The Obamessiah was too busy, the White House said, and Barack Obama became the first president since Grover Cleveland to omit attending the annual Gridiron Club Dinner.

The Politico tries reading the tea leaves to divine the significance of Obama’s slight, but the obvious subtext is really just the arrogant sense of personal entitlement and contempt for institutions and tradition of the standard-bearer of the cultural left. Barack Obama’s politics has been strong on generational consciousness and he used Change as his personal mantra. The change includes dispensing with respect for old practices and with courtesy toward Washington’s establishment press corps.

No offense intended, says the Obama White House.

None taken, say the esteemed leaders of the Gridiron Club.

Still, in Washington, a slap does not have to be officially labeled as such for its sound to echo — and its sting to be felt.

And make no mistake: President Barack Obama deciding that he is too busy to attend the Gridiron’s annual banquet later this month is a slap. He’s the first president since Grover Cleveland to skip the white-tie-and-tails affair in his first year in office.

The official line from the Gridiron Club — a society of Washington reporters, columnists, and bureau chiefs — is, “We understand.”

But some Gridiron veterans make clear they don’t understand. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page said, “People feel uncommonly saddened, miffed and burned.

“I don’t think he understands the implications of not coming to the club in the first year. It’s not your ordinary state dinner. I think it would be helpful for him and his relations with the Washington establishment to come to the club.”

Beyond bruised feelings among the pundit class, Obama’s snub is a revealing cultural moment.

Gridiron has for decades been an inner sanctum of Washington’s political press corps. The club’s mostly aging members were considered highly prestigious because they said so — and because they had the ability to summon the capital’s political elite to a spring frolic of skits and songs.

But if a young and glamorous president decides he can afford to blow off an august and tradition-bound institution, one has to at least entertain the possibility that this institution may not be quite as august as its members assumed.

The rejection was heightened by the that’s-the-night-I-wash-my-hair explanation the Gridiron got from Obama.

At first, Gridiron members heard through back channels that the Obama family would be in Chicago during the Obama daughters’ spring break from school. Then, on Friday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said at his daily briefing that the family would actually be in Camp David on March 21, the night of the dinner.

That’s not exactly out of town by presidential standards — in fact, it is about a 20-minute helicopter ride if Obama had decided the event were important enough.

1:53 video

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

Roosevelt elk

Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are trying to make sure that hundreds of healthy Roosevelt elk and Kaibab mule deer living on Santa Rosa Island are exterminated by the federal government.

The animals have been living there since the 1910s and 1920s when the island’s former owners imported them to provide hunting opportunities on the 52,794 acre off-shore property, then being operated as a cattle ranch. The introduction proved extremely successful, and the island became noted for the trophy animals it produced.

In March 1980, however, Congress established a Channel Islands National Park. In 1986, the Federal Government purchased Santa Rosa Island. The purchase agreement, however, granted the former owners the right to continue ranching and operating a hunting concession for 25 years.

In 1997. however, the National Park and Conservation Association, another litigious self-appointed group of busybodies, sued to end ranching and hunting immediately, claiming that they interfered with public access. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement agreement ending ranching, and stipulating the removal of the elk and deer by 2011.

Hunting is cruel, you see, but exterminating non-native species (who have lived there for a century) is good conservation, California-style.

The National Rifle Association has taken up the fight to save the 1100 animals.