No president, no celebs, no problem: The White House correspondents' dinner crowd parties on

WASHINGTON - Party on, Washington.

In the end, it turned out that to have a good time, journalists didn't need all the menu extras that had come to define the glammed-up White House correspondents' dinner: the sexy Hollywood celebrities, the administration sources to schmooze or even a comedian to yuk it up.

"Who needs 'em?" asked Jeff Ballou, an Al Jazeera editor, as he strode into the phalanx of pre-dinner cocktail soirees at the Washington Hilton on Saturday. "This should be about us."

While President Donald Trump might have made a point of skipping the dinner (again) - and ordered members of his administration to do likewise - the weekend wasn't entirely devoid of this administration's fans. There were plenty of recognizable stars of the Trump Cinematic Universe at the weekend-long festivities surrounding the dinner (let's call it the WHCD loophole, shall we?).

We first bumped into senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Friday night in the posh living room of David Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media.

Wait, we asked, was she violating her boss' ban on WHCD fun?

"You would call it a ban, wouldn't you?" she asked, reflexively slipping into media-critic mode. The president didn't mean that no one who works for him could attend parties, she explained, just not the dinner. "Besides, they're our neighbors!" she said of the Bradleys, who live in embassy-heavy Observatory Circle. "I couldn't be rude!"

So Conway was free to mix it up with Adrienne Arsht and other A-listers under the lovely tent in her neighbor's backyard. The next day, she appeared again at the A-list pre-party known as the "Garden Brunch" wearing a butterfly-printed romper, breezing past Jay Leno to air-kiss Greta Van Susteren.

Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer popped up at nearly every...