Washington types understandably fall over themselves to meet the stars who are invited, coerced or outright rented to attend the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. After all, these are people who deal (or should be dealing) with the dreary details of policy day in and day out, suddenly among the shiny beautiful people of their favorite TV shows.
There was an extra sheen in this year’s event, held just down the street from me at the Washington Hilton, because of all the shows set in D.C. these days. And all of their stars seemed to stream in during CSPAN’s wordless red carpet coverage — we like to think they were speechless as they paraded in one right after another: Morena Baccarin and Claire Danes from “Homeland”!, Julia Louis Dreyfuss from “Veep”! Tony Goldwyn, President Fitz himself from “Scandal”! (Was anyone there from “The Americans”?)
These are all stars that are especially beloved in D.C. because they are depicted as working here too, with the city’s gleaming monuments and landmarks behind them (even though most shows are shot in Baltimore or some such).
But the show that got the most fuss this year was the Netflix original “House of Cards” perhaps because it went down the political rabbit hole the deepest and Kevin Spacey so good at playing a ruthless powerbroker with a honeyed Southern accent. The pols fell all over themselves to meet this more glamorous version of themselves this weekend and, it turned out, lined up to star in a “House of Cards” themed video that was an early highlight of the dinner.
The main event of Conan O’Brien was very good, though — much, much better than his 1995 hosting duties, where his Bill Clinton Clutch Cargo bit clearly bombed. Here he was much more on point.
Comedians have a tendency to rush through these things. And Conan wasn’t one for pauses, but at least he didn’t speed-read through the material like Jimmy Kimmel did last year. And as he got more comfortable up there and got some big laughs — often at the expense of PBS and NPR, oddly, he began to infuse his appearance with some of the improvisational physical bits that make his humor stand out — using the gavel more than once (“What’s this up here for?”) or lapsing into a spontaneous imitation of old dinner-goers who didn’t understand what he was doing. There was no tassle dance though. Here’s the whole thing:
And President Obama didn’t do so badly either: