Um, does this sound like junior high? It's right out of the movie "Mean Girls," except it's not. It's Washington, D.C. and the White House press corps.
Yes, these are the people who want to inform the public and shape opinion. They are your "media elite." Could they be more petty?:
The battle over A-list guests begins long before the date of the dinner is set and often leaves news organizations complaining — all off the record, of course — about who stole what guest and which celebrity bailed on them.Ridiculous. Just ridiculous.
This year, news outlets are grumbling in particular about ABC’s impressive roster of White House guests — senior adviser David Axelrod, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, adviser Valerie Jarrett, Michelle Obama Chief of Staff Jackie Norris, CIA Director Leon Panetta and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.
Traditionally, the White House divides its staff among the various news organizations after looking through its invitations. But several people pointed to ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos’s close friendship with Emanuel, and questioned how the network got so many big names.
ABC disputed the questions about Stephanopoulos’s involvement and said it was their hard and early work that resulted in the guest list.
The network pointed out it was ABC senior political editor Virginia Moseley who invited Emanuel, while correspondent Jake Tapper invited Axelrod and anchor Terry Moran invited Jarrett.
“That rumor needs to be ‘shot through the heart,’ but the only guest George booked for this White House Correspondents Dinner was Jon Bon Jovi, and to quote the singer, we weren’t exactly ‘livin’ on a prayer’ booking guests. We started earlier, worked harder, and these are the results,” said ABC News spokeswoman Emily Lenzner.
The White House refused to get involved in the dispute. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told The Hill he hadn’t “seen the lineup of who’s going where.”
