As President Reagan might say, “Well, there they go again.” The “they” in this formulation is the laughably self-regarding “in crowd” of media who belong to the White House Correspondents Association - aka the “WHCA.”  The “cool kids” of the media who will be in attendance at the their annual glitzy black-tie dinner this weekend. To make sure their self-regard is noted, an “open letter” signed by over 250 journalists was released that said in part, the following, with bold print supplied for emphasis. “The dinner has long served as a symbol of the vital and irreplaceable role of a free press in American democracy and a celebration of the First Amendment and the journalists who uphold it. President Trump’s systematic, sustained, and unprecedented attacks on the free press (detailed below) render his presence at such an event a profound contradiction of its purpose. The collective weight of the administration’s actions – retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations, frivolous lawsuits against the press, defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House press releases and social media posts, the arrest of journalists, and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the press represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president.” Stop right there. Full stop. Again, notice the letter was condemning “defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House press releases and social media posts….” And right there is a decidedly unconscious show-and-tell of exactly why the American people have such a low regard for today’s media. To begin, there is no provision from the First Amendment in the Constitution that mandates the federal government -- or any state or local government -- fund public broadcasting or support “international broadcasting.” Not to mention there is no provision in the First Amendment that opposes so-called “physical restrictions on journalists” or is restricted from limiting journalistic access to this or that government function.  As someone who has worked at all levels of government -- local, state and federal -- it is completely normal that this or that government body or agency holds various meetings that bar attendance from the press, that are closed to the public. I have personally been in meetings at all three levels of government where there was not a single journalist allowed in the room. Once a specific meeting is completed, it is up to the government body holding the private meeting whether it will or will not issue a press release on the substance of the meeting in question. And it is up to the media to cover or even attack the government meeting closed to the press if they so desire. That kind of thing happens with regularity all the time. These journalists don't mind it when it's their favorite pols -- like Hillary Clinton's secret health-care task force in 1993. And to take umbrage, as the letter from these Washington journalists does, on “personal verbal attacks on reporters” when the media of today is perpetually slinging all kind of personal attacks at President Trump (and yes, on some of his conservative predecessors) is, to put it mildly, hilarious.  Particularly in the Trump era the media has been out there repeatedly attacking the President. But in fact this kind of treatment of a President is decidedly not new. Good heavens, there is a reason President Trump recently said: “Abraham Lincoln and many of our greatest presidents fought with the media.” Indeed they did. In comparison with no less than Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln scholar and historian Harold Holzer long ago noted that “No president ever cracked down on the press more than Abraham Lincoln did,” adding that the media “was completely and openly partisan in Lincoln's day, with Democratic and Republican newspapers," and that "Lincoln followed the Republican press with the same intensity with which Donald Trump watches Fox News and Breitbart." Holzer added that Lincoln was also a master at manipulating the media with leaked stories, courting the favor of certain editors, and releasing private letters to the press. One could go on -- and on and on -- with similar stories and quotes about Trump’s predecessors and how they treated and/or dealt with the press. Joe Biden's team could stiff-arm them for weeks and months at a time. But safe to say, as the White House Correspondents Association gathers for their annual black tie cocktails-and-dinner this weekend hang out, there is nothing new here under the Washington political sun.  And on a personal note? Yes, I have been to this dinner on a couple of occasions. A night of fun. But taking umbrage at the President because he shows up -- or even when he doesn’t show up -- is nothing more than a sign of too much self-regard. A balloon of self-regard this President in particular finds it all too easy to burst.