Making Sense of the White House Correspondents Dinner

From Chris Lehmann:

How does one make sense, after all, of an event where you can see Ashton Kutcher directly in the path of an onrushing Donald Rumsfeld? Where Michael Bloomberg regales you with an account of sitting in on the congas at a recent fundraising concert in a Puerto Rican restaurant—and tops that off with a reminiscence of his impromptu dance performance on a Dominican Republican tarmac? Could it be that, in the age of Obama the DC–Hollywood glitzeratti —described by Ann Curry, without a note of irony, in a fundraising appeal at the Tammy Haddad brunch that kicks off the weekend’s frenetic networking, as “the most powerful people on the planet”—just aren’t taking themselves all that seriously?