Amber Ruffin explains the lesson she learned when she was disinvited from WHCA dinner

Los Angeles Times

01-04-2025

Amber Ruffin isn't going to perform for the White House Correspondents' Assn.'s dinner later this month after the group's board decided unanimously to un-invite her as its featured entertainer.
WHCA President Eugene Daniels — who recently joined MSNBC as a weekend host — said in a Saturday email to members that the organization's board had unanimously decided to lose the comedian and refocus the event on journalistic excellence rather than 'the politics of division,' Politico reported.
He didn't mention that Ruffin said on a podcast last week that the Trump administration was 'kind of a bunch of murderers' who wanted the 'false equivalency that the media does' because it 'makes them feel like human beings, but they shouldn't get to feel that way, because they're not' — and that there was 'no way' she was going to mock both parties at the dinner. Or that Trump's deputy chief of staff had called out the organization Friday for featuring a '2nd rate comedian' at the dinner and the next day referred to Ruffin as a 'garbage, hate-filled comedian.'
To comment on events — sort of — Ruffin popped up Monday on 'Late Night With Seth Meyers,' the show where she's worked as a writer and performer since 2014.
Meyers was talking about a supposed robbery at a bodega when the comedian materialized on set, saying, 'Honestly, I'm concerned with how you're going to end that joke.'
'Obviously, I'm going to make a punchline to make fun of the guy who robbed the bodega,' the host replied.
'See, Seth, the problem is, that's divisive,' Ruffin said with sarcasm. 'Take it from me. If there's one thing I learned from this weekend, it's you have to be fair to both sides.'
'Yeah, but that doesn't make sense in this case,' Meyers said, playing the straight man. 'There's an innocent bodega owner. There's a burglar.'
'Or — hear me out — there are very fine people on both sides,' she said. The audience laughed as she invoked comments made by President Trump when he was asked in 2017 about violence around the tearing down of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, N.C. Demonstrations for and against the removal of the statue had happened amid a far-right rally organized by white nationalists.
Not mentioned, perhaps because Ruffin is in the business of jokes, was the part where Trump also said, 'I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK?'
Back on the late-night show, Meyers and Ruffin went back and forth. 'Yeah, but he shattered the front door of a bodega,' Meyers said.
'Did he?' Ruffin replied. 'Or did he provide an innovative ventilation system?'
Stealing from the till? 'He received a micro-loan.' Setting fire to the ATM? 'He bravely fought inflation.'
Finally, Meyers said, 'Amber, when people are objectively terrible, we should be able to point that out on television.'
'I thought that too,' she said. 'On Friday. But today is Monday. And Monday's Amber Ruffin knows that when bad people do bad things, you have to treat them fairly and respectfully. When you're watching 'The Sound of Music,' you have to root for the singing children and the other people.'
'You mean the Nazis?' Meyers asked.
'Calling them that is so one-sided!' she answered.
The exchange continued apace with Ruffin ultimately saying that she was glad she had been stopped from making her speech at the dinner, because 'Ooh baby, I would have been so terrifically mean.'
Then Ruffin said she had to run because she had to return the dress she planned to wear to the correspondents dinner.
'I already took the tags off,' she said, 'but I'm gonna just say they blew off in the wind.'