Roy Wooden Jr.’s closing monologue on the 2023 White Home Correspondents’ Dinner is a wonderful sight to behold. The comic roasted everybody from President Joe Biden to former Fox Information host Tucker Carlson, eliciting a mixture of laughter and groans from the gang of attending journalists.
“Give it up for Darkish Brandon,” Wooden opened, a reference to President Biden’s heavily-memed, laser-eyed alter ego(opens in a brand new tab). He then joked about Biden leaving some categorized paperwork on the rostrum: “Do not give them to him, I am going to put them in a secure place. He do not know the place to maintain them.”
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Wooden additionally turned his consideration to the media, and to the firing of Carlson from Fox Information and Don Lemon from CNN. “Tucker bought caught up!” he stated. “Acquired caught up like that dude from Vanderpump Guidelines” — a reference to the notorious Scandoval.
Later remarks on Lemon included: “Sure, Don Lemon was a diva, and he stated a few ladies are raggedy within the face, however that is a promotion at Fox Information!”
Whereas the night was filled with riotous jokes on the expense of high-profile politicians and journalists, Wooden additionally took the time to deal with present newsworthy subjects, akin to anti-drag laws and faculty shootings. “Drag queens should not at a college to groom your children. Cease it,” he stated. “And even when they have been, most of them children are gonna get shot in school.”
In response to the viewers’s audible discomfort, he retorted: “Do not groan, go laws!”
Wooden additionally spoke to the significance of journalism, drawing on his father Roy Wooden Sr.’s expertise as a reporter protecting Black platoons in Vietnam and the Soweto riots in South Africa. Wooden Sr. went on to discovered the Nationwide Black Community, now the American City Radio Community.
“The work you do as journalists is vital. It is important. It is harmful,” Wooden stated, happening to champion native reporters and spotlight the terrifying actuality of newsroom layoffs. The complete speech is value a watch: Come for the Darkish Brandon jokes, keep for the impassioned breakdown of the present state of journalism.
