The White House Correspondents Dinner 2013: Morphing of Hollywood and DC Now Complete

You know how I love “Hollywood on the Potomac”; the “Nerd Prom,” and and everything the White House Correspondent’s Bacchanal has to demonstrate. Of course, nothing can top the hypocrisy of last year’s pic of Santorum and Lohan. Still, here are some of my favorite images from this year’s edition. In the spirit of the brilliant Obama as Daniel Day Lewis spoof I wrote about yesterday, the theme this year involved not just the intermingling, but the morphing of Hollywood and DC, the “but I play one on TV” joke disintegrating before our eyes.

This is just one White House/Capitol Hill cameo in the video spoof on the Netflix/Kevin Spacey/Washington self-hate series, the self-abusing fictional Speaker of the House on the phone with the self-effacing real-life press secretary.

Here’s Michelle doing late night, as she’s been wont to do. Might an extended stint on the Today Show be just around the corner?

And here we have “the Vice-President” with the Secretary of Health and Human Services also doing “a lace meld.”

And then, it’s not a morphing of DC and Hollywood exactly, but we can call it the ’13 version of the Santorum shot.  It’s that customary scene in which being Washington’s (and the right wing’s) anti-hero, untouchable and intellectual bully is elevated to the height of DC sex god.

What really brings down the house — and the DC/Hollywood barrier, however — is the brilliant photo leading this post of the CIA’s bipolar Carrie Mathison (who, yes, bears a strikingly resemblance to actress Claire Danes). If captured in a pose that would otherwise be cringeworthy of any other actor in a news photo, this one brilliantly translates how much the American political TV consumer can feel a pang of nostalgia for a psychotic break. For a gesture (besides Spacey’s final, biting comments about DC in his sign-off in the “House of Cards” spoof)  that fleetingly alludes to the insanity that is Washington, this is epic.

(photo 1, 4 & 5: Carolyn Kaster/AP. caption: Actress Claire Danes from the Showtime series “Homeland” attends the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Washington. photos/screenshots 2 & 3: video spoof on Netflix series, House of Cards, photo U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (2nd R) attends the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington April 27, 2013. caption 4: First lady Michelle Obama and late-night television host and comedian Conan O’Brien gesture to his tie at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Washington. photo 6: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters. caption: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (2nd R) attends the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington April 27, 2013.)