The Old Scribbler stayed up way too late on Saturday evening.

No, he did not stay up to watch the Red Sox, for they did not have a night game. They played in the afternoon and won 17 to zip. They had 21 hits and this – no errors – in hammering a good Chicago Cubs squad. But I digress.

The Old Scribbler stayed up to watch three networks provide extensive coverage of one of the (and maybe the only one left) premier celebrations honoring the profession, or racket, called journalism: The White House Correspondents Association’s Annual Dinner.

What used to be a closed event for a handful of old-time cigar-smoking/whiskey-drinking Washington political reporters/insiders has become an open, free-flowing spectacle involving (gasp) TV types, professional comedians, and even Hollywood celebrities.

And they even raised money for a worthy cause – to help train the next generation of reporters and editors.

For 103 years, the WHCA dinner has been a staple of the Washington political calendar. Every president since Calvin Coolidge, save the last one, has attended and accepted playing the role of being the butt of good, bad, and insulting jokes about his policies, politics and personality.

On Saturday night, President Joe Biden sat at the head table, staying up way past his usual bedtime. He smiled and laughed as Colin Jost, a fake news anchor for “Saturday Night Live,” entertained the 3,000 spectators with lines that skewered him, the former president, the press corps and politics.

He even suggested the journalists’ jobs were at risk and that their reporting and writing skills might be replaced by Artificial Intelligence.

If you want to listen to the jokes (some were pretty good and some not so) I suggest you ask Ms. Google.

But, for me, the event was more than a chance for the reporters to put on a tux, mingle with celebs, and nosh on a lukewarm filet Mignon. It was a chance to revel in the Constitutional freedoms we enjoy in the good old USA.

Think about it for a moment. At least three TV networks broadcast most of the lengthy show giving the nation a spectacle where the current and former POTUS and political pooh-bahs of all stripes were insulted, denigrated and demeaned.

After the show, the guests and the insulters went home or to some after-party. They were not beaten up, arrested or, perish the thought, shot. To date, no one has been (and here I get a chance to use my favorite word of the season) defenestrated.

What do you think would have happened to them in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, or a couple of dozen other nations?

Before it all started, the journos, in their glad rags and fancy gowns, were forced to skirt dozens of protesters who mocked, insulted and accused them of being complicit with American support for Israel in the war in Palestine.

The same protesters forced the Secret Service to detour the presidential motorcade to avoid the gathering outside the Washington Hilton.

It was ironic. A dinner celebrating the constitutional rights of press freedom was being protested by others decrying their work, using the rights granted by the same First Amendment.

Meanwhile, at the podium, Kelly O’Donnell, the president of the WHCA, paid tribute to the more than 100 journalists who have lost their lives covering the war in Palestine. Their work showing famine, destruction and the bodies of slain children inspired the very protests outside the hotel. Only in America.

O’Donnell reminded the audience that other reporters faced government repression, noting it has been 396 days since Evan Gershkovich, the Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, was jailed for telling the stories of ordinary Russians who opposed Vladimir Putin's Ukraine invasion that led to the slaughter of thousands of Russian soldiers.

She also honored reporters who documented the failure of Texas law enforcement officers to act promptly when a gunman invaded a grade school in Uvalde while murdering 19 children and two teachers.

Would the public have learned of those kind of official failures in Moscow, Beijing, or Tehran?

Somehow, framed by the events of the Revolutionary War and the overthrow of the French monarchy, the guys who wrote and passed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights included the concept of freedom of speech, religion and the press.

In 1787, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, et al penned a document giving us all the right and freedom to criticize our leaders.

And that same Constitution gives you, dear reader, the right to criticize our elected leaders and even decry the ramblings of an old scribbler.

For that, I give thanks. You should too.

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