I cringed along with the rest of you during the holidays when Tareq and Michaele Salahi got busted for crashing a state dinner President Obama held for the prime minister of India.

But for me it was personal. As the pictures of the outlaw couple posing proudly for pictures at the White House flickered across CNN, I said to myself, “Oh, man. The jig is up.”

FOR THE REST OF MY CONFESSION, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

The event attracts a unique mix of glamourous celebrities, policy wonks, journos, and what Wonkette has termed “famous for D.C.” people.

I could list dozens of famous I’ve seen there, but the one that really caused me to be star-struck was Carole King, successful mid-20th-century singer-songwriter and, it turns out, jerk.

My parents had the album Tapestry in the house when I was a kid, and I loved it. Each song is basically a masterpiece. “So Far Away,” “I Feel the Earth Move,” “Natural Woman.”

So when I saw her I was taken back to a place that was quite small and childlike in my star-struck heart, and, out of character for me, asked her shyly: “May I take a picture?”

With all the grace and charm of a big-city sanitation worker hanging off the back of a garbage truck, she waved me off and just kept walking, responding to me over her shoulder: “I’ve kinda got another agenda right now.” I think she was on the way to the bathroom.

“Another agenda” she says. What a jerk. It actually hurt my feelings. She made me remember for a moment that I have feelings that can be hurt. And then she hurt them. I later deleted her songs from my iPod.

So I resolved not to ask for any more pictures, just to start taking them. A moment later I was extending my arm, hand, and camera right into Colin Powell’s face and just snapping a picture without asking or aiming or anything.

FOR MORE ON MY WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS ASSOCIATION DINNER PHOTOGRAPHY, CLICK HERE.