In The New York Observer, New York Times reporters and editors explain why they’re pulling out of the White House Correspondents dinner (and now talking about doing the same thing on state and local events). Reporter David Sanger underlined what most should expect: it looks bad on TV. “I think the imagery of these on television creates a false impression that we regularly sit around with members of the administration, laughing at each other’s bad jokes. That’s not what life in Washington is like, so it’s probably just as well not to attend.”

Executive Editor Bill Keller said the same thing, that his tipping point was he couldn’t abide the image of the Times enjoying Karl Rove: “There was no one thing. Or maybe everybody has his or her own cringe-making moment. For me personally, the tipping point may have been watching Karl Rove on YouTube, doing a rap routine with reporters at the TV correspondents’ dinner.”

If the Bush team decided they weren’t going to dignify these events with the media, one can imagine Frank Rich and the other Bush-haters at the Times defining that as a symbol of their authoritarian hatred of the press. It should be just as fair to suggest that the Times pullout suggests a very political attempt to suggest its solidarity with the MoveOn crowd and its contempt for the president. (I know that Times also pulled out, quite temporarily, in 1999, but the countervailing competitive impulse is to attend the dinner to build personal relationships with powerful sources. Could it mean something that they only display their dinner-buddy contempt in the lame-duck phase of a presidency?)

If the Times really wants to show its (often ironic) distance from political hackdom, perhaps it should start with a ban on the publisher’s floridly ideological commencement speeches – no more Pinch the Pericles Pretender, like the infamous Schmaltz at New Paltz.