NERD PROM - THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS DINNER

Do you enjoy a little "action / adventure" with your White House Correspondents Dinner?  Well, have we got an episode for you!  

A special note to y'all from your amateur clinical pundit: Having completed the writing and recording of episode six, season five, I was overseas on vacation. This episode was to be a short history of The White House Correspondent's Dinner to be dropped just before the WHCD on April 25. This year's WHCD was to be the first that MOTUS would attend as president - as he refused his invite to the previous five. That said, we know our audience is getting a little tired of hearing MOTUS with his pompous public lying so we were not really focused on his appearance. Nonetheless, adult beverage in hand, I tuned into CSPAN at the appropriate time  and watched pompous arrival of the head table and then watched with incredulity while CSPAN decided that they would cover the entire dinner during while guests ate...there were no speeches, just a bunch of gowned and tuxedo'd folk munching. We could have been watching the real estate Annual Top Seller banquet for all it mattered.  I couldn't believe it and commented to my posse that this broadcast had to be the pinnacle of bad broadcasting, in itself not unusual for CSPAN, but here they outdid themselves...

Oh look here comes the salad course!  

Dull dull dull.  

Until it was the most exciting banquet dinner  I have ever seen on TV! 

You know the rest. 

Transcript

Nerd Prom | The White House Correspondents Dinner

TRANSCRIPT 

Lisa: Canada curious? More so than ever. This is the Yes We Canada podcast, the progressives guide to getting the fuck out.  This episode?  Nerd Prom, the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Hey, I’m Matt Zimbel in Montreal.  

 You guys have heard the expression “politics is show business for ugly people”. Right? We’ve talked about that on the pod before…Yep… Washington DC … Hollywood for the homely”.  And this is their Academy Awards.

Clip: Welcome to the White House Correspondents Dinner. Obama 2015 

 The first gala dinner was held in 1921 and to use the word gala was perhaps a stretch. It was a small affair, about 50 journalists, all men, all white, who got together at the Arlington Hotel to inaugurate a few new officers.  

Yes, and in 1921 that bastion of liberal thought, the news media, did not allow Black journalists to join the White House Correspondents Association until 1953. Women were not allowed to attend the dinner until Helen Thomas, a veteran of the White House press corps, who covered 10 presidencies, pressured JFK in 1962 to refuse his invitation to the event unless women journalists were welcomed. 

Which of course makes complete sense.  My boy Johnny Kennedy was an alley cat, a renowned ladies man, a chick magnet, a rake, a playa, our fuck boy president…why would he want to go to a dinner… where there was no girly action!  

Clip:  Happy Birthday Mr. President Marilyn Monroe 

The first time a president attended the White House Correspondents dinner was three years after it was founded, when in 1924 Republican President Calvin Coolidge accepted an invitation as the guest of honour. Now Cal Coolidge was known as a man of few words, in fact his nickname was Silent Cal. 

Folks, we’re just gonna stop here for a sec and meditate for a few seconds on the idea of having a president of few words.  

Clip: Trump O’Donnell

 Not those words MOTUS, you imbecile. 

President Coolidge once famously said, and we hoping you’re listening MOTUS; 

 "The words of a President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately”.

Clip: Trump on sending Iran back to the stone ages 

So silent was Silent Cal that a guest seated beside him at a dinner once told the president that he’d made a bet that he could get more than two words out of the president’s mouth. Coolidge responded, “you lose”. 

So, suffice it to say, Silent Cal Coolidge wasn’t booked at that White House Correspondents dinner for his gregarious personality, but still… the President of the United States?  That’s a get for any banquet. I’d say. 

