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Les Enfants Plaza: On the WHCD
It's Sunday evening, and I need to get something off my chest that has been bothering me all weekend. The annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner is my least favorite annual event on the calendar in this city, and for all the reasons people have already identified: the sycophancy, the all-too-close relationship between the decisions makers in this city and the people who cover them, the desire of so many journalists to not simply report the news but to be the news themselves.
I think it's great, actually, that the president can poke fun at himself and others -- I laughed while reading the president's speech and enjoyed those of President Bush as well. And I heartily approve of journalists breaking bread and sharing the occasional drink with their sources and subjects. There's nothing wrong with any of that when it is done discretely and in moderation.
But what really set me off was the constant use of the phrase "nerd prom" -- usually by the attendants themselves -- to describe the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Teenagers go to proms -- not grown men and women. This is part of a broader pattern I see in Washington -- a pattern which include cupcake stores, kickball leagues, and adults dressing up on Halloween (to amuse themselves, not children) -- whereby ostensibly grown people adopt the rituals of childhood.*
Unlike some people <cough> Spencer Ackerman </cough>, I really like Washington, DC: I love my neighborhood, I love my neighbors, I love my neighborhood church, and I love my local rugby club. I especially love the fact that neither my neighbors, nor the people in my church, nor my rugby teammates care anything about what I do for a living and that my social life is generally pretty separate from my professional life. I met my wife here, and although I very much miss Tennessee, I enjoy my adopted hometown.
But it rubs me the wrong way that people sending 18-year old kids off to war spend so much of their own time posing as children. Grow the bleep up, DC. It's no wonder the Congress behaves like infants when they see nothing but infants around them.**
*Yes, yes, I realize what you're thinking: who am I to be lectured on behaving like an adult from a d*** Lego man? I can explain: in Iraq, in 2003, I got some very wise advice from an officer in the British SAS for whom I was working. He told me that keeping one's sense of humor was one of the most important things one could do. The minute you start taking yourself too seriously, he told me, you start thinking you're too good to get killed. So I have always tried to not take myself too seriously and to approach even the most serious subjects -- war, terrorism -- with a sense of humor. Hence the Lego jihadi. There is a thin line, though, between having a sense of humor and behaving like a jackass. I'm not sure where that line is, but I'm sure it has been crossed when you start attending parties with Kardashians present.
**I might be affected by having spent the entire weekend with my father-in-law, who is the most adult man I know. The guy got off a boat from southern Italy about 50 years ago with his mother, his father, his infant brother, and about $50 between the four of them. He's been working hard ever since and took enough pity on his son-in-law this weekend to show him how to do all the things around the house that he, as a man in his thirties, frankly should have known how to do already. (By the way, look out, world: I can replace windowpanes now.)
To be fair to Spencer, he
To be fair to Spencer, he said he likes the restaurants and the non-political people, but it was the underlying political phoniness and degradation, of clever people acting proudly stupid, that he hated.
Similar to your rant...
However, cupcake stores, kickball teams, and adult Halloween is everywhere; I wouldn't think they are DC phenomenons. Also, you have your rugby league: it's a tough game. Not everyone can take the big hits. Maybe kickball is better for them (I don't know how seriously a kickball league operates, but for a workout, it has to be at least on par with bowling...).
I have no doubt that your weekend spent with a serious adult has led to the rant. We live in a land of plenty, and our joyful frivolities often seem petty. But if cupcakes and kickball do bring joy to the masses, perhaps they have a rightful place as well.
Your rant did remind me of an old speech from 2009 from a DC resident:
"We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."
You are the same guy that
You are the same guy that played paintball with Hezbollah right? Do YOU remember that??
Exum, good rant not sure it
Exum, good rant not sure it is all on solid ground.
If you didn't ping the WHCD, I would have. I found some of the jokes distasteful, then people tend to joke about things that they fear the most. It is an inside view of a persons head.
Think the cupcake thing has a lot to do with Mrs. Fields making way too much money on cookies. There was cupcake factory here in town (any town, USA). It came and went, the $5-10 cupcakes were new at first then people lost interest. It is all part of the life of a city center that once was then wasn't and then was again and now is trying to find a new life. Most of it is service industry rather than value, upscale restaurants that the average local incomes cannot afford. It is about entertainment for people that think they have too much money.
Lot of changes in our society since your father-in-law came to America. Those Italians are hard working people and they made their place in America. I know of one that lived in the NE part of America. This was in the 50's. One day a group of the local younger generation rolled into a local business selling protection. The business owner promptly pulled a pistol out of a desk drawer and indicated that the protectors could use some protection. The young kids about wet their pants and ran out. That was the commercial laundry business in Philly. Talking with the older generation Italians is a hoot and belly buster, they got good restaurants too. Good people to know and they know their friends. Latino's have the same work ethic.
