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: Althouse

"This is my first ever blog, so I forgive me if I make any 'blogosphere faux pas.'"

No no no, Donatella Versace. We will not forgive you. But we appreciate your humility as you enter our domain. So go ahead, tell us all about the White House Correspondents' Association dinner:

The evening started with drinks at Christopher Hitchens' house.

Just getting started!

Then onto the Newsweek pre-dinner cocktail...

How does one get onto a cocktail? I'm picturing that cartoon character from the Playboy Magazine jokes page...

... and then the actual dinner....

The dinner was a glamorous affair, as it was last year, but this time round there was a very different atmosphere, in ways that seemed to me to symbolize the huge changes that are taking place in this country as a result of the new administration.

The first thing that hit me was that nobody was using their BlackBerrys. This is a pet hate of mine, and last year lots of the guests were glued to their devices. While George Bush did a little comedy ? conducting the orchestra and entertaining people with a speech ? the audience was just not that attentive. Many people were talking away and those dreaded BlackBerrys were out in full force.

This year, the minute Barack Obama stood up to speak, there was silence....

There was a friendly atmosphere, it was cool, younger, relaxed and glamorous. Glamour was something that seemed to be completely lost before....

The key to this administration's appeal is, I think, that it's so energetic and positive, and (yes, one of my favourite words) glamorous!...

Glamour. Is it wrong to have glamorous leaders that glamorous people find glamorous?

It was a long night but the time flew ? it went so go quickly. People genuinely had fun. I've been to so many of this kinds of events where you have people looking at their assistants as if to say, "Can I leave now?" There was none of that.

Hey, I want an assistant, an assistant that can read my eyes when they say "Can I leave now?"!

Everyone was having a good time, and I was amazed by how members of the Obama administration, high-powered people like the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, and the Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, were just walking round the room in a really cool and relaxed way. Rahm was carrying his jacket slung over his shoulder. These people look like they know what they are doing.

And, yeah, what are they doing? But they look like they know what they are doing. Per Donatella. With their cool, relaxed walk around the room and their jack slung over their shoulder. What a relief from Bush!

Full post as published by Althouse on May 11, 2009 (boomark / email).