The Star-Studded White House Dinner
 Wednesday, May 20th, 2009  by Connie T.

Tyra Banks at the Annual White House Correspondents Dinner, via Lauren Victoria Burke

This month, the White House Correspondents dinner was hosted at the Washington Hilton, and the guest list included Chace Crawford (star of the CW's Gossip Girl), Kevin Bacon (no introduction needed), and Owen Wilson (complete with his own security).

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel even posed for a photograph with Eva Longoria Parker, and went to chat up Chace. Sting and his wife were there, as were Forest Whitaker, Ludacris, and Brooke Shields.

CNN brought Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Val Kilmer, Kyra Sedgwick, and Tyra Banks as their guests. To ABC News' credit, they brought chief's of staff, CIA, a United Nations Ambassador, and other politically-inclined professionals. CBS went a different route and brought Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner (although rumors swirleth that Ben is interested in running for Congress), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine!), and Brad Paisley among the politicians. NBC had Jimmy Fallon, Mariska Hargitay, Mike Myers. Warren Buffett, Samuel L. Jackson, and a whole slew of entertainment celebrities.

What were they doing, sitting around playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon including themselves? And you know Tyra interviewed President Barack Obama, so they could've literally gone all the way up. Okay. (Deep breath.) Granted, the WHCD is typically hosted by a "celebrity" (this time, Wanda Sykes). But the WHCA (White House Correspondents' Association) is an organization of journalists, and the requirements for membership include employment on an editorial staff that regularly reports on the White House. Of all the behind-the-scenes (and on-the-scene, for pete's sake) reporters and journalists that toil all year long bringing often yawn-worthy coverage to the America public, these networks choose Hollywood A- to B-listers for their guests?

Two years ago, after the '07 WHCD, New York Times columnist Frank Rich said the Times was no longer going to participate in the Dinners, because they are "a crystallization of the press's failures in the post-9/11 era...[it] illustrates how easily a propaganda-driven White House can enlist the Washington news media in its shows."

And see, it is the press. It our mainstream media: the WHCA has strict requirements for journalists to enlist, but the networks are employing no similar imperatives when they choose whom to involve in these junkets.

They opt for the public interest instead of the interest of the public.

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