What's on Katie's Mind? Katie: The artist, teacher, and social commentator.

What do Greta Van Susteren, Lindsay Lohan, Arianna Huffington, Kim Khardashian, and President Barack Obama all have in common?  Well, tonight they are all at the White House Correspondents’ dinner.  It is the place to be if you are the rich, the famous, or the connected!  Don’t worry you and I, the “normal” American people, weren’t invited!  We can only watch through a CSPAN camera lens.

This event always irks me because I see the coziness between the White House and the press that is supposed to be covering it for the American people.  It doesn’t matter if the president is a Democrat or a Republican.  These dinners go on and they are all the same.  The president is expected to be funny and self deprecating.  A good laugh is supposed to be had by all and everyone can let their guard down a bit from the stress of everyday life in Washington D.C.  That, to me, is a fantasy because truthfully these people don’t know what stress really is.  They live in a world unlike what most Americans live in.  They are the one percent.  They are the movers and shakers in the country, if not the world.

The rest of us are truly the glue that holds this country together.  We are the ones that take care of their children, educate the masses, watch over their homes, and give dignity to those that are dying in a hospital or on the battle field.  We are the ones that give our bodies to build this country, our heart to fight for it, and our soul to continue to believe in what matters in this world is our humanity!  We are not the one percent.  We are not Hollywood, and we are not politicians.  We are the American people that can see through a fake dinner and are probably the servers at the dinner.  We are the 99%.  We are your sisters, brothers, cousins, and friends.  We hold no title but we serve our country in a manner that the one percent could never understand.  While they are busy patting themselves on the back for doing their jobs and telling the rest of us what they had to give up in the private sector to be a politician, super star, or whatever, we are out doing our jobs every day like we always do.  We don’t complain.  We just want a fair break.  We aren’t stars although we tend to watch the stars.  We are normal folk that just want our country to do the right thing.  This dinner is meaningless to me but it always shines a light on what is happening in our country.  While we are living our simple lives the politicians, Hollywood, and the press are busy figuring out how to manipulate us into the next big thing, whatever it may be.  If we’re supposed to get ready for another big war, don’t worry folks, Hollywood will put out just the right kind of movies to get us in the proper “mood”, you know those movies that make us feel patriotic and want our young ones to do something for their country.  We have all watched them and they do tug at our heart strings in ways we can’t quite understand.

The press already has done their job for this election.  This past year it was obvious that the press wanted Mitt Romney to be the nominee.  Why do you suppose this is? From my point of view, it seems as though there won’t be much difference between the two parties for voting.  We have a choice between Barack Obama who continued the Bush policies, even those tax cuts for the wealthy or we have Mitt Romney, who will continue the Bush policies like extending, once again, the tax cuts for the wealthy.

The reason I’m upset about this dinner is because we, the American people, will get the shaft.  We do all the heavy lifting and while we are doing it these people are really setting the agenda for the coming year.  Does it make any sense that former Senator Chris Dodd went from being a senator to being the president of the Motion Picture Association of America?   He is working right now on legislation that could have a major impact on us “little” people.  This dinner makes a lot of sense to me and it makes it easy to understand how Dodd ended up with the job he did.  These shakers and movers are not really concerned about the American people.  They are concerned about their own situation and their next jobs.  Everything is a set up.  Do you remember last year’s dinner?  The next day was the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound.  Following that was “breaking news” about Osama Bin Laden.  Even the death of Osama Bin Laden was so strange to me.  They dumped the body at sea.  I really don’t know what that was about but it sure did feel like we should have learned a lot more than we did!  I just feel the timing for all of this was pretty staged.  It was presented as “all in a day’s work” of the office of the presidency but to me there was much more to it.  It just makes me wonder if there will be any surprises this week.

The one thing I’ve noticed in the past several years is how easily politicians move into the press.  The relationship must be too cozy if these politicians can get their next jobs as pundits on some show.  How else could people like George Stephanopoulos and Joe Scarborough so easily switch into the roles of correspondents or press?  Sarah Palin and Governor Huckabee are both on Fox.  Go figure.  Don’t get me started on Hollywood or I’ll have to be wondering how a guy that was an actor in a movie, “Bedtime for Bonzo”, could ever get the job as president of the United States of America!