Former boss Seth Meyers trashes the WHCA's cowardice in not backing Michelle Wolf
After the White House Correspondents’ Association and its president Margret Talev spent all of Monday standing up for the sacred trust spelled out in the First Amendment by cringingly apologizing for comedian Michelle Wolf hilariously exercising her First Amendment rights at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Sunday, Wolf’s former boss had some thoughts. Saying that Wolf—who, in her monologue, went hard after both assembled representatives of the Trump administration and the media—“spoke truth to power as advertised,” Late Night host Meyers mocked the WHCA for inviting the outspoken Wolf into a room full of administration and media types and then pretending to be shocked when the outspoken Wolf went Wolf.
After a routine spent ripping into those (like White House spokes-liar Sarah Huckabee Sanders) whose daily attacks on the free press on behalf of a petty, petulant would-be strongman/reality show clown, one might imagine that an organization dedicated to championing free expression would, you know, stick up for someone they invited to humorously take up the fight. But, as Meyers put it, the WHCA’s retreat from the intellectually dishonest attacks on Wolf from the administration and its enablers in the media (and not just those on Fox News, depressingly) points up the hypocrisy of a group “whose whole point is supposed to be to celebrate the First Amendment.”
Meyers said admiringly of Wolf that she’s “filthy and mean, and that’s what we love about her,” and claimed that, even though she’s not on his show any more, Wolf’s incisive, unsparing wit (often at his expense) still makes him jump whenever he sees a redhead walking down the street. Touting Wolf’s upcoming show The Break With Michelle Wolf (premiering May 27 on Netflix), Meyers predicted that, unlike the WHCA, Wolf isn’t going to concern herself with “when it is or isn’t proper to make fun of people who lie to us on a daily basis.” He then introduced current Late Night writer Jenny Hagel, whose piece on how Trump spent his Sunday (bravely fleeing the Correspondents’ Dinner in favor of telling lies in front of people who like him and believe every racist, nonsensical thing he says) showed that Wolf’s mantle has been picked up by another woman at Late Night unafraid to piss off the right people.