In a town where politicians and notable folks tend to avoid the press, it’s one of the few times when the invitation bearing, ticket holding, media is suddenly in demand:
“This is the only time they call us and beg…. This is the only time where everyone has to stand in line together.”

Tracey Ullman does research for her Showtime series "State of the Union" at the 2008 Garden Brunch. Here with Hilary Rosen and Ed & Wendy Schultz.

We’re heading into the homestretch, ready to slide into a weekend full of brunches and screenings, and oh yeah, a little thing called the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. Oh, my!

The jostling for tickets and guests to bring to the WHCA Dinner has been going on for months. As WHC Insider’s Tammy Haddad told Annie Groer in Politics Daily:

“It’s become a competition about who can get the better ‘get,’ ” said Tammy Haddad, a former producer for Chris Matthews and Larry King and thus no stranger to megawatt wrangling. “Journalists are very competitive and there are very few times they get to go head to head, like at a political convention.” The dinner, she said, gives these multiplatform media rivals a perfect showcase “to bring in someone of interest to draw attention to the work they are doing.”

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Instead of a comedian or impressionist, guests at the Convention Center on Friday night will hear music from Sweet Honey in the Rock, the all-female African-American a Capella group that the RTCA dinner organizers tout as “a favorite of the First Lady.” Humor will come from JibJab.com, which says on its blog that it is “beyond thrilled” that its first satire of the Obama Administration will premiere in front of the man himself. (The satirists entertained President George W. Bush with “What We Call the News” at the 2007 dinner, as well.) Onion News Network will have a “special report.”

“For our dinner, entertainment is a plural term, not a singular term,” says Heather Dahl, a producer at Feature Story News and the dinner’s chair.

Despite the smaller table buys from some news organizations in this money-crunched year, what will stay the same, she says, is the attendance: Her preliminary estimates are that the crowd will number in the ballpark of recent dinners, around 2,000 attendees.

International news organizations took more tables, Dahl says, and some journalists whose employers refused to pony up for full tables have paid their own way. “I believe this shows that people really want to go out and have a nice evening, so that’s what we’re going to deliver,” she says.

Wanda Sykes — the emcee of this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, who is known for her often raw, blush-inducing commentary — has a lot of inquiring minds wondering just how raw her routine might be this Saturday night.

Richard Siegel, veteran producer on the D.C. comedy scene.

One of her biggest fans thinks that, when time comes for her to address her high-powered audience, “she really should tone it down. Audiences here are a lot more conservative generally,” Richard Siegel tells WHCInsider.com. “They don’t like things getting too edgy.”

The longtime producer of the annual “D.C.’s Funniest Celebrity” contest, Siegel knows a little about what kind of comedy works in this town. He’s also known Sykes since the late 1980s, when he was managing a local stand-up comedy contest at the Comedy Cafe, located above a strip club that enforced a dress code.

On not much more than a whim and a desire to change careers, Sykes — originally from this area — entered the contest. Her day job then was working as a procurement officer at the National Security Agency — generally not a breeding ground for stand-up comics. But when she took the stage, Siegel noticed.

“She had this very sarcastic, rebellious and hilarious delivery,” he remembers. “And her material was great. She didn’t get a lot of attention, but I thought she was really funny.”

Impressing Siegel even more was Sykes’s personality. “She was very pleasant and easy to get along with and very cooperative, a really nice person,” he says. “And that’s a rare memory to have of any comedian, because they’re generally miserable, depressed, angry, neurotic and annoying people. It was very telling that Wanda wasn’t like that.”

(Around that same time Siegel spotted another rising local star — Dave Chappelle. “He was miserable and depressed already, and he was just 15.”)

Sykes was born in Portsmouth, VA, in 1964 and raised in the D.C.-Maryland area. She attended Hampton University and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in marketing. Before landing at the NSA, she worked a string of jobs, like waitress, video store cashier and fast Chinese food cook. It was while moonlighting as a stand-up that Chris Rock noticed her and signed her to open for him on an upcoming tour.

Siegel says he wasn’t surprised in the least when Sykes started to hit big, and he adds that the comic personality she projects today hasn’t changed much at all since the early ‘90s.

The Comedy Cafe is no more, but the contest Siegel originally managed eventually evolved into the “D.C.’s Funniest Celebrity” contest, which will take place this year on Sept. 30 at the Improv downtown. Along the way, several high-profile types who have “White House” on their resume in one way or another have participated in the contest, including Tony Snow, Helen Thomas, Sarah McClendon and Norah O’Donnell, among others. This year, he’s hoping to convince NBC’s chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd to enter.

1989's "D.C.'s Funniest Celebrity Contest" contestants: Sarah McClendon and Helen Thomas in front row, center and right respectively, with Veterans Affairs Secretary Edward Derwinski at far left; in back row is a young Barney Frank, who won that year, a young Jim Bohannon (pre-talk-radio fame), who placed that year, and Gerald Ford's former press secretary Ron Nesson. Photo courtesy of Richard Siegel (next to Derwinski).

John Fox Sullivan by Liz Lynch of National Journal

It was 2004 and Carl Cannon of National Journal was president of the White House Correspondents Association. National Journal Group Publisher John Fox Sullivan was seated on the dais, with a clear view of President and Laura Bush, and late night talk show host Jay Leno.

Sullivan said, “When it comes time for the president and the first lady to be seated, we all stand up, but Jay Leno was a little slow to rise from his seat. President Bush secretly reached over and goosed Leno, while making a funny sound to startle the comic.”

In a ballroom packed with 2000 reporters, a sitting president grabs an American icon — who is about to tell jokes at the president’s expense! This is what makes the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a must-attend event every year.

“The president looked at Leno with a wonderful jocular smile,” said Sullivan. ”Leno burst into laughter. After the speeches people asked what happened. Some thought it looked like Leno tripped.” Sullivan told WHC Insider it was one of the most memorable moments in his 33 years of working in Washington. 

Go to the Back Story to watch Leno’s 2004 roast of President Bush, after the president got closer than Leno ever expected.

“[I] was just a kid, well 30, but that’s a kid, and he’s the president and people said don’t make fun of him, and others said he’s got a great sense of humor so go ahead and make fun, and so I start throwing jokes out in both directions and the last group was right. President Reagan had a great sense of humor.”

From The Sacramento Bee, April 5: “It’s a Reno show, with Jay Leno”