There are no better symbols of the rotten soul of the Washington, DC press corps than its annual "Cocksuckers to Power" dinners, when journalists emerge from their cave to backslap with and be patronized by the very politicians that they are supposed to be covering in an aggressive manner, on behalf of the public. The White House Correspondents Dinner is the most high-profile example of this sickening vomitorium of fellatio of power. Now its prime competitor, The Gridiron Dinner, is getting jealous.

The Gridiron Dinner is hot hot event in which politicians and reporters dress up in fancy clothes and hear funny songs about funny things—like Andrea Mitchell singing about how her husband broke the country, or George Bush singing while he broke the country. In a rational world, the debate that The Gridiron Club would be having about its dinner would be: "Should we end this dinner's existence immediately, issue a public apology for all the past dinners, and retire from journalism, collectively?" Instead, their question is: "Wouldn't the public love us more if they could watch our clubby hijinx on their televisions, in debtor's prison?" I dunno, sounds risky.

"The fact that we're wiling to get onstage and look stupid, there might be more reluctance to do that if you knew it was going to be on YouTube," said USA Today's Susan Page, who was club president last year.

Is that quote supposed to read "The fact that we're willing to get onstage and look like slavish whores to power, there might be more reluctance to that if we had not completely forsaken the idea of an adversarial relationship with the powerful figures we are covering?" Fact check that, please.

[WaPo. Video of deafening applause from "journalists" for George W. Bush's funny song via]