Press Guest Zero: Fawn Hall

1987. White House Correspondents' Dinner. Then-Baltimore Sun scribe Michael Kelly (killed in 2003 when his humvee went off a cliff in Iraq) invites Iran-Contra hearings honey Fawn Hall - Ollie North's paper-shredding secretary - to sit with him at the Baltimore Sun table after his bosses told him to bring an attention-getting guest.

Fast-forward 22 years. Look what Kelly has wrought:

Chickaboomer tipster: "MSNBC has purchased 8 tables for themselves this year (the table limit per big-cheese news organization). Understand in the past, NBC bought their limit of 8 tables and gave one table to MSNBC for MSNBC's own guest list. Don't know whether parent NBC also has their own 'full house' of 8 tables this year or not."

Wash Post: As the Press Prom -- better known as the White House Correspondents' Association dinner -- looms ever closer, some news networks and magazines announced yesterday which VIPs and celebs are expected to be their guests at the Hilton Washington event on May 9.

Along with typical Hollywood types Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, Time magazine may have the most in-demand get: Kal Penn, who had "House" writers kill him off last month so he could take a job in the Obama administration. Other highlights thus far:

-- Fortune: Glenn Close, George Lucas.

-- CBS News: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Brad Paisley (a guest of Bob Schieffer), Colin Powell, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

-- NBC News: William H. Macy, Warren Buffett, Whoopi Goldberg, Samuel L. Jackson, John Cusack, Colin Firth, Jason Bateman, B.J. Novak, Mike Myers, Mariska Hargitay, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

-- Glamour: Alicia Keys, Kerry Washington, White House Social Secretary Desirée Rogers, fashion designers Narciso Rodriguez and Kenneth Cole.

Ten years ago American Journalism Review lamented in "This Dinner's Not A Winner": "Maybe it's time to turn out the lights. In the immortal words of Semisonic, it's closing time. This is one party that should be over. What was once a relatively harmless if stiff affair where Washington journalists socialized with their sources has become a vivid symbol of what is so wrong with elite journalism. It's exhibit A of the shotgun marriage of journalism and entertainment. It's the embodiment of the triumph of buzz over content. It's the ascendancy of bad taste, or the death of taste altogether, incarnate. It's low-rent Oscar night, if that isn't redundant. Do we need this? The desperate scramble for celeb-rity guests is eloquent testimony to what is so wrong about this black tie from hell."

As for Hall, she married former Doors manager Danny Sugerman in 1992 (who died at 50 in 2005... lung cancer... after writing a Jim Morrison bio - "No One Here Gets Out Alive"). Sugerman got Fawn into crack cocaine and they both went to drug rehab.

The theme of this year's Press Prom: No One Gets Here Gets Out Alive. Class of 2009 song: Break On Through (To The Other Side).

As for me, I'm getting positively orgasmic about sucking up to NBC's "get" - Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, and cruising the CBS table to ogle EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Isn't lesbian comic Wanda Sykes the first female emcee of this august event?