Does Colin Jost Have An Extremely Punchable Take for White House Correspondents' Dinner?
Saturday Night Live star and “Weekend Update” anchor Colin Jost will headline this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Presumably, Sarah Squirm is already figuring out how to sneak past the Secret Service to heckle him.
Early this morning, it was announced Jost will fill the large shoes worn by the likes of Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Michelle Wolf and many other lauded, politically minded comedians in years past. In a statement, the organization’s president, Kelly O’Donnell, said of Jost’s assignment, “Colin Jost knows how to make Saturday nights funny, and I am thrilled Colin will be live from the nation’s capital as the headline entertainer for this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” Jost has been a cast member and “Weekend Update” host on SNL since 2014, and worked as a writer on the show for another nine years before that making him an easy choice for the ceremony in which comedians and comedy writers lambast the politicians who aren’t too chicken to show their faces.
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Jost, the author of the best-selling book A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir, will flash that un-smashed face in front of President Biden and the rest of the movers and shakers of Washington on April 27th.
The role Jost will assume at the prestigious roast/gala for politicians and prominent members of the press comes with massive expectations, and it will invariably be compared to previous performances that changed the course of comedy’s coverage of politics. At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006, Colbert delivered a legendarily scathing speech about the misdeeds of the Bush administration, marking a turning point in the history of the event that opened the door for the kind of direct criticism around which previous toothless hosts had danced.
During such a pivotal year for American politics (and, less importantly, political comedy), Jost has the opportunity to make a strong statement about the state of the country in front of its most formidable figures and speak truth to power, even if it makes him even more punchable to the illustrious guests.
However, if Jost has trouble coming up with killer lines to put an exclamation point on Biden’s first (and possibly final) term in office, he shouldn’t be shy about asking for help – Michael Che would be more than happy to write Jost’s jokes for him.
