White House Correspondents’ Dinner 2013: Sarah Palin Twitter Slam Provokes Charges Of Hypocrisy And Ignorance

Twitter critics are calling out Sarah Palin after she blasted the White House correspondents’ dinner as “pathetic.”

Making multiple uses of the word “a--,” the onetime vice presidential nominee turned would-be rabble rouser sent out a tweet late Saturday in which she called the annual charity press event a “nerd prom.” In her tweet, Palin suggested that it was hypocritical for Washington “a--clowns” to hold the lighthearted, celebrity-laced affair while the rest of America is “working our a--es off.”

As several respondents pointed out, the event in question, which began in the 1920s, is paid for not by taxpayers or Washington politicos, but by the news outlets that attend the dinner. Proceeds for the event go toward scholarships and awards that recognize journalists.

Other respondents said Palin’s attempt to lump herself in with working-class America was itself hypocritical, particularly in light of her high-profile departure from the Alaska governorship in 2009, a move some of her colleagues deemed an abandonment. Judging from the responses below, Palin’s duplicity did not go unnoticed.

Other Twitter users pointed out that Palin herself attended the dinner in 2011, with some critics suggesting her tweet on Saturday was out of jealousy for not being invited this time around. Some tweeters posted pictures of Palin at the event two years ago.

The conservative website Twitchy, meanwhile, seemed to think Palin’s critics were engaging in petty bickering. “Haters crawled out of the woodwork, natch. And some journos clutched their pearls madly,” the website wrote Sunday in an unbylined post.

The 2013 White House correspondents’ dinner took place on Saturday at the Washington Hilton Hotel, with Conan O’Brien as the headline speaker. Barack Obama is the 14th president to attend the dinner, which has had a rocky history over the years. The event is held annually by the 100-year-old White House Correspondents’ Association, or WHCA. According to the WHCA website, the annual dinner was closed off to women until 1962, when UPI journalist Helen Thomas urged President John F. Kennedy to refuse to attend the event unless it ended its boys’ club ways.

Watch the complete video for the White House correspondents’ dinner on C-SPAN here.

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