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• Tuesday, March 17, 2009 10:15 AM

  More "sycophantic, needy journalists"

  I read this last night after dinner and had a hard time keeping it down. So don't say I didn't warn you.

  Obama to skip Gridiron for Camp David
  
  Friday's announcement of the president's travel plans is likely to make the Gridiron snub seem like, well, more of a snub — especially as Obama would be the first president since at least World War II to skip the event in his first year in office....
  
  Of course, skipping the Gridiron is already sparking the inevitable questions: Does Obama's version of change in Washington mean not taking part in some of its oldest rituals? And if the president doesn't show up at a dinner whose guest of honor is usually the president, what happens to the dinner?
  
  Gridiron singed by Obama no-show
  
  But some Gridiron veterans make clear they don’t understand. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page said, “People feel uncommonly saddened, miffed and burned.
  
  “I don’t think he understands the implications of not coming to the club in the first year. It’s not your ordinary state dinner. I think it would be helpful for him and his relations with the Washington establishment to come to the club.”
  
  Beyond bruised feelings among the pundit class, Obama’s snub is a revealing cultural moment.
  
  Gridiron has for decades been an inner sanctum of Washington’s political press corps. The club’s mostly aging members were considered highly prestigious because they said so — and because they had the ability to summon the capital’s political elite to a spring frolic of skits and songs.

  I don't know why Obama decided not to attend, but I'm glad he did.

  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20036.html

  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20036.html

  —EJ Read EJ's other letters
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