Rachel Bloom, the writer and creator of the CW comedy “My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” says the real reason for the backlash against Michelle Wolf’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is simple: Her gender.
“I definitely think Michelle Wolf is getting more criticism because she’s a woman,” Bloom told TheWrap. “The way people are calling her lewd and crude and crass, those are not insults lobbed at male comics as much, because it’s expected from them.”
The National Organization for Women agrees with Bloom.
“There is no doubt about it,” NOW president Toni Van Pelt told TheWrap. “I remember when Stephen Colbert did his speech years ago, and while the audience was uncomfortable, nothing really happened.”
Stephen Colbert was accused of hitting President Bush too hard at the 2006 White House Correspondents dinner. But Colbert came out fine, Bloom noted.
Wolf went after President Trump, Democrats, news outlets and even herself on Saturday. But many journalists and politicians in attendance seemed bothered by her jokes about White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who sat at the head table to represent the administration in Trump’s absence.
Interestingly, some of the attacks on Wolf came from prominent female journalists, including New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, who believed Wolf got too personal in her jokes on Sanders.
But Bloom said there was nothing about Wolf’s speech that justified the criticisms.
“The thing that stuck out to me was the writing,” Bloom told TheWrap. “It was so well-written. What line did she cross exactly? Someone should explain it to me because I don’t get it. The person she insulted the most was herself.”
Not everyone was critical, of course. Jane Lynch, Chrissy Teigen, Gabrielle Union, Kumail Nanjiani, Sarah Silverman and Kathy Griffin defended Wolf on Twitter. Wolf’s former boss at NBC’s “Late Night,” Seth Meyers, praised her on the show Monday night.
As for Wolf? She’s standing her ground, and said she wouldn’t change a word of what she said.