Frank Rich let a cat out of the bag in the 13th paragraph of his Sunday op-ed:

After last weekend’s correspondents’ dinner, The Times decided to end its participation in such events. But even were the dinner to vanish altogether, it remains but a yearly televised snapshot of the overall syndrome. The current White House, weakened as it is, can still establish story lines as fake as “Mission Accomplished” and get a free pass.

No word on other media outlets (somehow, we doubt Fox News is going to put the kibosh on coverage, even though C-SPAN televises it). But if next year’s host is Rich Little again, the entire press corps would be smart to follow the Times‘ lead.

EARLIER:

A year watching Steven Colbert fillet the Bush administration at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, we knew Colbert’s replacement, Rich Little, would be about as edgy as a butter knife. What we didn’t know: Little’s act would bomb like one. Which is, to a man, what everyone in the room said (except for Bush himself, who said Little was “absolutely perfect“).

FishbowlDC’s recap:

The whole thing made us feel that we were not at the White House Correspondents Dinner, but rather frozen in a 1970s moment … stuck in a basement somewhere with orange carpeting, flower patterned couches, wood paneling and a black and white television with rabbit ears.

In fact, the evening’s lone exciting moment came in the form of Sheryl Crow and Karl Rove, who got into a Lou Piniella-worthy argument over global warming between the tables. (Crow and Laurie David‘s take is here.)