By Michael Woyton
The Al Smith Dinner should be retired, IMO.
It’s difficult to imagine that the fundraising that purportedly benefits Catholic charities in the Archdiocese of New York outweighs the public relations nightmare of having a convicted felon and adjudicated sex abuser insult people on the dais, using profanity, and a comedian referencing “grab ’em by the pussy” while mentioning immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Didn’t Cardinal Timothy Dolan learn anything from 2016 when Donald Trump was first running for president and was booed after broking with the good-natured humor tradition by tearing into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?
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According to The New York Times, the dinner hasn’t been the same since.
“Eight years later, the dinner he returned to was not the same,” the Times said. “Like so much else in the Trump era, the Catholic charity even had become savage, warped by blunt force politics.”
It was easy to tell who supported whom, the paper of record said.
“There were sycophants and there were outcasts. You could see the one who had submitted to Mr. Trump, sitting beside members of gorgonized establishment still unsure how to treat him, much less stop him,” the Times’s Shawn McCreesh wrote.
You know how you can stop him? Don’t invite him. It’s as easy as that.
Watch videos from the 2024 Al Smith Dinner through this YouTube link.
Lead art: Screen grab from WFAA video at YouTube.
On Second Thought 
An editorial worth reading about the Al Smith Dinner. https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/editorial/editorial-cardinal-dolans-al-smith-dinner-disappointment-misdirected
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