The evening had started pleasantly enough. The most alarming thing about the party I was attending in the Hilton Hotel where the Washington Correspondents’ Dinner was being held were the $18 martinis. Those, and the woman in the nice black dress screaming “criminals” at the police as they dragged her out the door as I arrived.
Protesters had gathered outside. They chanted indiscriminately at guests filing through the entrance, calling for an end to the war in Iran and to free Palestine.
I was one floor above the main dinner at a party hosted by ABC, engaged in the kind of self-congratulatory socializing this weekend was designed for, when heavily armed police officers started moving through the room. First one, then several – and they wouldn’t explain why.
I was mid-conversation with a Los Angeles Times reporter, who had moments earlier offered to buy me a filet mignon, when I heard the news that there was a shooter on the premises.
The rumor spread fast through the room. The drinks, nevertheless, continued to flow.
How the man had managed to breach a perimeter that had sealed off four city blocks, with police at regular checkpoints, nobody could explain.
In the bar around me more heavily armed officers arrived. Nobody told us whether to go in or out. Some guests were rushed away under armed escort. Others went outside to smoke. Nobody appeared to be in charge of deciding which category any of us fell into.
Inside the ballroom, guests remained locked in, unable to leave. Left to piece together what was happening from whispers, speculations and Twitter.
A guest told me he had been locked in a bathroom with approximately 14 other people. “I was stuck in there with Wolf Blitzer,” he said grimly. The gunman had struck as guests were on their salad course.
“I don’t wanna die because of a president I don’t support,” one guest said emotionally.
Confusion extended to DC’s social circuit. Across town, the afterparties remained nominally on schedule. Leaving still thirsty members of the press to wrestle with a question that only this city, on a night like this, could produce with a straight face.
“Are people still going to the afterparties?” one invitee asked aloud. A woman nearby, who noted she had not been at the dinner itself, offered the clearest analysis: “my evening is not becoming collateral damage.”
As of the time of writing, the investigation into the shooting remains active, the afterparty situation remains unresolved and the filet mignon offer, this reporter notes, also remains outstanding.
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