The White House Correspondents’ banquet in 1923 was definitely not brought to you by a vodka company. (National Photo Company Collection/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Want to make a bunch of top-flight White House reporters really mad? Here’s a handy how-to guide, courtesy of a tale involving the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the Atlantic magazine, a vodka company and an Obama impersonator.
It began with an e-mail from a Grey Goose publicist, boasting that the brand would be sponsoring two social media “superstars” at the dinner who would be “tweeting, taking photos, and creating video content, giving their millions of followers to-the-minute updates” on the glittery annual gala.
The pitch promised that popular YouTubers Iman Crosson (he’s an Obama impersonator who goes by the handle “Alphacat”) and Philip DeFranco would be “reporting live from the front lines” of the dinner for Grey Goose.
Confused by how a premium-hootch peddler enlisted fake reporters to cover what’s nominally a charity fundraising dinner ostensibly celebrating real journalists — in the name of getting more people to buy booze? We were, too.
Commercialization of the dinner isn’t new, with corporate logos and swag bags groaning with free goodies par for the course at the gauntlet of parties surrounding around the main event. And the dinner certainly has evolved far from its origins as a stuffy press dinner into a smorgasbord of celebrities promoting their latest TV dramas.
But here’s how things typically work at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner: News organizations buy tables at the dinner. They invite a mix of guests that might include members of their own editorial staffs, potential sources (think Cabinet secretaries or members of Congress), splashy celebrities, and whatever advertisers and ad buyers their execs might want to curry favor with.
[Arianna Huffington picks ‘social stars’ as White House Correspondents’ Dinner guests]
So how did the vodka brand get the tickets? Grey Goose spokeswoman Amanda Anderson told us that the vodka company had “partnered with” the Atlantic and obtained two tickets “through that partnership.” The company, an advertiser with the magazine, in turn “partnered with” the YouTubers, who they said would take over Grey Goose’s social media channels for the evening.
That’s enough partnering to make even a polygamist nervous. And it definitely didn’t sit well with Christi Parsons, the Los Angeles Times reporter who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “Our group exists to argue strenuously for more openness and transparency from the White House, not to lend our name to corporate publicity stunts,” she said when we alerted her to the arrangement. “The mission of the WHCA is clear and we have had a longstanding commitment to not engaging in the commercialization of our organization or our dinner.”
She said she and other members of the board would contact the folks at Atlantic Media, the magazine’s parent company, to straighten it out. Once they did, the would-be vodka partner emerged red-faced.
“We made a mistake in communicating to Grey Goose that they could share their dinner tickets with others,” Atlantic Media spokeswoman Emily Lenzner said. “This was just a mistake – but wholly our own. This transfer would have gone against our policies and against the spirit and purposes of the White House Correspondents Association.”
And then the requisite grovel: “We are sorry and apologize to the Association and to Grey Goose.”
She explained that someone on the magazine’s ad staff knew about the arrangement, but didn’t flag it to Atlantic Media staffers in Washington coordinating dinner guests, who would have known such a thing wouldn’t fly with the WHCA.
It seems the YouTubers are now uninvited, thanks to our inquiry, though a Grey Goose spokeswoman referred our call for comment to the Atlantic. There will be, perhaps, fewer Vines of the president’s best punchlines. Maybe a drop in the overall number of celebrity selfies produced at the event. And Grey Goose won’t have the chance to hawk its booze from the hallowed halls of the Washington Hilton.
And thus concludes the how-to on how to tick off the WHCA. Commercial influences will no doubt find other ways to creep into the dinner. But one way they can’t be served — unlike a shot of top-shelf vodka — is straight up.
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