Comfortably Numb

I wanted to ignore the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (again) this year. So much for that.

It doesn’t feel like I have much choice anymore about what to attend to or how. Like so much dramatic news now, this past weekend’s story—attempted political assassinations at an annual televised event—will fade within days, replaced by the next as I struggle to focus on what matters most. What lingers is often an image: a child’s hat, a bandaged ear, a widow’s glare. An image from this story that will stick: Salad Guy.

In case you missed the viral video, as chaos takes hold in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton after an uninvited assailant breached security, a singular man remains calmly at a table that’s been abandoned by panicked guests—and continues to eat his salad.

Who was Salad Guy? One answer is Michael Glantz, a talent agent. An older man, Glantz told the New York Times that he didn’t hit the floor because he wouldn’t have been able to get back up. He said he’s used to chaos and “wanted to watch.”

Another answer is that Salad Guy is all of us.

He is us becoming inured to violence in a country where many tens of thousands die annually from gun violence and traffic violence, where firearm suicides are at an all-time high, where school shootings are routine. Where thousands are arrested weekly by ICE, where children are held in inhumane detention facilities, where police violence is common, masked men kill protestors, and soldiers patrol our own streets, and where political violence is on the rise.

Stay seated. It’s hard to get up.

He is us becoming inured to political chaos in a country where a chainsaw-wielding near-trillionaire sends hackers to burn and pillage federal agencies. Where the president is dropping bombs so fast we are running low, posts on social media 7,000 times in the past year, issues orders or withdraws them, makes cuts or restores them, makes hideous threats and delivers on some, lies so much no one bothers counting them anymore.

Keep on eating. What a feast!

He is us becoming inured to flagrant corruption in a country where the Trump family has amassed over $4 billion via deals rife with conflicts of interest in just over a year, where Trump has interfered with investigations, repealed regulations, given pardons, and shaken down law firms and universities for personal and political benefit. Where cabinet officials spend lavishly and behave recklessly and Supreme Court justices accept what is unacceptable.

Watch the show. The show goes on.

The week prior to the Correspondents’ Dinner, veteran journalist and critic Margaret Sullivan asked in a piece in The Guardian, “Why are White House journalists partying with Trump?” Excellent question.

President of the White House Correspondents’ Association Weijia Jiang has been personally subject on multiple occasions to Trump’s vile, condescending treatment of journalists. She is all too aware of the danger Trump has put journalists in at home and around the world and the threat he presents to press freedom. But at the dinner, she sat right next to him, aglow and smiling. 

Two days before, another dinner for politicians and journalists, also attended by Trump, was held in Washington. This one was hosted by nepo-magnate David Ellison, who has turned over the once-venerable CBS News to right-wing writer Bari Weiss. The dinner was cynically billed as a celebration of free speech. Jake Johnson quotes Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman that it seemed “nothing more than a transparent bid to flatter the Trump administration into rubber-stamping David Ellison’s proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.”

It's corruption all the way down.

I wanted to ignore the Correspondents’ Dinner. I didn’t want to see journalists suck up to authoritarians, authoritarians enjoying their celebrity, or celebrities playing "government." I didn’t want to see metaphorical shots fired at the media by Trump (to quote White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt) or real bullets fired at anyone. I didn't want to see more of the violence, chaos, and corruption we live with. But I couldn’t avoid it. The show goes on—and it is numbing.

As a meme, Salad Guy should take his rightful place in replacement of the “This is fine” cartoon dog that took over social media a decade ago. The flames are higher, but irony is dead, and the dog should be, too. An aging man, unable or unwilling to get up, watching for what happens next as though the event is no more insane than any other, is the more apt choice for 2026.