C Wright Mills and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

By Anonymous

 


This picture is from the 2015 White House correspondents dinner, which shows Obama and Keegan-Michael Key performing stand up. I have chosen this picture because it does a good job of showing how the power elite socialize. C. Wright Mills writes in The Power Elite that these people are all of a “similar social type and leading to the fact of their easy intermingling” (Mills, 19). In 2015 you could find anyone from Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, to Russell WiIlson, then quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks (Helena). While the dinner is mostly journalists who regularly work alongside the White House staff, there are still powerful people from other spheres that fit right into the event. What is important is that they are all “members of a top social stratum, as a set of groups whose members know one another socially and at business, and so, in making decisions, take one another into account” (Mills, 11). While Russell Willson will likely not be in consideration the next time senator Mark Warner (also in attendance) is getting ready to vote, Brian Chesky might be able to woo him into voting differently on an issue that is relevant to him. The correspondents dinner is an interesting case because it highlights that people from each institutional unit Mills describes actually do socialize. Not only are there people from the state (many representatives from congress attend), the private sector, and military officials, but there are a plethora of athletes and entertainers as well. This highlights how the power elite come directly from the upper class. 


Andrews, Helena. “The VIPs attending the 2015 White House Correspondents' Dinner.” The Washington Post, 8 April 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2015/04/08/the-vips-attending-the-2015-white-house-correspondents-dinner/. Accessed 21 April 2022.

Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. Oxford University Press, 1956.

Thurm, Eric, et al. “5 Things We Learned From White House Correspondents' Dinner.” Rolling Stone, 26 April 2015, https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/5-things-we-learned-from-2015-white-house-correspondents-dinner-63000/. Accessed 21 April 2022.

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