DC cozy mark

She may be out of politics, but Sarah Palin is still bringing her "maverick" mentality to Washington. The former vice presidential candidate took to Twitter Saturday night to call the White House Correspondents Dinner "pathetic" and call out the "DC assclowns" in attendance executive gift.

The correspondents dinner has long had detractors who see it as self-congratulatory and emblematic of a press that is too deferential to the president and others who hold power in Washington. For nearly as long, there's been a backlash-to-the-backlash, with the D.C. political press covering its own event extensively, saying that it's all in good fun, and reminding critics that the dinner raises money for scholarships gift premium.

That tension was evident even in the tongue-in-cheek Twitter hashtag that went with this year's event — #nerdprom, along with the more basic #WHCD.

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Palin's criticism wasn't strictly directed at the members of the fourth estate sharing drinks with the political figures that they ostensibly hold accountable (although Stephen Colbert did that in a withering speech when he hosted the event in 2006), but at all of the attendees gift and premium.

"The rest of America is out there working our assess off," she said in the tweet, "while these DC assclowns throw themselves a #nerdprom."