Year of the Heroes: Reality showtime

by Mark Silva

Bon Jovi, Ben Affleck and Demi Moore walk the carpet tonight at the crowded entrance to an annual, black-tie White House Correspondents Association dinner, where President Barack Obama will make his debut on the stand-up comedy circuit of Washington dinners where scripted jokes are part of the menu.

But among all the actors and musicians who will arrive tonight as trophy-guests of the national broadcast and cable networks, the newspapers and Websites, some of the celebs arriving at the Washington Hilton tonight are newly minted:

Heroes who made their own debut in the daily news this year:

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, captain of the US Airways flight downed by a goose-strike, landing on the icy surface of the Hudson River in January without a single loss of life among passengers or crew.

The New York Daily News is taking Sully to dinner.

Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama, the U.S.-flagged container ship attacked by Somali pirates last month. The captain, taken hostage by four pirates in a lifeboat, was freed by Navy SEALs who took the remaining three captors in the boat with three shots. The fourth faces piracy charges in federal court in New York.

Bloomberg News is taking Phillips to dinner.

As for Obama, well, he had Phillips and his wife in at the Oval Office today - while working in a basketball game of his own with friends at Fort McNair. The pool reports the president's team won three of five games of 21, with Obama aide Reggie Love joking that he needed stitches afterward. Tonight, the president suits up for a licking on the dinner circuit.

There will be a lot of jokes tonight, on a lot of fronts, and a lot of people will become ready butts of those jokes - including Obama, who will give as good as he gets, surely, with comedienne Wanda Sykes playing the house, too.

But no one will be making fun of Sullenberger and Phillips. They'll be the heroes in the house.