RINGER.(The Talk of the Town)

Each spring, the White House Correspondents' Association hosts the President and other subsidiary potentates for an evening of obligatory conviviality and moderate drinking. Once every decade or so, someone mistakenly makes news at the correspondents' dinner by saying something ruthless and true about the President. Such was the case last year, when Stephen Colbert committed the sin of humor in the presence of President Bush. "I stand by this man," Colbert said, gesturing toward Bush, who was on the dais a few feet away. "I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares."

This year, no such insults will be directed at the President, because the correspondents' association has hired as entertainment the impressionist Rich Little, who calls himself "basically a Republican," and whose jokes are reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's, though without the edge.

The decision to retain Little's services has raised, as they say, a host of troubling questions, including:

(1) Why not Nipsey Russell? And,

(2) Did the journalists who run the association hire Little in order to please the White House?

The answers are (1) Nipsey Russell died two years ago; and (2) no.

"Nobody from the White House complained about last year," Steve Scully, a senior executive producer of C-SPAN, and the president of the association, said by telephone. Scully added, "I walked the President out, and he said, 'Great night. I enjoyed it.' "