 Since Coolidge attended in 1924, every sitting president since has been present at the White House Correspondents Dinner at least once.  That is until, 2016 when the man with the thin orange skin took office. President Donald Trump refused to attend, calling journalists, 

Now for the record, The Donald has attended the event as a civilian, twice, but oh my god, he’s been in the room a lot – as the punch line of many jokes…

Clip Biden on Trump + Obama on  Bloomberg /Trump 

Some say that that kind of taunting made Trump decide to run for the presidency, which is why your gas prices are as high they’ve ever been, your health care premiums have sky-rocketed and the U.S. is mired in yet another foreign war. Why? Because 77 million of your fellow Americans, looked at a man who was a reality tv star, a man who sponsored an armed insurrection of the American government and thought…

Sombitch. He’s my guy! Good to go. 

Maga. Baby! 

But here’s some good news…Writing on his social media platform “Half Truth Social” Trump said, quote: “In honor of our Nation’s 250th Birthday, and the fact that these ‘Correspondents’ now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T., according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!”

Chicken or beef Mr. President?   

Oh my god, here is a man so devoid of modesty, humility, intelligence, it makes me want to cry …

As a freelance, amateur pundit, I have studied the White House Correspondents dinner extensively and the most important thing for a president to bring to this dinner is simply, a self-depreciating sense of humour. 

Clip:  LBJ, BUSH, OBAMA at WHCD

The humour follows a well-worn pattern. Make the most powerful man on earth look human, like an everyday shlub, a dude, subservient to the most powerful woman in the world, his wife, the first lady FLOTUS.

Clip: Laura Bush 

Theres usually a few jokes about the home the people so graciously provide for them, describing life at the White House as a kind of hostage taking situation.  Which is why Bill Clinton famously called the White House the pride and joy of the American penal system. 

Clip Obama on Michelle escape

The light-hearted, sweet spot of the presidents Correspondents Dinner monologue is to nail the quality that most presidents are in terribly short supply of, humility. 

Clip Obama take myself down a peg.  

Oh god Obama loved performing at these dinners. His writing room, ie: his speech writing team, were young men raised on stand-up. Every year they amped up the writer’s room by bringing in the best comics and directors, eventually including Oscar winning director Steven Spielberg in the production of a 20 minute speech at a banquet, at a hotel in Washington. 

After watching Obama, at these dinners, you’d think that he saw the presidency of the United States as a resume enhancer for the gig he really wanted, an eight-minute set at LA’s Comedy Store on an open mic night.   

So, it’s all good fun, dropping insider jokes in a room full of 1000 people who ripped you a new asshole, every day for the past year. 

Clip Joke about journalists – Obama 

Now this will likely not surprise you but President Nixon, not someone who excelled at self-deprecation absolutely hated the dinner. He called it a quote: “disgusting and cruel event” and yet he went four times in the six years he was in Washington Presidenting. 

Reagan, who started his career as an actor seemed to love the dinner.  In fact, in the eight years, he was president, he only missed it once and he had a pretty good reason, he was recovering because a month before the dinner he got shot – leaving the very same hotel! Which would give anyone PTSD. None the less in the spirit of you can’t keep a good president down, he did phone into the dinner. 

Clip of Reagan phoning the dinner:  

The presidential monologue at the White House Correspondents Dinner has a very specific format or a narrative arc if you will …the coda is always the same…the laughter quiets, the presidents tone calms and they get all first amendmenty.

Clip: Obama on Trump 

When Trump’s appears at the dinner on April 25th the teleprompter will be loaded with this:

 "This dinner is a celebration of the 2nd amendment and the important role played by me in fighting the enemy of the people, the fake news hacks in the most healthy republic in history. We’re the hottest country.  We used to be a dead country. Now we’re the hottest country.”

 Shut up MOTUS you are a fucking MORON.

Ok my exceptional exceptionalists that is a great segue to the north – Canada, your soon to be 51st state.   I know your first question… do you guys have a White House Correspondents Dinner?  Well, we don’t have a White House in fact the Canadian Prime Minister doesn’t even have a house at the moment…he’s currently homeless, crashing on the couch at a cottage at the Governor General’s grounds.  And if you want to know more about that housing crisis, may we recommend you tuck into episode 1 of season five – which is called “On the House”.  Sorry for the promo. 

