Where Tech, Celebrities and Washington Meet ⇒

Excellent reporting by David Carr from the New York Times on the significance of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He paints a picture of the technology industry throwing its weight around in Washington as the “new” celebrities on the hill.

Carr opens the piece with an anecdote about Judd Apatow meeting Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman and former CEO:

“Wow, I had to do a double take when I heard his name,” Mr. Apatow said, adding later that the company is “so central to my life. It threw me. It was like suddenly being introduced to the person who invented fire.”

The nerd in me is wondering if Apatow is just talking about Gmail (the obvious entry point), or if most of his work is stored and shared in Google Docs. Regardless, what better advertising for Google’s services than proof that the rich, creative and powerful rely on them? More important: what better proof that, whether they like it or not, the technology and entertainment industries are intertwined?