The baby boomer kids grew up and now their kids are growing up. They have way too much money that they did not have to sweat to get. Most do not do their own stuff. All my nieces and nephews ( bankers and medical profession ) would not even think about doing their own car repair. House repairs, many of those are farmed out too. As the easy money dries up (usually they start having their own children) there is more interest in saving money on repairs. That is when the uncles and helicopter parents show up to do the repairs. The auto companies are not making it any easier. Since OBD2 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics ) you can still make most of your car repairs with a volt meter, starting in 2005 the diagnostic software used at the dealerships has moved to a laptop platform ( https://www.tistechstream.com/PDF/TECHSTREAM_VISION_BROCHURE.pdf ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC0DLiFkHM4&feature=related ). Thing that strips my gears is that for a "mere mortal" to use the dealership based software tools an active subscription is required. In other words you just purchased a laptop and got the software to diagnose your car problems, but you have to pay the eternal monthly fee to Toyota or you investment stops working. Use to be you purchased your software and you owned it, no active anything needed. As we pour more electronics into cars, there are more proprietary functions that only dealership tools have access to. The dealership has you by the short hairs.
Had to laugh, the local University has a Nanotechnology Program (many do these days). One of the current administrators of the facility was a grad student reporting to of one of my professional references back in the day. The administrator was talking about his 40 year tenure at the University. He validated my theory, he indicated that people do not do repairs anymore. He has Graduate students come in his office claiming that a Million dollar piece of fabrication lab equipment is not working correctly. On inspection of the equipment in question the administrator would find the equipment doing its function, all indications of operation was normal with only a "go-no go" indicator lamp being burned out. People put too much dependence on what their technology displays tell them without interrogating the complete system. Even researchers with multimillion Federal Grants loose sight of the simplest things while working on Carbon Nanotubes solving the worlds energy problems. All stopped by a burned out indicator lamp.
It is easier to dress up for Halloween than to fix your windows.
umm what is the point of this
umm what is the point of this post?
Look, it's one thing to
Look, it's one thing to comment on the plague of cupcakes sweeping through the nation's capital but watch what you say about Halloween, pal. It is the one time a lot of pretentious Washington blowhards are forced to take themselves less seriously.
So kickball leagues are a
So kickball leagues are a problem but rugby leagues aren't? Sure, right.
And I hate to tell you this, but cupcakes, kickball, and adult halloween parties are big out here in the midwest too.
Yeah, it's not just a DC
Yeah, it's not just a DC thing, by any means. There just aren't any adults in this country anymore, period. Couple weeks ago, I was at a meal at my church, and all the talk was, "Have you seen Hunger Games yet? When will you see it? Have you read the books already, or is it better to read them after seeing the movies?" Then they began talking about having a Harry Potter-fest at somebody's home.
These were people in their 40s and 50s. It was appalling.
Years ago there was an NPR story on Howard Stern, and one of the guests remarked he appeals to 13-35 year-old male demographic, and I thought, how can there be a 13-35 year-old demographic? Isn't that just wrong?
God help us.
Does my heart good to see
Does my heart good to see that even Army Rangers feel a little less manly around old men who can fix everything.
While I agree with some of
While I agree with some of the visitors here that cupcake stores and kickball leagues might not be the best example of DC's childishness, I totally agree with you that the city and it's decision makers have some growing up to do. Having graduated from college in downtown DC fairly recently, I think that a good percentage of that childishness comes from the hordes of my peers who go straight from the DC universities into internships and full-time positions with those decision-makers, often without real-world experience to temper their youth. Inexperienced recent graduates don't exactly have a lot of influence at the congressional offices, government agencies, or think tanks where they get their first positions, but they have an impact on the organizational culture around them. If they are immature and childish, it is bound to reflect on their superiors, as well as their peers. Eventually, it creates a significant cohort of relatively young policymakers and policymaker assistants who haven't lived outside the DC bubble and its college-age population. It's one of the reasons I got out of DC as fast as possible and headed to Benning School For Boys.
This is not to say that all of my peers who stayed in DC and went to work for various organizations there are immature. Far from it. Many are absolutely brilliant, hard-working individuals who do their best to contribute to making this country and this world a better place. But my personal experience was that these individuals were few and far between by comparison with the vast population of inexperienced and immature interns and staffers whose influence on organizational culture was significant.
In fact, the "prom" is an
In fact, the "prom" is an interesting cultural throwback. It is a formal ball, and in my understanding, the custom of having such a ball at high school was intended as an introduction into the world of adults. It was the adults that would have, more or regularly, such formal events.
The thing here is that there are no more formal events of the type of the correspondents' dinner in the adult world. Instead of being one of the many formal balls one would be more or less obliged to attend in white or black tie, it is a one-of-a-kind event for most attendees. For most people, the prom has been the only similar event. So, calling the correspondents' dinner a "nerd prom" mostly signals that the speaker or the intended audience has never attended any other formal situation.
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