Yesterday's Post featured a great
critique of the annual Gridiron Club dinner, wherein Washington's journalists and politicans pal around and
perform stupid skits. The Post's Linton Weeks makes an excellent case that the dinner is not, in fact, such a good thing:
It's one thing for comedians and satirists to turn political
transgressions into punch lines. It's another for those of us charged
with exposing those sins to make light of them. And for people who
committed the sins to be guffawing at our jokes in the audience. How
can reporters ask the tough questions -- about, yes, the Iraq war,
global warming and perjury -- of politicians on Monday morning when
we've been yukking it up together about those very same issues on
Saturday night?
...But is it funny? As humor trumped skepticism once again last night, we
couldn't help wondering why this charade parade goes on year after
year. Or is that skepticism we see every day at White House news
conferences and nightly news interviews just a stage show,and this
chumminess reality?
Righteous.
Having said that, here's why Weeks's argument makes me uneasy. Every December, I anxiously await Mayor Menino's press party, which takes place in the luxurious confines of
Parkman House and at which much delicious food and drink are served. There are no skits, thank God, but there is fraternization between the mayor and his administration, on the one hand, and those of us who are supposed to be critically covering city government. This fete has never made me reluctant to whack the mayor. Even so, if the Gridiron Club dinner is ethically suspect, isn't the mayor's holiday party, too?