No, Michelle Wolf Didn't Joke Well-nigh Sarah Huckabee Sanders's Looks

Equally soon as Michelle Wolf finished delivering her blistering White House Correspondents' Dinner roast of the Trump administration and the members of the printing that embrace it, she was, non surprisingly, criticized for much of what she said. Oddly, however, a lot of that criticism zeroed in on something that Michelle Wolf did not actually say: a joke about Sarah Huckabee Sanders'due south appearance.

Later Wolf's scathing, unapologetic, and often funny remarks, several prominent journalists called her out for mocking the White Business firm press secretary because of her looks. Maggie Haberman, the New York Times White House correspondent, weighed in with this tweet.

MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski — whose engagement to her Morning Joe co-host, Joe Scarborough, Wolf described in her speech every bit "similar when a #MeToo works out" — voiced a similar business.

Like-minded criticisms were sounded from other corners of the political Twitterverse, causing a number of people — including New Yorker Television receiver critic Emily Nussbaum, Kumail Nanjiani, and, less importantly, me — to express defoliation followed by outrage. I was baffled and irritated by this particular critique of Wolf's operation considering, once again, and I cannot stress this enough, Michelle Wolf did non criticize Sarah Huckabee Sanders, or any other woman, about her advent. Wolf herself even clarified this betoken earlier today on Twitter.

The two jokes that seemed to irk critics were her Handmaid's Tale dig — "I have to say I'chiliad a petty starstruck. I dear you as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid's Tale" — and the aforementioned line about Sanders's smoky centre, which went similar this: "I actually really like Sarah. I think she'due south very resourceful. She burns facts, and then she uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Maybe she's born with it, maybe it'due south lies. It'due south probably lies."

Neither of these jokes are well-nigh Sanders'due south advent. The first one suggests that, like the character Ann Dowd plays on the Hulu series based on Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, Sanders acts as a complicit oppressor on behalf of an authoritarian government. The other joke riffs on a Maybelline slogan to highlight the fact that Sanders lies to the American people on a regular basis on behalf of her boss. You can be offended past either of these insinuations, but at least be offended by what Wolf actually insinuated.

For the record, when Wolf took aim at White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, she didn't say a unmarried affair about her appearance either. Instead, the focus was on Conway'southward dishonesty: "You guys have got to terminate putting Kellyanne on your shows," Wolf told a ballroom filled with cable news producers, anchors, and reporters who repeatedly put Kellyanne Conway on their shows. "All she does is prevarication. If you lot don't give her a platform, she has nowhere to lie. It'due south like that onetime maxim: If a tree falls in the woods, how do we get Kellyanne under that tree? I'g not suggesting she gets hurt. Just stuck. Stuck nether a tree."

It would have been like shooting fish in a barrel for Wolf to take a cheap shot at either of these women for some superficial offense, like the way they apparel or talk. Equally Nussbaum points out, that's what Trump would have done, and has done on many occasions. But nothing nearly what Michelle Wolf did on Saturday night was easy. Information technology was difficult, harder even than the truthtelling that Stephen Colbert did to President George West. Bush-league'southward face at the 2006 White Business firm Correspondents' Dinner. True, Colbert was dressing downwardly the commander in chief in his bodily presence, something Wolf didn't accept the opportunity to do since Trump, for the 2nd year in a row, couldn't muster the courage to show upwards for this event. Merely Colbert could at least hide behind his alter ego as the conservative host of The Colbert Study. Wolf had to go out at that place every bit only the fourth female comedian to perform solo at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, drib a agglomeration of truth bombs, then sit back down with no shield to provide cover.

She wasn't always successful. Her start joke about abortion, for instance, was a groaner: "[Mike Pence] thinks abortion is murder, which, first of all, don't knock information technology till yous try it. And when you do effort it, really knock it. You know, you got to get that baby out of there." But Wolf's swipes at the media were genuinely hilarious. Honestly, the bit that made me laugh the hardest was the one she did about MSNBC: "MSNBC's news slogan is, 'This is who we are.' Guys, it's not a expert slogan. 'This is who we are' is what your mom thinks the sad show on NBC is called. "Did you sentry This Is Who Nosotros Are this calendar week? Someone left on a Crock-Pot and everyone died."

Not surprisingly, though, it's the jabs that Wolf threw at Sanders and other Trump staffers that are getting criticized today, not just because some of them were funny only because they legitimately stung. To acknowledge what actually made the smoky eye line funny meant that some of the people in that ballroom had to reflect on the fact that they either lie, enable liars, or act nicely to liars because that'south what they sometimes have to do to get the data the public deserves to know. That's the sort of situation that makes people itchy.

But here'due south the matter: If the worst thing that happens to y'all while you're working for Trump is that a woman from The Daily Show says a few hateful things about you lot while you're wearing a nice dress, eating a gratis repast, and drinking some wine, y'all are however having a better day than a hell of a lot of people in this country. Also, this is part of the task when you're a public servant. When Don Imus addressed the Radio and TV Correspondents Association dorsum in 1996, he made all kinds of controversial comments well-nigh President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton, both of whom were sitting right there on the dais. Imus was non nearly equally incisive or funny as Wolf was final night — one of the biggest laughs he got was a joke most Sally Struthers being fatty, the kind of punching-down humor that Wolf was accused of committing merely didn't. The Clintons took all of his pot shots, anybody fretted afterward about how inappropriate information technology was, and and then life in Washington moved on.

Life in Washington will motion on from this, too. Only before it does, I desire to pause and make sure it'due south clear why I and others reacted the way we did to the backlash against Wolf's speech. Information technology wasn't because the White House Correspondents' Dinner is and so important to our nation — I'm guessing most of the state, if not the vast majority, has no idea information technology even happened last night — or considering Wolf is the most bright comedian who's always lived. I thought she was pretty funny, but that's not really the point. The issue is that those who expressed shock most her performance could not see the obliviousness and hypocrisy in their responses.

Take the atomic number 82 item in Mike Allen's Axios newsletter, which noted, in a disquisitional tone, that Wolf "made several uses of a vulgarity that begins with 'p,' in an audience filled with Washington officials, height journalists and a few baseball game legends (Brooks Robinson, Tony La Russa and Dennis Eckersley)." The word pussy has go part of the national lexicon because Donald Trump said it in an Admission Hollywood video. It'south since been uttered in news broadcasts, printed in newspapers, and spoken in an episode of Roseanne that aired at 8 p.m. on network TV. The idea that Wolf is vulgar considering she said it in a room total of "top journalists," while perchance sullying the virginal ears of the great Brooks Robinson, is utterly ridiculous.

But what'southward even worse than misguided pearl-clutching is the fact that Wolf is getting criticized for things that she never fifty-fifty said. It'south non unlike the experience that plays out when Trump and his staff, including Sanders, peddle "alternative facts" to the public: If you lot're paying attention to the actual facts, information technology makes you question your ain sense of reality. This is why, after seeing the criticism of Wolf's jokes most Sanders, I felt like I had to rewatch that portion of her speech again because surely I must have missed something.

On a night designed to gloat the importance of journalism, somehow, what some people heard was a jab nigh a smoky eye. They're missing the underlying point of Wolf's comedy: That what should business organization every American are the smokescreens that Sarah Huckabee Sanders and other members of the Trump assistants create, and that go far so hard for White House correspondents to uncover the actual truth.

No, Michelle Wolf Didn't Mock Sarah Huckabee Sanders's Looks