C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, MAY 2 , 2022
Maggie Sajak.
“I’m her escort,” said the proud
dad, who spent most of the night
doing what smart celebrities do:
chatting and posing in photos
with thrilled fans of all ages. “If
you don’t want to do that, you
shouldn’t c ome,” he said.
At Haddad’s brunch, another
tradition was back: rude people
talking through speeches, these
ones honoring military veterans.
Emcee Stephanie Ruhle was clear-
ly peeved: “All you jerk asses
who’ve been talking this whole
time: You’re not coming back.”
At the pre-parties Saturday eve-
ning in the Hilton, C aitlyn Jenner,
who recently joined Fox News as a
contributor, stopped by her net-
work’s fete. When asked by The
Post w hy s he decided to attend the
dinner, she “grimaced,” according
to one onlooker.
Meghan McCain, the former co-
host of “The View” who now
writes columns for t he Daily Mail,
was willing to stop and chat. “It’s
not fun for the rest of the country
to hear people bitching about go-
ing to a black-tie dinner party,” s he
said, “so I chose to come and have
a good time.”After dinner, the crowd scat-
tered to after-parties, with
many boldface names
showing up to Paramount’s i nvite-
only fete at the elegant Kalorama
residence of the French ambassa-
dor. There was fine champagne, a
lavish buffet, White House press
secretary Jen Psaki, and lots and
lots of corporate executives. It f elt
rich and grown-up. The closest
anyone came to pushing the en-
velope was Shields, who switched
from her dinner outfit into a white
T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. “I felt
so bad. I was like, ‘Wait, where are
we going?’ I was in the car. I
changed too soon,” she said. “I
better drink something, because
I’m not dressed accordingly.”
Secretary of State Antony
Blinken gave the evening high
marks. “I thought it was wonder-
ful,” he said. “I also thought there
was a serious undertone that was
really right for the moment.” Ash-
ley and Naomi Biden mingled un-
noticed; Sens. Patrick J. Leahy
(D-Vt.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)
and Christopher A. Coons (D-
Del.) did not. “I missed the parties
last night, so I must do them all
tonight,” Coons said to a group of
admirers. Gene Sperling, senior
adviser to Biden, told Psaki that
she looked great up on the dais:
“Just the right amount of laugh-
ing.”
Speaking of jokes: CNN’s Don
Lemon (wearing a perfectly tai-
lored tux but no socks), took all
the slaps on his network in stride.
“It’s like a roast,” he said, shrug-
ging. “What are you going to do?
Put on your big-boy pants — with
no socks.”
Nearby, at the Colombian am-
bassador’s r esidence, a brass band
was playing and comedian Billy
Eichner was still reeling about the
president name-checking him in
his speech. “One of the most sur-
real moments of my life,” he said.
“I’m probably gonna watch it a
bunch of times to make sure that it
happened.” How many LGBTQ co-
medians get to a level where the
president knows who they are, he
wondered.
At a party for theGrio, the only
party of the weekend hosted by a
Black-owned media company,
guests included “The 1619 Proj-
ect’s” Nikole Hannah-Jones, rap-
per Fat Joe, CNN’s Abby Phillip
and actress Vivica A. Fox. Every-
one was there to see Mary J. Blige
strut to the stage — coming on
well after midnight. For the crowd
of mostly Black politicos and jour-
nalists, belting out the “Family
Affair” lyrics about not needing
drama or “hateration” felt like a
release.
Meanwhile, over at the Reach
at the Kennedy Center, NBC had
to ask the crowd of mostly jour-
nalists and hangers-on to leave
the after-party, well after 3 a.m.,
sending a staffer around to polite-
ly tell people: “The party has con-
cluded.”
Hours later, the hungover
masses showed up at a CNN
brunch in Union Market and a
Politico brunch at the George-
town home of Robert and Elena
Allbritton. More Andrés. More
Psaki. Bloody marys helped.
But maybe it was worth it, coro-
navirus risk and all. As he left
Paramount’s p arty, Desus Nice got
emotional talking about how he
had been so moved by seeing the
memorial to journalists who died
in Ukraine. “It really put a pause
on it,” he said. “We’re out here.
We’re just enjoying a party. We’ve
got our fresh suits on, and, like,
people are dying reporting on
Ukraine. We have to remember
that, at the end of the day, we’re
here to defend the First Amend-
ment. ... We’re the first responders
for this.”Helena Andrews-Dyer, Jeremy Barr,
Paul Farhi, Elahe Izadi, Sonia Rao and
Roxanne Roberts contributed to this
report.MSNBC host Symone D. Sand-
ers smartly snuck into Kar-
dashian’s entourage to get to the
front of the line to enter the din-
ner. “I’m shameless. I wanted to
get in quickly and I was like, ‘I
can’t get there without Kim Kar-
dashian,’ ” she said. According to
Sanders, who knows a ll as Harris’s
former spokesperson, Kardashian
made just one p ersonal request all
evening: to get a picture with
White House Chief of Staff Ron
Klain. “Her people reached out in
advance. They were excited about
Ron,” S anders s aid.
