The first White House Correspondents’ Dinner of the Obama years was this past Saturday.  Check it all out here.

Now that this whole Wanda Sykes “Oh-no-you-didn’t!” business is blowing over, let’s do a quick recap of what President Obama said… and didn’t say.

Jokes we heard:

• “Wishing all a happy mother’s day, a difficult time for Rahm Emmanuel who’s unused to saying the word day after mother.”

• “I’d like to welcome you all to the ten-day anniversary of my first one hundred days.  I’m Barack Obama.  Most of you covered me.  All of you voted for me. Apologies to the Fox table.”

• “Sasha and Malia aren’t here tonight because they are grounded. You can’t just take Air Force One on a joyride around Manhattan. I don’t care whose kids you are.”

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Once again, Chris Matthews produced a provocative, substantive interview.  What is it with this guy?  I want to view him as some caricature but he simply isn’t choking lately.

He had Joe Sestak on as well.  The entire discussion was about Arlen Specter and the repercussions of his switcheroo.  Sestak acts skeptical and critical, but somewhat open-minded about this realignment: “[I am] waiting and seeing.  If he has got the right answers then he can be the man, I am not opposed to it… but right now… I am worried it is more about political survivability.  Too many people lost their jobs to worry about his.”  He persists, “At the end of the day, Arlen Specter found it was too hard to run against someone.  That’s not what politics is about.  It is what you are running for.”

For his part, Matthews offers Specter no quarter, saying “We have no idea which way Arlen Specter will go on any issue, you never can predict him… He’ll do what he thinks will work politically” and Sestak laments, “But it shouldn’t be true.  That isn’t the point of politics.”  The Statue of Liberty just stood up straight with pride.

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