So, no we do not have a White House Correspondents Dinner, but we do have the Parliamentary Press Gallery and they do like a banquet…the last one was held in November of 2025 and if appreciate a really well-crafted dick joke, this is an event you don’t want to miss.

Clip: Parliamentary press gallery dinner  

Ok, for our American audience we need to do a little backgrounder on the Trudeau joke, because it’s pretty um, deep. You see, Justin Trudeau, our former PM, has a son named Xavier and last year Xavier released his first record.  It’s a pop, rap R&B ballad, thang with auto tune doing heroic service. And Dad?  Well since leaving office Justin has been in a bilateral romantic situationship with pop star Katy Perry. So now ya get the joke– the Trudeaus are trying to get into the music business?   

Oh man that’s killing it…

Pi: Sorry to interrupt ...don’t mean to nitpick but is… bi lateral the correct term?

MZ: Pi remember the big staff meeting we had at the beginning of season five where we all decided to try to have the pod taken more seriously so we could win a Pulitzer?  

Pi: yep

MZ: And we decided…

Pi: you decided.

MZ: and I decided that we would start using the language of the press pool… you know those phrases that working journalists 

Pi: Working journalists? Wait, are working journalists still a thing? Do they still have, like, jobs?

MZ Ok, words that grown up journalists, mutter ever so casually; like double ender, the lede, the nut graph, b roll, codel, scoop, chyron 

Pi: We’re audio only, we don’t have chyron.

MZ: Maybe we could rent some … 

Pi: On it.

MZ: to my ears “bilateral” sounds smart …but not academic…that’s the sweet spot for  pretentious podcasting. Yeah baby!

It’s not the first time Justin’s been bi-lateral - he’s worked both sides of the border he before – in fact he made a cameo at Obama’s White House Correspondents dinner in 2015.

Clip: Obama on Trudeau

But enough about you guys – I got a scoop for you…have you ever heard our prime minister cuss…probably not – he’s what we call on the pod, a charming technocrat …very polite…

Clip Carney curses…

MZ: Buddy just cuz yer buildin’ ports don’t mean ya can cuss like a long shoreman, jeez…

Carney Clip:  we are in a crisis – newyest government… for me at least I went from Governor to President… 

And that is where we are going to rap our primer on the American White House Correspondents Dinner and Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner with…As our Prime Minister loves to say:

Clip Carney: Final Point there is no final point there are many. 

Theme

MZ:  Pi hold up, 

MZ: I can’t resist. This is perhaps my favorite joke.  One that works well in America… but I can’t see working in Canada.  The back story is, the Secret Service had gotten themselves into some serious scandal for their drinking, drug use and whoring about while doing some kind of security site visit in Columbia. I’ll let your former Muslim Socialist president take it from there. 

Clip Obama Secret Service 

Pi:  um, I too have a curfew, but before I go… are we ah, doing anything on the White House Correspondents Dinner… Action Movie Edition? … Starring Donald ‘not a Basket Case’ Trump?

Pi:  Ah, do we want to do anything about this … a short field report? An editorial? Perhaps some chyron? 

MZ: Theme out 

Theme

Lisa:  Thanks for listening to Yes We Canada. No AI was harmed in the production of this podcast.  The original idea for this episode comes courtesy of Lyne Tremblay.  Pi Salin Cutler is our sound designer and senior engineer. Our theme was written by Doug Wilde and Matt Zimbel and was performed by Manteca from the recording, Monday Night at the Mensa Disco. 

Please consider supporting our independent podcast with a paid subscription for as little as 3 dollars a month, by going to Yes We Canada dot Buzzsprout dot com and hit the support button.  You can cancel at anytime. Your support means the world to us. 

My name is Lisa Evans and I’m your announcer. 

Until next time!