Late night funnyman Conan O’Brien will be back to host the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April.
It will be Coco’s second at bat, entertaining the president, Washington politicos, Washington journalists,and the Hollywood petting zoo that fills out the clambake’s guest list each year.
Jimmy Kimmel hosted last year’s dinner -- ironically as part of a carefully orchestrated walk-up to his taking over newsmag “Nightline’s” timeslot on ABC.
Association president Ed Henry, of Fox News, tweeted the news Wednesday morning.
Conan was the headline act at the dinner once before, in 1995.
A lot has changed since then. Bill Clinton’s not president, Conan’s not an NBC star, and the fodder for cheap gags is no longer the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
Conan and the dinner are inextricably connected. Right around the time he was angrily leaving NBC, in 2010 — after NBC threatened to move his “Tonight” show to a later timeslot in order to bring back Jay Leno in late night — the association announced it had picked Leno, the guy blamed for Conan’s exit, to host the dinner that year.
To be clear, the association had asked Leno weeks earlier -- when he was simply the host of a prime-time show that was failing five nights a week on NBC. But by the time Leno actually appeared at the annual Washington bash, he was the guy who pushed aside Conan to become the newly returned host of "Tonight," after Conan stepped down. Leno was also known at that time as the butt of pretty much every other late-night talk-show host's jokes for several weeks past.
