Wanda Sykes gets to entertain Obama

Wanda Sykes, the black American comedienne best known for playing a very aggressive version of herself in Larry David's TV comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm, has been chosen to be the key entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner in Washington.

President Barack Obama is expected to attend the black-tie affair, to be held at the Washington Hilton sometime in May, and will almost certainly follow his predecessors' tradition by putting on a comedy act of his own.

While 44-year-old Sykes's act is likely to be partisan affair - she is a big fan of the new President - she said that it would not be an adulation-fest. She says she already has some joke ideas at his expense, saying that he can be "a little long-winded. So we can get him on that."

She also expects the Obama administration to experience a few hiccoughs between now and the dinner. "There's gonna be some incidents and missteps, like we saw with the whole tax thing."

Unlike her rather militant on-screen persona in Curb, Sykes is very much a child of the establishment. Her father was a US Army colonel employed at the Pentagon, and her mother a high-flying banker. She attended the exclusive Arundel High School in Maryland, and after winning a marketing degree at Hampton University put in five years as a procurement officer with the the National Security Agency.

That said, it would be hard to find a more right-on choice for the correspondents’ dinner. Sykes, 44, announced last year she was gay and has been a highly vocal opponent of California's Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage.
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