PUNCH LINE: Conan O’Brien (top right) hosts the White House Correspondents Dinner. Joking with the president actually isn’t much fun, say (inset from left) Lewis Black, John Hodgman and Don Imus. (
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If Conan O’Brien thought dealing with NBC was stressful, wait till he gets to DC.
On Saturday night, the late-night host will go to work in front of comedy’s toughest crowd — the political and media elite at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Forget the fact that it comes a week after the Boston Marathon attacks, the worst terrorist scare since 9/11. Not exactly a moment fraught with humor.
In the best of times, hosting the correspondents dinner (or its little brother on the DC media calendar, the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner) may be the most unforgiving comedy gigs in the world.
Try telling jokes about the president of the United States with him sitting close enough to kick you under the table.
O’Brien — who performed at the dinner once before, in 1995 — declined to be interviewed for this story.
But several comics did talk to us. And what they said wasn’t funny.
“There’s a level of terror around the whole thing,” says Lewis Black, who performed at the Radio & TV event in 2005. “There are certain things [about it] I’ve repressed.
“Political audiences are not fun,” says Black. “They bring an attitude of, ‘I’ve seen it all. What makes you think you can make us laugh at what we live every day?’ ”
Don Imus, who performed at the Radio and TV event in 1996, dealt with then-President Clinton’s scandals head on, joking about his reported infidelities and the first lady’s legal troubles.
“It didn’t go over with the President, who was to the right of me about three feet, glaring at me,” Imus recalled last week.
“And to the left was the first lady, and she was glaring at me as well.
The Clintons “were f—ing livid,” he said, understating things more than a little.
“They didn’t like being made fun of, but I didn’t give a s–t,” he says. “I did not then, and do not now, give a f–k what they think.”
The bad press he received from the gig was legendary and — unlike O’Brien — he’s never been invited back again.
But Imus got the last laugh. The controversy earned him about 100 new affiliates for his morning radio show, he says.
On the other side of the spectrum would be mild-mannered comic John Hodgman, who hosted the the same event four years ago.
Hodgman recalls that President Obama spoke to him both before and after his routine. But don’t ask the comic what the president said.
“The words he said to me are lost to history, because it sounded like one of Charlie Brown’s teachers,” says Hodgman.
“My brain couldn’t process what was happening. He said things to me and I’ll never recall them, and I’m sad about that.
“I’m glad there is a video record of me and the president sharing the vulcan ‘live long and prosper’ salute,” he adds. “I can’t ask for a more strange or incredible memory than that.”
The White House dinner — a larger event but still pretty much the same cast of movers and shakers — has become such a big deal in recent years that, for the first time, E! Entertainment channel is livestreaming the red-carpet arrivals on its Web site — just like the Oscars.
Ashley Judd, Courteney Cox, Hayden Panettiere, Jon Bon Jovi, Kevin Spacey, Nicole Kidman, Shaquille O’Neal, Sharon Stone, Sofia Vergara, and Tracy Morgan are expected to attend.
But the dinner can be as much about who isn’t there as who is.
Black’s gig wound up taking a threatening turn when President Bush canceled at the last minute to attend Pope John Paul II’s funeral.
Black found himself performing instead for Vice President Cheney — whom he’d said countless awful things about over the years.
Cheney wound up laughing at everything, then greeting Black warmly afterward.
“It was like being on drugs, because it was so out of my context,” says Black. “I’ve said things about Cheney that were unbelievable, and now I’m shaking his hand, and he’s grinning and thanking me.”