It may not have been intended, but nothing recently has more exposed the national media as a tool of left-wing politics as Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner.
The annual event over the years has poked fun at the occupant of the White House and others of prominence in Washington, but the era of Trump has turned the event into just another opportunity for the national press to spew hate toward the man whose upset win in the 2016 election ruined the coronation of Hillary Clinton as president of the "third term" of their beloved Barack Obama.
Over the nearly 100 years of the event, the sitting president usually has attended and has been allowed to skewer the media that skewers him. But over the past quarter century, the event has become more partisan, with Republicans the subject of bitter attacks and Democrats generally given a light touch.
Trump, no fan of the national media, decided not to play ball and didn't attend the dinner in 2017 or this year. Of course, hell hath no fury like a national media scorned.
So the dinner turned loose Michelle Wolf, a comedian and former "Daily Show" writer, who used the opportunity to personally attack White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders and to joke about abortion.
On Monday, even the White House Correspondents' Association and usually vehement anti-Trumpers were weighing in with their criticism.
But why now?
Where were they when a Harvard poll showed Trump receiving 91 to 93 percent negative coverage from the media? Where were they when his wife and 12-year-old son were unjustly criticized? Where were they when his words were twisted, when news stories were used to advocate against his policies, when incidents were spun from something innocent to something troubling?
Even former Democratic president Jimmy Carter's comments in a Maureen Dowd column in The New York Times acknowledged the problem.
"I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I've known about," he said last year. "I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation."
Margaret Taley, the White House Correspondents' Association president, began to distance the organization from the dinner with a letter to members Sunday.
In it, she said, "Last night's program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners, not to divide people. Unfortunately, the entertainer's monologue was not in the spirit of that mission."
Wolf, for instance, wondered, "Is it Sarah Sanders? Is it Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Is it Cousin Huckabee? Is it Auntie Huckabee Sanders? Like, what's Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women?"
She also referred to the White House spokeswoman, who was in attendance, as Aunt Lydia, a frumpy, scowling older woman in the Hulu series "The Handmaid's Tale."
"I actually really like Sarah, I think she's really resourceful," Wolf said. "Like she burns facts and then uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she's born with it, maybe it's lies."
Is this what passes for tolerance and sisterhood in the #MeToo era?
On abortion, she said, "Don't knock it till you try it - and when you do try it, really knock it. You know, you've got to get that baby out of there. And yeah, sure, you can groan all you want. I know a lot of you are very anti-abortion. You know, unless it's the one you got for your secret mistress."
We're not sure what part of Taley's "unifying message" that entailed, but it's certainly a far cry from the "safe, legal and rare" abortions the White House suggested during President Bill Clinton's tenure in office.
Although left-wing correspondents such as MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell and Mika Brzezinski, the Washington Post's Margaret Sullivan and The New York Times' Maggie Haberman criticized Wolf or praised Sanders, we wonder if it will bring about any long-term change.
The national media's rabid treatment of the president and his family, after all, is why Trump is given a pass by his supporters for the inelegant things he says, the exasperated tweets he types and the outrageous claims he sometimes makes. If the media vowed to be fair in its coverage of Trump, would the president in turn back down in his rhetoric?
Hard to say, but we're afraid it's a game of political chicken right now. No one wants to give in first.
Unfortunately for the media, though, Trump supporters view this game as a sea of correspondents vs. one president. He has won this round, and he didn't even have to show his face on Saturday.