My introduction to the birther movement had come a few years earlier, through a blog written under the pen name “Texas Darlin.” Texas was one of the few Hillary supporters who hadn’t come around. Instead, it was as if Catholics and Protestants had split, and she’d responded by turning to Satan. Her posts made even Sarah Palin look restrained.
I kept tabs on Ms. Darlin’s blog the way a coal miner keeps tabs on a canary. If she floated a conspiracy theory on Easter, by Christmas it would be part of the conservative mainstream. Still, when she began warning readers that Obama was born in Kenya, I was certain she had gone too far. Who could possibly believe that? I thought. And then, just a few months later, millions did.
If people like Texas Darlin kindled the birtherism epidemic, it was real estate mogul Donald Trump who fanned the flames. It seems unbelievable now, but in 2011, Trump’s star was waning. His reality show was losing its audience. America was tiring of his brand.
Then, in a reboot of epic proportions, Trump began demanding the president’s birth certificate. It was impossible to tell whether his act of showmanship was a triumph of strategy or instinct. Either way, it came with an adoring, built-in audience. A sizable chunk of red-state America was desperate for a hero, someone to unmask the foreignness of the president they loathed. Within weeks, Trump was leading a kind of anti-Obama revival movement. Instead of covering the administration’s agenda, reporters began covering the birthers’ antics. No wonder the president looked pissed.
And now he had called the Donald’s bluff, posting his long-form birth certificate on the Internet for the entire world to see. Those of us standing around Straut’s television unanimously agreed this was badass. In a single stroke, President Obama had just delivered a fatal blow to birtherism. He had exposed its most famous cheerleader as a fraud.
Best of all, he had done it just three days before he would see Donald Trump in person. That Saturday, they were both scheduled to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
BECAUSE THE CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER PLAYED AN OUTSIZE ROLE in my White House career, I should acknowledge up front that it is bonkers. Imagine learning that once a year the British prime minister leads a mariachi band, or the Chinese premier performs burlesque. Yet in America, tradition dictates that each spring our commander in chief don black-tie attire and perform a comedy monologue in the ballroom of a Washington hotel.
In some ways, it’s a fairly modern ritual. While every president since Calvin Coolidge has attended the dinner, most didn’t tell jokes. Those who did kept their remarks focused on the relationship between the chief executive and the press.
Then, near the end of the Reagan era, reporters began inviting celebrities. Celebrities began showing up. In 1997, red-carpet buzz reached new heights when Ellen DeGeneres and her then-girlfriend Anne Heche arrived. In 2002, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne accepted invitations at the peak of their reality-show fame. By the time President Obama took office, what was ostensibly a fund-raiser to provide scholarships for high school students had become a bilateral summit between Hollywood and Washington, D.C. The night was nicknamed Nerd Prom, but Name Dropper’s Paradise would have been just as accurate.
“As I overheard Chris Christie tell Sofía Vergara . . .”
“That reminds me of a joke I told the Secretary of Labor, Kim Kardashian, and two-thirds of the cast of Glee.”
Each White House handles amateur night differently. Bill Clinton’s staff fought tooth and nail to land their favorite lines, backstabbing colleagues without remorse. I once asked a Clintonite how to gracefully cut subpar jokes, and he told me not to bother. “If a joke really stinks,” he advised, “push it into the middle of the highway. Let it get run over by a truck.”
George W. Bush’s team was less cutthroat, but also less confident in their principal’s ability to perform. They often let goofy slides do the heavy lifting, while the president read captions that were difficult to screw up.
Obama’s process was defined not by infighting or caution, but by an ironclad if unwritten rule. Everyone stayed in their lane. Jon Lovett was the president’s funniest speechwriter—his color commentary was a fixture of our team meetings—so he was in charge of the jokes. Favs made edits and shaped the flow of the script. David Axelrod, already in Chicago for the reelection campaign, served as a kind of professor emeritus, offering advice, pitching one-liners, and initiating long e-mail chains full of puns.
Another dozen or so writers—some from the comedy world, others from politics—sent in jokes as behind-the-scenes volunteers. It was in this role that I had landed a few lines in the previous year’s script. Now, however, I was on the inside. I was sure I had more to contribute. I hoped I would finally get my chance.
In many ways, I did. Favs and Lovett found me a ticket to the dinner. When we had to tweak setups or edit transitions, they welcomed my two cents. Also, because I could see each draft of the monologue, I knew in advance which lines would make the cut. As the day of the dinner neared, I had four jokes in the speech—not an overwhelming number, but respectable. I was especially proud of a line I’d written about one of the 2012 Republican candidates, in response to the birther mess.
“You may think Tim Pawlenty’s all-American, but have you heard his full name? That’s right: Tim ‘bin Laden’ Pawlenty.”
I could picture the shock rippling across the audience, followed by a wave of laughter. It was going to be epic. I couldn’t wait.
Still, the dinner wasn’t the big break I was hoping for. Access to drafts aside, I found myself excluded from the joke-writing inner circle. I understood why Favs and Lovett didn’t rush to include me in their Oval Office meetings. They didn’t yet know if I could be trusted with information reporters would cut off a pinkie to obtain. But it stung to be so close and yet so far.
The day of the dinner, as I scoured Washington in a desperate search for cuff links, Favs, Lovett, and Axelrod met with the president in the Oval one last time. Not long after, the red light on my BlackBerry flashed. An updated draft. Some of the changes were hilarious, especially the long run of jokes that Lovett and Judd Apatow (one of our comedy-world silent partners) had written torching Trump. But as I scrolled through the latest version, I was stunned. They had butchered my best line. The reference to bin Laden had been deleted. In its place was the name of the Egyptian strong man deposed a few months before.
“You may think Tim Pawlenty’s all-American, but have you heard his full name? That’s right: Tim ‘Hosni’ Pawlenty.”