Obama Brings Down House at Press Dinner

Jimmy Kimmel, President Obama pile on

(NEWSER) - Jimmy Kimmel received generally good marks as host of the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night, tweaking both parties without going for the jugular. And both Kimmel and the president dinged Mitt Romney—not in attendance—a few times. Among the top lines of the night, as per Politico :

• "It doesn't matter if you're black, like President Obama, or white, like President Obama, or red, like President Obama's agenda," said Kimmel.
• "I talked to a guy who was a huge supporter of ObamaCare and a guy who said it was a disaster and it should be killed immediately, which was interesting because I never met Mitt Romney before."
• To New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: "I think you're misunderstanding New Jersey's slogan. It's not the Olive Garden state."
• To Obama, on a darker note: "Remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow? That was hilarious."

...and other mistakes

(NEWSER) - One is the president of the United States. The other was bent on destroying the United States. So you’d think Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden would be pretty easy to keep straight. But when the former announced the death of the latter, a really embarrassing number of news outlets couldn’t , and the ubiquitous "Obama bin Laden dead" gaffes that followed have been named Poynter ’s top typo of the year. Every year Craig Silverman looks at the biggest media screw-ups; the other notable typos, errors, and gaffes he spotted include: More»

Timely joke came one day before raid

(NEWSER) - The White House Correspondents' Dinner was Saturday night, just one day before Osama bin Laden was killed in a US raid. Knowing that, it's especially interesting to watch the joke Seth Meyers made at the dinner—and Obama's reaction to it in particular. Hat tip to Pat's Papers for the find. Click for more zingers from the dinner . More»

And what is 'it,' anyway?

(NEWSER) - Jon Stewart has noticed a recurring theme in the coverage of the president’s post-election press conference: The pundits are all eager to know if Barack Obama "gets it," he explained on last night’s Daily Show in a segment titled "The Mourning After." But they’re less than clear on what "it" is. “I mean, as pronouns go, ‘it’ is amongst the vaguest,” Stewart pointed out. “‘It’ won’t even choose a sex.” More»

Sun Valley conference a pessimistic affair

(NEWSER) - The Sun Valley summit of media titans last week was a dour affair, with the CEOs lamenting the poor state of the economy—and how little faith they have in the Obama administration to fix it. In on- and off-the-record conversations with the moguls, Peter Lauria of the Daily Beast reports, they expressed “serious concerns about the administration’s motives” and worried that its policies would do long-term damage to the economy. More»