Feb. 12, 2007 – Page 448
Have you heard the one about Rich Little? The 68-year-old comedic impersonator — a television staple three and four decades ago on the “Dean Martin Celebrity Roast,” “Love, American Style” and “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” — is making a political comeback.
After last year’s biting performance by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, who showed minimal mercy toward both President Bush and the capital press corps, the White House Correspondents’ Association wants to use its annual dinner this April to turn back the clock to a kinder, gentler era of political comedy.
This is not a joke. But it may be a sign that Washington is losing its sense of humor. Between the Iraq War, the continued bitterness of the partisan wars and the public perception that the capital is fundamentally corrupt, many public officials in this town seem incapable at laughing at the folly of their own enterprise.
Truth be told, though, it’s hard to tell who has a thinner skin these days — the politicos or the press corps. It’s been a particularly bad year for the news business, from the wave of newspaper buyouts, to the surging competition from the Internet, to the flaws in the Washington reporting ritual exposed each day of the Libby trial. So perhaps it was the press corps that got the squirmiest and most annoyed with Colbert at the last correspondents’ dinner. One of his sharpest barbs, after all, was planted in the hands of the reporters who were feeding him that night. “We Americans didn’t want to know,” Colbert said about many of the most important stories of recent years, including the ultimate absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “And you had the courtesy not to find out.”
At the same time, all the reports about officials’ outrage at Colbert’s monologue — a sarcasm-laced rip on everything Bush — seemed to grow with each telling. I was at the Washington Hilton and can honestly say I didn’t see anyone from the administration walk out in a huff. I never saw the president scowl, either. And Steve Scully, C-SPAN’s political editor and the president of the correspondents’ association, says that if the White House was miffed at Colbert, nobody at the top let on: “I walked out with the president and he said, ‘Great night. Thanks. I enjoyed it.’ ”
This year, the correspondents’ group did make its annual run at landing David Letterman or Jerry Seinfeld, once again with no luck. Scully said he never thought that settling on Little would prove controversial. Each year the group sets a different theme for its dinner, which seeks to raise $20,000 for journalism scholarships. “My approach this year was to take a look at presidential humor over the years,” Scully said. And, indeed, Little’s Web site describes him as “the greatest impersonator of all time” who can mimic 157 voices, including every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Outside the Beltway, however, choosing Little after Colbert is likened to putting on “That ’70s Show” instead of “The Sopranos.” Some columnists have called on the press corps to do away with the dinner entirely.
“It sounds like they wanted a nice purple-state comic who doesn’t have any edge,” observed Paul Lewis, an English professor at Boston College and author of “Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict.” “They felt it was too controversial last time.” Just as the country has split electorally into Republican “red” and Democratic “blue” states, Lewis says, there is also a clear political humor divide, with Rush Limbaugh/Dennis Miller states and Jon Stewart/Bill Maher states. Colbert impersonates a conservative cable talk show blowhard, but he’s squarely in the liberal humor camp.
Of course, sitting presidents are traditionally the butt of jokes at the correspondents’ fete. Their trick is how to survive the evening, and self-deprecation has often been the answer. When Chevy Chase was invited to showcase his bumbling Gerald R. Ford routine in the 1970s, Ford arrived with a thick sheaf of papers that soon went flying in a well-rehearsed pratfall. “He had the audience eating out of his hands,” recalled Ron Nessen, Ford’s press secretary and now journalist-in- residence at the Brookings Institution. Last year, many thought Bush easily trumped Colbert when he took to the podium alongside dead-on presidential impersonator Steve Bridges.
I’ve thought Rich Little was a funny guy since I was a kid, and I hope he’s a hoot on April 21. He could have a field day with the Washington elite these days — by opening, for example, with his version of Sen.
If he’s a flop, blame the media. These dinners used to be an insider thing. Only the people in the room got the jokes, and they remembered none of them in the morning. Now they’re broadcast on cable and downloadable on the Internet, so the whole country has been let in on the joke. If the reporters and their guests don’t like it, maybe they should try a new format. Last week, the Washington Press Club Foundation got some big laughs at its annual dinner by inviting a few prominent politicians to go after one another. And those reality TV shows still draw big numbers.
Contributing editor Elizabeth Wasserman is a Washington freelance writer. She can be reached at ewasserman@cq.com.