{"id":181627,"date":"2016-05-01T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/05\/01\/larry-willmore-slayed-at-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner\/"},"modified":"2016-05-01T19:40:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T00:40:00","slug":"larry-willmore-slayed-at-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/05\/01\/larry-willmore-slayed-at-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Larry Willmore Slayed at the White House Correspondents Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 346px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"189\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1IDFt3BL7FA?rel=0\" width=\"336\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>Made Even Better by the Crowd Reaction<\/i><\/div>\n<p>It is pretty clear that he looked at Colbert&#8217;s now famous talk 10 years ago, and decided <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/reliable-source\/wp\/2016\/05\/01\/did-larry-wilmore-bomb-or-slay-at-the-correspondents-dinner-yes\/\">give me some more of that<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Comedian Larry Wilmore held no punches at the 2016 White House correspondents&#8217; dinner, taking aim at presidential candidates, reporters and Bill Cosby. (Erin Patrick O&#8217;Connor\/The Washington Post)<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">It\u2019s always the big question after the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner: Did the comedian flop?<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Opinions vary wildly, but there\u2019s no question some of Larry Wilmore\u2019s jokes received a very frosty reaction inside the Washington Hilton on Saturday night.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But that was nothing compared to when he tried out his jokes about the media \u2014 to a crowd filled to the brim with journalists.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">On TV, the reaction sounded like hushed murmurs. Our colleagues inside the dinner reported the line bombed. \u201cBoo!\u201d someone yelled. \u201cHiss!\u201d yelled another.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Wilmore laughed nervously. \u201cNo \u2014 alright, fine, I like Wolf.\u201d He was booed again when he took another shot at Wolf\u2019s network: \u201cI don\u2019t know about you guys, but I cannot get enough of that CNN countdown clock. Now we can see exactly when they hit zero in the ratings.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Another joke that didn\u2019t go over so well? \u201cA little bit about me, I am a black man who replaced a white man who pretended to be a TV newscaster,\u201d Wilmore said. \u201cSo yeah, in that way Lester Holt and I have a lot in common.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">There were audible, very loud gasps at that joke that obviously called out Brian Williams, replaced by Holt on \u201cNBC Nightly News\u201d after it was discovered he exaggerated or misrepresented stories over the years.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Melissa Harris-Perry, whose messy departure with MSNBC was specifically referenced in the routine (Wilmore says MSNBC now stands for \u201cMissing a Significant Number of Black Correspondents\u201d), tweeted support for Wilmore, which is unsurprising:<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It was a good talk, made even better by the frosty reception of the room, who are still as thin skinned as they always were.<\/p>\n<p>The best line was not a dig at Fox, but by a line about MSNBC, &#8220;MSNBC got rid of so many black people I thought Boko Haram was running that network,&#8221; though the best moment when Don Lemon flipped the bird in response to a dig at him.<\/p>\n<p>He also dropped the N-bomb. <\/p>\n<p>It was good, and he had to know that he would piss off most of the guys in the room.<\/p>\n<p>Well played Mr. Wilmore.<\/p>\n<p>Here is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/reliable-source\/wp\/2016\/05\/01\/the-complete-transcript-of-larry-wilmores-2016-white-house-correspondents-dinner-speech\/\">the complete transcript <\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Made Even Better by the Crowd Reaction It is pretty clear that he looked at Colbert&#8217;s now famous talk 10 years ago, and decided give me some more of that: Comedian Larry Wilmore held no punches at the 2016 White House correspondents&#8217; dinner, taking aim at presidential candidates, reporters and Bill Cosby. (Erin Patrick O&#8217;Connor\/The &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1002,1048,978,1027],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-writing","category-humor","category-politics","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}