May 12, 2009

President Obama attended his first White House correspondent’s dinner Saturday night. It was filled with Hollywood types, as you might expect given the entertainment establishment’s overwhelming support of Obama.

Some of the jokes were crude. Even the president referred to his trash-talking and foul-mouthed chief of staff in a way I can’t repeat. He linked a common profanity with Mother’s Day. Nice and classy.

Wanda Sykes, the black comedienne, got up and among other things wished Rush Limbaugh dead. She called him a traitor and guilty of treason because he has said he hopes Obama’s policies fail. She said he hopes he fails, but Limbaugh has only talked about the president’s socialist policies.

You know what the reaction would have been if a comedian had wished a liberal icon dead or suggested that if you don’t agree with this president’s policies, you are a traitor and guilty of treason. But when you’re a liberal Democrat, anything goes. I’ve stopped going to these affairs. Journalists ought not to be so cozy with their sources and Hollywood should stay on the left coast where it belongs.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.