Once again, Hollywood celebrities and DC politicians gathered in Washington Saturday for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — AKA nerd prom. It’s an opportunity for Nancy Pelosi to rub shoulders with the likes of Jane Fonda and for Barack Obama to further his agenda and take down political opponents by dishing out punch lines. This year, the dinner only showed how out of touch the two institutions are with the rest of the nation, because while attendees were slurping down Foraged Wild Mushroom Ragout and Seared Alaskan Halibut protests became violent in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, who died because of injuries he received while in police custody.

While the baseball game at Baltimore’s Camden Yards went into lockdown because of protests outside, three big television networks — CNN, MSNBC and CSPAN — kept their cameras trained on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner because Obama was going to start his jokes soon. Never mind that the latest chapter in the debate over modern day policing was being punctuated by vandalized police cars and smashed storefronts an hour away.

Obama was once again selling the tired issue of “climate change,” trying to make it matter to everyday Americans. “I am determined to make the most of every moment I have left,” Obama said. “After the midterm elections, my advisors asked me, ‘Mr. President, do you have a bucket list?’ And I said, ‘Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list.’ Take executive action on immigration? Bucket. New climate regulations? Bucket. It’s the right thing to do.” But as executive editor of the Washington Free Beacon Sonny Bunch pointed out in a piece titled “This Is Why They Hate Us,” no one except those inside the Beltway care about nerd prom.