I'm torn

I'm watching the White House Correspondent's Association Dinner on CSPAN. I'm torn between being sucked into the whole thing, squeeing with delight at catching sights of Supreme Court justices, favorite reporters, and loved/hated politicians and changing the channel with disgust at the self-congratulatory fraternization between the administration and people who are supposed to think critically about them and question and be skeptical.

I think I'll split the difference, meaning: I will watch it and complain to you, my readers.

Edits, liveblogging it:

• Did Tony Snow just reference the "heart and decency and soul of the people in this town"? I didn't know he was pulling a parody a la Stephen Colbert.
• Letterman is showing a "Top 10 favorite GWB moments." They're not too funny. Just verbal and physical mishaps.
• Oh wonderful. They're all toasting and cheering for the president. Isn't that what they do everyday in their respective media outlets?
• GWB has "decided not to be funny," in response to the VA Tech tragedy. Fair enough.
• I just bet this Rich Little guy is not near as funny as Stephen Colbert. "I'm not a political satirist.... I'm a nightclub entertainer." Great.
• His McCain impression is... well, it's not McCain.
• And it, substantively, is not funny.
• wtf
• His Ahh-nold voice isn't so bad. But, again, substantively, not all that funny.
• At this point, like 5 minutes in, I kind of want to punch him in the face.
• He's doing a reasonable impersonation of Andy Rooney, but it seems like he should be being more political.
  
• He is just going to keep doing random impressions?
  
• He's... singing.
• Reagan: ???
  
• At least the audience isn't laughing, either.
• He's singing again. The exact same song. Is he going to sing this between every one of his impressions? Jimmy Carter is up next.
• Well, he said Jimmy Carter was up next, but I don't know who this guy he's doing is....
• Yes, apparently, he's doing the song in between each one. "Sing a little song all about the throng in Washington, tell a little joke, and we're gonna poke a lotta fun. Poke a lot of fun at Wash-ing-ton!"
• Wow. Bush 1 is good, visually and audibly. Bill Clinton, not so great. Actually, I can't distinguish him from Little's "Jimmy Carter."
• Song-time again! Now time for GWB.
• Yeah, I think Jon Stewart does a better GWB than Rich Little. And I hate Jon Stewart's impressions.
• "Mr. binLaden, please take a note, please take a moment from humping that goat."
• Song! Nixon!
  
• I'll be honest with you, I've stopped paying attention. He's been doing Nixon for about 8 minutes or so now. I'm reading mugglenet.
• Oh, wait, is Little!Nixon singing? And crying?
  
• This is just sad and hard to watch.
• Seriously, that's it? "If I made you laugh or smile the last half hour, it was all worthwhile." Well, then it sure was a waste of my time.

In case you need to be happily reminded of better days for the WHCAD, watch Stephen Colbert's performance last year here. I would embed the video, but I can't find it on Youtube, CSPAN must have requested it to be taken down. That link is to Google Video.