Nothing Much Happened.

A man with a weapon was stopped outside the White House Correspondents' Dinner. This is the annual evening at which the journalists who cover power put on black tie and have dinner with power, and everyone agrees this is how accountability stays healthy.

Donald Trump was due to speak. He had, one imagines, prepared material. He has spent a decade calling the people in that room enemies of the people, purveyors of fake news, a disgrace, a disaster, various other things. The Correspondents' Dinner is the one night a year he could say it to their faces, in a tuxedo, with a microphone. He did not get the chance.

Instead, a man with a weapon appeared outside, the perimeter was secured, and the journalists, unable to leave, went back to their tables and finished their food. Someone was photographed eating a salad. This is not a metaphor, though it is available as one.

Outside, and at some distance, people who had not been anywhere near the building concluded almost immediately that the episode was staged. Not at the margins, in the centre, with the weary authority of those who have found a faster route past the inconvenience of evidence. Obviously, they said, from their sofas.

One understands the appeal. Accepting things at face value risks looking naïve, and naivety is the one condition nobody can currently afford. Suspicion is free and signals sophistication. It also requires nothing, no proximity, no information, no particular engagement with what actually occurred.

The geometry here is difficult to improve upon. The journalists who have spent years being called fake news were trapped in a room while people outside declared the news fake. Donald Trump, whose entire relationship with this dinner has been a decade-long accusation that the press manufactures reality, was denied his speech by an event his supporters promptly decided was manufactured. The people in the room finished their salads. The people outside finished their theories.

Both groups, in their way, carried on.

If you know someone who’d appreciate this, they probably will. Please share. Sharing's nice.
...
If you enjoyed this article and would like to see more, 'Buy the Goose a Coffee →'.
...
The views expressed are those of the correspondent. Factual claims draw on publicly available sources.