SALON

Monday, May 3, 2010 2:20 PM UTC

Your White House Correspondents’ Dinner review and roundup

Everyone in Washington dressed up nice to impress the cool kids

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Topics: Media Criticism, War Room, Steny Hoyer, D-Md.,

Every spring, the White House Correspondents’ Association throws a dinner. It used to be a clubby sort of affair for journalists and a few politicians. Then presidents and vice-presidents started going. Then the C-Span cameras began filming and professional comedians began emceeing. Then news organizations began inviting actual, proper celebrities, because it was the only way to trick them into going to D.C. Everyone began calling it “prom,” which is one of those nicknames that started off ironic and slightly critical but is now just descriptive. Then Politico, a newsletter for the worst people in Washington and those who aspire to be even worse, was invented. And now the whole depressing, debased affair, this little professional organization’s annual self-congratulatory dinner, lasts a whole weekend and receives blanket coverage on multiple cable news stations — and whether the president of the United States of America was funnier than the professional comedian is debated on multiple Sunday shows and in all the major newspapers.

This year’s dinner was on Saturday. I was watching basketball. But I made sure to read all 10,000 words Politico ran on the brunches, the receptions, the dinner, the after parties, and the next-morning brunches. One paragraph from this wrap-up was basically the most important piece of information that I could find, and so I am “aggregating” it here, for you.

Steny Hoyer asked POLITICO, “Is Diane Lane here?” No, Mr. Majority Leader. “Well, that’s who I would want to meet [if she was].” When we asked Hoyer about his famed Electric Slide YouTube video, he said, “If we have it here, I’ll do it! I love the electric slide!”

Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

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