White House Correspondents Dinner 2016: Larry Wilmore on presiding over President Obama’s last outing
We’re a glutton for punishment, and maybe for that reason we love watching the White House Correspondents Dinner year after year. For us, there is just something so funny and odd about watching some of these people in the news media squirm while someone makes fun of them. It’s also really hard to even figure out from the crowd what’s supposed to be. It’s ridiculous, but at times that’s also what makes it great.
This year, the person in charge of providing the comedy is none other than “The Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore, who has the challenge of sending off one of the funniest Presidents in recent memory in Barack Obama. How does he plan on paying tribute to the man? Per his new comments to The Hollywood Reporter, the best way for him to do it seems to be just finding as many ways as possible to make fun of him:
“You pay respect by being completely disrespectful. You spread that disrespect all around the room and just have fun. I’m very honored to do it. I’m the same age as Obama, but we kind of went on different paths. We graduated high school at the same time. So for me, it’s kind of surreal if I really sit and think about it. Man, I never would’ve considered a peer, a brother growing up in the era that I did, would be president someday. I remember it was a big deal when Thurgood Marshall was named to the Supreme Court. I thought that was the biggest thing for a long time.”
So while Wilmore has respect for Obama on many different levels, he’s going to find ways to make fun of him, and Donald Trump, and also probably every Presidential candidate and news organization that is there. We imagine that Fox News and C-SPAN will be common topics of mockery, just because they always are.
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