A
t its heart, the correspon-
dents’ dinner is about cel-
ebrating journalists by get-
ting the industry together to
drink, be merry and swap adula-
tion with a select group of celebri-
ties. Everyone was required to be
vaccinated and have a same-day
negative coronavirus test — even
the folks from Fox News, as Biden
pointed out in his speech. It w as a
return to some form of normalcy
after three years of President Don-
ald Tr ump refusing to attend the
dinner and two years of pandemic
shutdowns after that. Per tradi-
tion, Biden roasted the press
corps (“The only group of Ameri-
cans with a lower approval rating
than I have”), then got roasted by
the invited comedian, Comedy
Central’s “Daily Show” host Trev-
or Noah.
With hardly a mask in sight, an
alarming Twitter thread circulat-
ed about a sensor placing t he CO2
levels in the room at more than
2,000 parts per million. Biden
skipped dinner and showed up
only for the speeches, where he
and first lady Jill Biden sat on a
dais far from everyone, as a pre-
caution.
Noah read the room perfectly.
“It is my great honor to be speak-
ing tonight at the nation’s most
distinguished superspreader
event,” he began.
“I’m a nervous wreck. No one
I’ve talked to says they feel fine,”
said Gayle King at Washington
networking maven Tammy Hadd-
ad’s 27th annual garden brunch
on Saturday — one of the hottest
tickets of the weekend, particular-
ly because it was outside. During
peak covid, King didn’t leave her
house for 105 days, she said, but
the event was too important to
miss.
“I’m glad to see us out. But I’m
not exactly hugging everybody,”
said the Rev. A l Sharpton.
Desus Nice, of Showtime’s
“Desus & Mero,” said he couldn’t
believe that a kid from the Bronx
got to sit that close to the action.
“Close enough to give Biden covid.
You know, if I killed Biden, that’s a
flex,” he said, laughing. “Nah, but I
was thinking: ‘Are we gonna kill
Joe Biden?’ I don’t wanna be that
guy!”
There were standing ovations
when the dinner gave lifetime
achievement h onors to Alice Dun-
nigan and Ethel Payne, the first
two Black women to be members
of the White House press corps,
and tears during a n in-memoriam
reel for journalists who have been
killed while covering the war in
Ukraine. Emotions ran high, and
so did sloppy drunkenness — as is
to be expected at the first open-
bar wingding many had been to in
years. Multiple TV j ournalists and
celebrities shed tears while talk-
ing to The Washington Post.
Martha Stewart, a guest at the
Daily Mail’s table, told her hosts:
“This is like my sixth time or
seventh time [here]. I’ve never
been at a table so far back before.
The view is fabulous, though.” She
was so far back that the doors to
the kitchen were swinging open
every five seconds next to her
chair. She was there to laugh, she
said, “and I want to see the presi-
dent in person. Other presidents
have not shown up. You know who
I’m talking about.”
Star wattage was lower than in
the Obama years. K ardashian and
Davidson were the big draws.
Chris Tucker was there, as was
Mario van Peebles, but who got
mobbed by more fans? World-res-
cuing chef José Andrés.
The weekend had started full
force on Friday at that UTA party,
where politicos mixed with cable
TV s tars and plausible deniability
was the name of the game, as
organizers banked on the sheer
number of maskless parties to,
well, mask the origin o f any poten-
tial coronavirus o utbreak.
George Conway was there,
but not his wife, Kellyanne. Seem-
ingly CNN’s entire lineup was
schmoozing, while Fox News per-
sonalities mostly kept to them-
selves. Bill Nye the Science Guy
came, plus Brooke Shields in
a black-and-white newsprint-
evoking suit designed by the late
Virgil Abloh. “Wheel of Fortune”
host Pat Sajak was leaving with a
beautiful blonde young enough to
be his daughter — who, you may
be relieved to learn, is his daugh-
ter, aspiring country singer
and Georgetown Law student
WHCD FROM C1
Dishing up the deets on the correspondents’ dinnerALEXANDER DRAGO/REUTERSAMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTBONNIE CASH/POOL/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCKPAUL MORIGI/GETTY IMAGESAt its heart, the correspondents’ dinner is about celebratingjournalists by getting the industry together to drink, be merryand swap adulation with a select group of celebrities.AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
C LOCKWISE FROM TOP: ABC News correspondent Karen Travers, comedian Trevor Noah and first lady Jill Biden at the dinner
Saturday; Stephanie Ruhle, Gayle King and Drew Barrymore; the NBC post-dinner party at the Reach at the Kennedy Center; Chris
Hayes, left, and Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee; actor Leslie Jordan.