WHCA DINNER: THE PROBEM ISNT THE GLITZ AND THE SWAG

In theory, the White House Correspondents' Association could have a big gala dinner with celebrity guests and insult-comedy speeches and swag bags, and it wouldn't necessarily be horrible. Nobody thinks comedians lose touch with their audiences when they celebrate and mock one another at roasts on Comedy Central or at the Friars Club. Everyone still loves Mad Men and Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad even though once a year there's an Emmy ceremony. And so on.

The problem with the dinner isn't the dinner itself, or the desire for glitz and glamour. The problem is inviting politicians. Imagine if there were a big, glamorous dinner every year for past and present Nobel Peace Prize winners, and for the individuals and organizations that might hope one day to be honored by the Nobel committee. Now imagine if the prizewinners' antagonists -- dictators, torturers, death-squad leaders -- were also invited to the dinner. That's what the WHCA is like.

When every pol is welcome to show up, the message is that none of what those SOBs are doing is beyond the pale. None of it is harmful to the nation. Nothing significant is really in the balance every day in D.C. Nothing is life-or-death.

Of course the journos are going to cozy up to some of the people they're writing about -- that's inevitable. But this dinner suggests that that's the only appropriate relationship between groups of Washingtonians who should be adversaries much of the time. This dinner suggests that they're all on the same side, all the time.