{"id":192592,"date":"2009-03-16T17:25:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-16T22:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/16\/self-important-wankers\/"},"modified":"2009-03-16T17:25:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-16T22:25:00","slug":"self-important-wankers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/16\/self-important-wankers\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Important Wankers"},"content":{"rendered":"

It appears that the members of the Washington, DC press corps are miffed because Barack Obama won’t be attending their annual Gridiron dinner<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But some Gridiron veterans make clear they don\u2019t understand. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page said, \u201cPeople feel uncommonly saddened, miffed and burned.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think he understands the implications of not coming to the club in the first year. It\u2019s not your ordinary state dinner. I think it would be helpful for him and his relations with the Washington establishment to come to the club.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr. Page, by “some people”, you mean “Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page,” and you need to get over yourself.<\/p>\n

Beyond bruised feelings among the pundit class, Obama\u2019s snub is a revealing cultural moment.<\/p>\n

Gridiron has for decades been an inner sanctum of Washington\u2019s political press corps. The club\u2019s mostly aging members were considered highly prestigious because they said so \u2014 and because they had the ability to summon the capital\u2019s political elite to a spring frolic of skits and songs.<\/p>\n

But if a young and glamorous president decides he can afford to blow off an august and tradition-bound institution, one has to at least entertain the possibility that this institution may not be quite as august as its members assumed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It never was anything but a mutual masturbation society.<\/p>\n

Obama decided that spending spring break with his girls was more important, so good for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that the members of the Washington, DC press corps are miffed because Barack Obama won’t be attending their annual Gridiron dinner: But some Gridiron veterans make clear they don\u2019t understand. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page said, \u201cPeople feel uncommonly saddened, miffed and burned. \u201cI don\u2019t think he understands the implications of not coming …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,974,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-hack-journalism","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192592"}],"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=192592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}