http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/washington/18memo.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=sloginNo Offense Intended With This Year’s Choice of Entertainer, but Still an Outcry
By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: April 18, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 17 — After more than 40 years in show business, Rich Little is still a working comedian, doing his well-practiced impersonations from Las Vegas to Granite Falls, Minn. He is even available for corporate retreats and weddings.
But this weekend, Mr. Little will return to the national stage, where he once held a regular place, when he appears at the Hilton Washington as headliner at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. It is the capital’s premier social event for the president, Congressional leaders and the reporters who cover them — some of whom were too young to know Mr. Little’s work, others who were surprised to learn he was still alive (actually, he is only 68).
In hiring an impersonator practiced in an old-school approach to comedy, meant to entertain but not offend, the White House Correspondents’ Association has, however, provoked left-leaning political activists, who see his assignment as a retreat from last year’s dinner. Then, the television satirist Stephen Colbert delivered a stinging roast of President Bush and, to a lesser extent, the White House press corps.
Mr. Little has said he would deliver no such performance this year. And his selection has become something of a symbol in the liberal blogosphere for what its members consider the proclivity of Washington reporters to give Mr. Bush and his administration a pass.
“It represents that the White House press corps is more interested in playing friendly and cozying up to the Bush administration than it is in providing the sort of oversight that a free press should provide in a democracy,” said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the Daily Kos. “They shouldn’t be yukking it up together as if they’re pals and friends, and that’s why we’ve had so much terrible coverage.”Conservatives, of course, hoot at the idea that reporters are too cozy with the White House, saying that by and large the news media is implacably hostile to the administration and ideologically left-leaning. And association officials say they are in no way seeking to protect their relationships, to the extent they have any, with Mr. Bush and his aides — and that whatever relationships they do have are neither cozy nor friendly.
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