White House Correspondents’ Dinner: Where Hollywood and Washington converge

Stars and politicians collided Saturday night at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, as media-types mingled with their glitzy Hollywood guests during one of Washington’s most entertaining evenings. The celebrity-studded crowd dined in between laughs at speeches from the president and host, said Post reporter Dan Zak :

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The lead-up to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner: Celebrities and media figures turned out for several events before the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

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Watch highlights from President Obama and Jimmy Kimmel’s 2012 White House Correspondents dinner speeches in under 2 minutes.

Hollywood and Washington went on a romantic date Saturday night in the basement ballroom of the Washington Hilton, where more than 2,000 politicians, celebrities, journalists and hangers-on dined on crabmeat terrine and chocolate truffles and belly-laughed at remarks delivered by President Obama and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

“Last year at this time — in fact, on this very weekend — we finally delivered justice to one of the world’s most notorious individuals,” Obama said during his after-dinner speech, seeming to allude to the killing of Osama bin Laden. But then a photo of an orange-faced Donald Trump — who spent much of last spring questioning Obama’s citizenship — flashed on giant screens in the ballroom. Punch line delivered.

Both Obama and Kimmel took their own shots at presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

“It’s great to be here this evening in the vast, magnificent Hilton ballroom,” Obama said, “or what Mitt Romney would call ‘a little fixer-upper.’ ”

Said Kimmel: “When I think ‘Mitt Romney,’ I don’t think Etch a Sketch — I think of Twister. You can’t even play Monopoly with him, because he keeps putting the dog on the car .”

But the real sagas of the evening played out during the pre- and post- parties, as Washington power-players conversed with silver-screen royalty. George Clooney, who was arrested in Washington during his last visit a month ago, is a professional at effortlessly working the crowd, the Reliable Source reports :

We have so much to learn from George Clooney: As thousands of guests tried to bolt from the ballroom of the Washington Hilton at the end of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — in a mad rush for the after-parties or the taxi line — Clooney stayed at his table and poured another glass of wine.

It’s not easy to be a celebrity at one of these things, besieged from all sides by fans and distant acquaintances — no, really, that stuff is exhausting! — but the Oscar winner spent the entire dinner posing for photo after photo with every female who could squeeze into a frame with him.

And then he spent the next three hours on his feet — we watched, so we know — schmoozing a parade of VIP guests (Harvey Weinstein, Barbara Walters, Jay Carney) in the front foyer of the Bloomberg/Vanity Fair after party at the French ambassador’s residence, but making it all look like fun.

Clooney also found time to praise his former “ER” colleague, Noah Wyle. The actor had also been arrested for protesting in the District, a move Clooney supported, says Celebritology’s Jen Chaney :

“I saw it, when he got handcuffed,” said the Oscar-winning actor/director, who himself was arrested March 16 outside Washington’s Sudanese Embassy for protesting the hunger crisis in Sudan. That occurred a few weeks before Wyle’s April 23 arrest during a protest against Medicaid cuts.