, screaming “Who’s the real mother???”

Sorry about all that stuff during the election, Todd. You know how Axelrod can get. He’s got all his little nerds typing away on their computers, e-mailing all that stuff to, heh… to respected journalists like… [chuckles] …like Sullivan there. [laughs] And Kos! [audience laughs along for one solid minute]

Ah, heh, whew. And speaking of hilarious comedy, thank goodness for Tina Fey, huh? I cannot wait to raise her taxes. She’ll be all like… [mimes holding tax statement at arm's length, gasping in astonishment] “Wait, what? I thought we was tight, yo!”

Meghan McCain. What a doll. Isn’t she adorable, folks? Glad to see she fixed herself back up. See, earlier she was standing between Carville and Axelrod, and the glare from their scalps was melting her makeup. Anyway, I can’t wait to not read your book, honey. How to Lose Friends and Influence Nobody.

But let’s get back to me. I’m the reason you’re all here tonight. Or anywhere, any night.

Hey, have you seen that new Star Trek movie? Terrific, terrific stuff. A Star Trek for our times. I’ve even read some reviews saying I’d make a good starship captain. Yeah. Can’t you just see it? Right after I lay off 8.9% of the crew and blame it on the previous captain, I go around the galaxy apologizing to the Klingons. And the Romulans. And the Cardassians. And the Ferengi. And the Tribbles…

I wouldn’t have Air Force One, though. Or as I like to call it, Air Force 9/11. We really put a good scare into those New Yorkers, huh? Gotta keep ‘em on their toes. They’ll get over it, though. I mean, what are they gonna do, not vote for me? [biggest laugh of evening]

Yeah, all kinds of people are kicking themselves for voting for me. Any Chrysler execs in the audience tonight? Wave your top hats and monocles. Just kidding, they’re all in their panic rooms. If they want to figure out what the hell happened, I hope they stocked copies of The Communist Manifesto. It’ll change your life! [grins]

Well, it’s about time for me to clear the stage so Wanda Sykes can say things really loudly and wait for people to laugh. I hope she uses the Limbaugh jokes I sent her.

And that’s my time, folks, you’ve been great. POTUS out!

This is why. WARNING: FAIRLY GROSS PICTURE AHEAD

Read the rest of this entry »

Bret Baier interviewed President Obama last night, and it’s a bit of a scandal because he didn’t let the Yammerer-in-Chief talk as long as he wanted to talk:

How dare Bret Baier interrupt an elected official who’s droning on and on and saying nothing and refusing to answer a direct question? What does Baier think he is, some kind of reporter?

I’m sure you’re happy to know that you don’t really care about the “procedural rules” that are being twisted and bent to the breaking point in order to squeak this through. Where are your goodies? Why don’t you have your goodies?

The rules only count if the Democrats don’t have to break them to get what they want.

Technical difficulties, both with my computer and my knee. Should be back up to speed tomorrow. Hope we’re not under a new system of government by then.

Later, kids.

(Hat tip: Hot Air)

“‘So what?’ says the American public.” That’s Steny Hoyer, speaking for you re: the possibility of the House of Representatives passing Obamacare without actually voting on it. Is that what you think about this topic? Well, it is now. Steny has spoken.

Why, some of the American public care so little about the Democrats’ desperate efforts to cram Obamacare down our throats, they’ve assembled on Capitol Hill today to express their utter ennui and nonchalance. Come on, feel the apathy.

And since nobody cares about this underhanded trickery, nobody is going to take John Boehner’s advice. Not to worry, Democrats. Whew!

How you feelin’, Morgan County?

Rielle Hunter has a tenuous grasp on certain things. One of those things is reality. A look back in pictures.

I believe that children are our future. They’d better be, because they’re the one who’ll be paying for this crap.

Now go read Eye Street.

