For four years, I was responsible for President Obama’s monologue at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. During those years, a growing number of critics argued that the dinner — with its celebrity guests and expanding galaxy of pre- and after-parties — had jumped the shark.

Now that I no longer write jokes for the president, I’m free to admit the critics have a point. The correspondents’ dinner has become, in a word, gross. The competition to see which news outlets can score the biggest stars. The government officials walking the red carpet. The lengths some people will go to (heck, the lengths I discovered I was willing to go) to be invited to a morning-of brunch.

Given all this, you might think I was delighted to hear of President Trump’s decision, announced on Saturday, to turn down the annual invite. Good riddance! It’s about time! In fact, however, it’s just the opposite. President Trump’s decision to skip this year’s event is a reminder that, for all its excesses, the correspondents’ dinner still matters.

The most important part of my job as a joke writer for the leader of the free world was also the least glamorous: Self-deprecation. “I will not be a perfect president,” admitted then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008. As president, he was willing to joke about those imperfections, from his sliding poll numbers (in 2010), to his reputation for acting professorial (2011), to his rapid aging (2012, 2013, 2015, 2016). “Now that’s not even funny,” the commander-in-chief once remarked, after we suggested he would resemble Morgan Freeman by the end of his second term.