Every year, C-SPAN looks forward to a sharp boost in ratings while the White House press secretary cringes towards a sharp drop in approval points in the long shadow of the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner.

It's a chance for the current administration to let their hair down and show everyone that they can take a good joke and stand some pointed criticism in the K-Street jungle. That should explain why the last Bush administration hired Rich Little to do their show in '07.

To be fair, the basic design of the show is a very slippery slope. You pack a room full of politicians and press figure heads, then top it all off with a comedian who says whatever is on their mind, and the whole thing is bound to boil over in a furious cloud of foam. That's what the Barack Obama administration got when they hired future Fox late night host and New Adventures of Old Christine star Wanda Sykes to serve as roastmaster general.

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This time, the press took Sykes to task with some comments she made about Rush Limbaugh being one of the lazier masterminds of the 9/11 tasks and hoping that his kidneys fail the same way he hopes the country will fail under Obama's presidency. She also took Sean Hannity to task for not taking up his waterboarding promise and suggesting that Keith Olbermann be his torturer. The camera then cut to Olbermann in the crowd who was having a big ol' laugh as if he just watched a CPAC board member fall into an open sewer and die.

In all honesty, that wasn't the funniest part of the video. That honor goes to watching fellow comedian Glenn Beck's unamused reaction to Sykes' set. You could almost hear him thinking, "Oh I'll be laughing when we're all being dragged off to one of Obama's FEMA re-education camps in hybrid trucks by gay Army sergeants." It's funny because he wouldn't be laughing. He would be bawling his beady little eyes out.

The issue is Sykes' pending talk show with Fox. This probably won't be a good reflection of the type of humor or edginess she'll exercise on her show, because she won't be the only writer on the block. Plus her comments seemed more off-the-hip than off the page, and her show will have the benefit of editing, something the White House could only possess if they have control over all of time and space. They're working on it, believe me.

I had originally written this post on the Monday following her performance, glowing with praise for her very edgy jokes and daring to speak what's on her mind when she's in the middle of a PR tornado. But I pulled it when I saw Keith Olbermann's interview with political analyst and "fellow dinner survivor" Richard Wolffe on the whole hoedown.

Their thoughts on the two lines in Sykes' 10-minute set startled me and got me thinking if I was praising a public death threat over political ideologies, which 99 percent of the time are way off base on just about any issue. But they weren't coming from the foaming mouth of a politician or between the rotting teeth of a radio talk show host. They came from a comic. She tells jokes and she's hired under the context of roasting D.C.'s bigwigs on the left and right side of the aisle, something even Obama did, albeit with less flying anger spittle.

She wasn't belittling the lives of the victims who died on 9/11 the way some political heads have done with far more egregiousness, and her deathwish for "Boss Limbaugh" might have been over-the-line. But they still drew laughs from the parallel between her comments and his regarding his hope for the Obama presidency. She shouldn't be given any slack because of her title, but humor is in the eye of the beholder.

And why does almost every White House Correspondents' Dinner attract some sort of "controversy" over their choice of outsider entertainment? Maybe it has less to do with the entertainment's choice of material and more to do with D.C.'s lack of a sense of humor.