WESLEY PRUDEN: A pity party for the unloved press.

There was a broken heart for every wine glass and beer bottle at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night, where the White House Correspondents Association dined at their slimmed-down annual imitation of Hollywood glitz, grandeur and glamour.

The reporters, editors, pundits and wise men and women, sitting stiffly in their rented tuxedos, with the ladies in expensively gowned splendor, all felt unloved, reviled and disrespected, suspected by millions to be peddlers of fake news. The correspondents even put out a red carpet at the door where the limousines arrive, but it still felt a Scotch-and-water or two short of an Oscars night.

The president, who made a point of being three hours and a hundred miles away in Pennsylvania, was the most derided man not in the room. The evening’s not-so-great entertainer, hired to make everybody laugh, complained that the president was campaigning in Pennsylvania “because he can’t take a joke.” Celebrities stayed away, too. Several comedians whose names wouldn’t have escaped anyone turned down the gig. The streets in the fashionable nearby Kalorama neighborhood, usually clogged with the limousines of the rich and famous en route to hot-ticket “after parties,” were deserted this year. Nobody was up to staying up.

The schadenfreude is strong with this one.