Yesterday’s treat, by way of surreal punctuation to the three nausea-inducing debates, was a “traditional” event that “traditionally” features lashings of “good-natured” jokes between rival presidential candidates. Groan. Must we? Must we have things like the White House reporters’ dinner and the Al Smith dinner and “roasts”? The whole thing is excruciating. Last night’s was of course especially excruciating. (I’ve never seen an Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner before, and I’m glad I haven’t. Not the least of the horrors of this one was the prominence of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the guy who complained about the New York Times’s reporting on the Catholic church’s enabling of child-raping priests. Dolan protected the child-raping priests for decades.)

It was tense even before they started. Reporters tweeted that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump entered the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner from separate sides of the room, and didn’t even shake hands (which at this point really isn’t a surprise).

But there was hope that Thursday night’s event could serve as a comedic salve for the nation following three decidedly nasty presidential debates. The fundraising event for Catholic charities — now in its 71st year — traditionally is a time for the candidates to offer jokes about themselves and their opponent.

Oh don’t be so silly. Why do they have to go through some absurd joke-swapping ceremony? This isn’t a damn game show.

The Times seems to find it uncomfortable too:

By the end, facing cascading and uncomfortable jeers from a crowd full of white ties and gowns, he had called Hillary Clinton Catholic-hating, “so corrupt” and potentially jail-bound in a prospective Trump administration.

“I don’t know who they’re angry at, Hillary, you or I,” Mr. Trump said sheepishly from the dais, turning to his opponent amid the heckling.

It seemed clear to everyone else. Mr. Trump was being booed at a charity dinner.

So it went at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in Manhattan, a presidential campaign ritual of levity and feigned warmth — upended, like so much else in this election season, by the gale-force bid of Mr. Trump.

Breaking with decades of tradition at the gathering once he took the microphone, Mr. Trump set off on a blistering, grievance-filled performance that translated poorly to the staid setting, stunning many of the well-heeled guests who had filed into the Waldorf Astoria hotel for an uncommon spectacle: an attempted détente in a campaign so caustic that the candidates, less than 24 hours earlier, declined to shake hands on a debate stage.

It’s a gruesome idea, isn’t it. It looks like telling the electorate, sitting out there in OrdinaryPeopleLand, that the whole thing is a fake set up by the rich people attending the dinner.

Trump produced some “jokes” at first, but then – entirely predictably – recycled his familiar bullshit.

Mr. Trump said Mrs. Clinton was merely “pretending not to hate Catholics,” an allusion to hacked correspondences from Clinton aides that appeared to include messages criticizing Roman Catholic conservatism.

He wondered aloud how someone like Mrs. Clinton — “so corrupt,” he said — could sell herself to the American people. “What’s her pitch?” he asked. “The economy is busted, the government’s corrupt, Washington is failing. Vote for me.”

He fake-griped that “all the jokes were given to her in advance.”

By then, he had decisively lost the room. Those on the dais with him seemed to almost visibly writhe away from him at points — brows furrowing, smiles turning to grimaces. One man beside Mr. Trump became a viral sensation on social media, his face frozen and eye bulged by a quip gone awry.

There was at least one joke that got nothing but loud boos.

Traditions are weird.