I just caught up with comedian Michelle Wolf’s HBO special, “Nice Lady.” I wasn’t familiar with her before — not being a regular viewer of “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” — but she had me laughing out loud several times.
She’s going to be the entertainment at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner this Saturday. It’s a notoriously tough room, particularly if you watch it on TV, because the audience isn’t miked, so even the jokes that go over well don’t seem like it. But I have a feeling Wolf will do just fine.
What I don’t understand is how, after a successful first special, HBO let her sign a deal with Netflix for her next one. She seems like the kind of talent you’d want to keep in-house if you had her. By the way, if you’re an HBO subscriber but haven’t seen “Nice Lady,” you can watch it on demand via the HBO GO app.
Speaking of the WHCA Dinner, while it has almost always included an appearance — and monologue — by the sitting president, Trump has decided to skip it for the second year in a row. That’s probably a good idea for two reasons.
First, if I were a journalist, considering all the vitriolic lies he’s told about reporters in the last couple of years, I’d walk out of the room the moment he got up to speak — and encourage everyone else to do the same.
Second, since the Reagan years, the presidential monologue has usually been pretty funny, thanks to the help of some very clever writers. But Trump is completely humorless. I can’t remember ever seeing him tell a joke. I don’t mean the dumb skits he mumbled his way through when he hosted “SNL,” I mean an actual setup-and-punchline joke that he delivered as well as his three predecessors (yes, even Dubya). The few times he’s tried it, his delivery was as unnatural and awkward as Sheldon Cooper hitting on Stormy Daniels.
If you can find video of Trump telling a good one — and I don’t mean one of his bullying insults, but an actual joke that made anyone besides cloying sycophants like Kellyanne Conway laugh — please send me a link.
Previously on Harris Online…