White House Correspondents' Dinner: Winners & Losers

I was flicking channels yesterday when I happened upon a recording of the White House Correspondents' Dinner on C-Span. It was good entertainment and provided a number of interesting lessons for the professional speaker.

The clear winner on the night was impersonator Steve Bridges. This very good “George Bush” may not be able to push up what is already an impressive fee, but he will surely get a substantial increase in bookings following this bravura performance.

Bridges was a success for a number of reasons.
* He had a great “prop,” – The Commander in Chief.
* He had a pretty obvious but well crafted script.
* Although he had an easy target, Bridges was not particularly aggressive in the barbs he threw at Bush.

The loser on the night was Stephen Colbert. When speaking to wannabe speakers, one of the things I tell them is “Listen to the audience.” Initial reaction to this comment is sometimes bemusement, but the experienced speaker can “hear” the audience and is able to read the audience reaction. On Saturday night, Colbert heard "the sound of silence."

There are two reasons for audience silence.
1) When you have really grabbed the audience and they are listening to every word. This most often happens when you are referencing a truly emotional event or anecdote.
2) When you are “dying,” when you are unable to create a bond between you and the audience, when you feel a cold sweat on the back of your neck. This happens to every speaker and humorist at some stage as even Jay Leno has admitted.

Audience reaction to Colbert was extraordinarily muted and the applause at the end of his session was tepid and very brief. Lessons the budding speaker might take from this event:
* Sometimes you can try too hard.
* Humor cannot be forced.
* Aggressive humor most certainly does NOT work when your target is in the arena. It is a lot easier to laugh at a person when that person is not in the room.

On the plus side, I think Colbert proved to be a real professional. He must have known he was dying, yet he kept going. He of course had no choice, but his overall demeanor stayed, as in the words of Bush, “chipper.”

Credit also to the real “Dubya” who played the serious role to Bridges’ caricature. Bush will be lambasted for a million different reasons over the coming weeks by the Washington press corps, but it is human nature that critics will not be as aggressive against someone they have a personal affection for rather than someone they despise. A question might be asked as to whether it is appropriate for the head of state to allow himself to be lampooned. However, the White House Correspondents' dinner is a well established tradition where it is preferable to be “skewered” in person than failing to turn up. Failure to turn up would really get you “skewered.”