As you’re reading this Slate.com profile of Andrew Breitbart, see if you can spot the places where the context has been left out. You won’t have to look far. Consider the very opening to the 6,700-word piece:

The first time I saw Andrew Breitbart, he was publicly insulting a reporter. “Kate Zernike of the New York Times, are you in the room?” he asked the crowd. “Are you in the room?” Heads turned. Apparently not. “You’re despicable,” Breitbart said. “You’re a despicable human being.”

Zernike’s offense: an item posted on a Times blog in which she said a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where Breitbart was also speaking, had mocked President Obama in “racial tones” by adopting a “Chris Rock voice.” Breitbart disagreed. “She’s the one that correlated his voice to Chris Rock. He happens to be from Brooklyn! He’s using his voice!” Laughter and applause. “This is what these creeps do,” Breitbart said. “I’m sick of having cocktails with them. I’m now at war with them. No more cocktails.”

Apparently the author of the piece, Christopher Beam, doesn’t think it’s significant that Breitbart was telling the truth about Mattera. The audience was laughing and applauding because they recognized that he was exposing a cruel and needless falsehood, with precisely the amount of politeness it deserved.

Is Zernike a despicable human being? Maybe not. She could be a very nice person for all I know. But branding somebody a racist, based on absolutely nothing, is certainly a despicable act. And doing so under the imprimatur of the New York Times is even more despicable.

But to Beam, the important thing is that:

Conservative figures may rail against the media, but they rarely call out reporters by name. They rely on those reporters, after all. It’s one thing to toss fans some vague media-bashing red meat. It’s another to deliberately alienate individual journalists in terms usually reserved for murder trials.

Sure, Zernike libeled the guy, but is that any reason to hurt her feelings? Maybe journalism wouldn’t be in so much trouble if more journalists cared as much about the facts as their own egos.

And this line from later in the piece also stood out:

[Breitbart] calls The Nation’s Max Blumenthal, who criticized O’Keefe for attending a panel with a white supremacist, “the most despicable life form I’ve ever seen.”

Putting aside whether Breitbart needs some new adjectives — “deplorable” or “detestable” would be perfectly fine here — Beam is wrong. Blumenthal didn’t merely criticize O’Keefe for sitting on the panel. He claimed, among other things, that O’Keefe helped organize the conference in question, which is false. He tried to imply that O’Keefe agreed with the white supremacist. (Sure, nobody has ever sat on a panel with somebody they disagreed with…) It was a stupid, clumsy attempt at guilt by association, but for whatever reason, Beam just glosses over that. According to him, calling out Blumenthal for his falsehoods is just part of Breitbart’s supposed role as “a pundit scientifically calibrated to piss off liberals.”

The rest of the piece is pretty fair, warts and all. Breitbart’s style isn’t for everybody, on the left or the right. But there’s a definite tone of bemused contempt. The idea that Breitbart is just spewing bile at random simply isn’t true. Is he ticked off? Yes. Does he have good reason to be? I believe so. He’s defending his friends and colleagues. And the more his enemies lash out at him, the more they prove that they’re exactly who he says they are.

P.S. The day you start taking media advice from David Corn, check yourself for a pulse.

Matt Labash has a sporadically updated column in which readers ask him questions. It’s called “Ask Matt Labash.” He thought of the title all by himself. The latest edition is here.

Normally I respond to a new Labash column by trying to undercut him and steal his thunder with my own “Ask Jim Treacher.” Fortunately for him, I have chosen to take pity on him this week. Any questions you were planning to ask me, ask him instead. In fact, just to make sure you do as you’re told, I’m turning off the comments. Ha! (Change my name to his name in your question, unless you want to remind him of my magnanimity and largesse.)

Not to mention that I’m having trouble updating this blog in the first place, because I’m working from home and I stupidly left my Macbook charger at the office yesterday. I’m typing this on a slow, cruddy little netbook that is going out the window if it keeps irritating me. You hear me, netbook? Out the window. Damn you!

Go read Labash. He talks about Charlie. Charlie is a good boy. Yes he is. Then buy his book. Labash’s book, not Charlie’s. Charlie hasn’t written a book because he is a dog.