白宫记者晚宴,总统谈笑风生

“Welcome to the fourth quarter of my presidency,” U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

The event provides an annual venue for the president to engage in self-mockery and poke fun at some of his harshest critics.

“Six years into my presidency, people still say I’m arrogant. Aloof. Condescending,” Mr. Obama said. "People are so dumb. That’s why I don’t meet with them.”

This year’s dinner was entertained by Saturday Night Live comedian Cicely Strong who told the president that he was a lot like Madonna, adding “you’ve both given this country so much, but in like a year and a half, you gotta stop.”

White House correspondents began staging the dinner in 1914 to push for broader journalistic access to the White House and to support vigorous reporting on the presidency.