Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger
The Reliable Source
The Washington Post
3/13/2011
…a parade of 20 Gridiron members traipsed across the stage, goofily costumed as the 2012 GOP hopefuls — Romney in a hospital gown, Rick Santorum as an altar boy, Haley Barbour as a Confederate soldier, Michele Bachmann in thigh-high red boots, Rudy Giuliani in a pink ballgown(Don’t get the jokes? Then you’re not as politics-consumed as this audience), and so on…
…Romney jokes were big, but not as plentiful as John Boehner jokes. The president said he used to think the House speaker was tan, but after seeing him tear up so much, he realized: “That’s not a tan — that’s rust!” A Gridiron skit had Fake Boehner singing “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to,”Lesley Gore-style. (I’m try’n to show them some leadership here / some gravitas and some guts / how did I end up in bed / with all these Tea Party nuts?)…
…Health Secretary Sebelius, the night’s Democratic speaker, recommended that the president “might consider folding the TSA into our department. We could make life a lot easier for the businessman on the go — by allowing him to get a boarding pass and a colonoscopy at the same time.”
(Yes, of course, there was a TSA song parody, too: To the tune of Parliament’s “Give Up the Funk” — “Don’t touch my junk!”)
Ah, good times. Sorry none of us were personally there for Gridiron’s age-old closing ritual, in which all guests linked arms to sing “Auld Lang Syne.” The more memorable musical moment may have come when the Marine Band struck up “Hail to the Chief” to welcome the president.
Obama waved them off: “Play that song we talked about,” he ordered.
And they did: “Born in the U.S.A.”
“Some things just bear repeating,” the president explained.
Read the complete article at The Washington Post.
At ABC News Jake Tapper posted the transcript of the President’s Remarks at the Gridiron Club.
Pardon us, please, for not laughing. Evidently we don’t have the really sophisticated humor one needs to yuk it up at these adolescent inside jokes (especially when it involves the Marines). Japan had just been devastated by a variety of catastrophes, the nation is collapsing under debt and corruption, the Middle East is on fire, and we’re not one of the “in crowd”. But we think whatever Andrea Mitchell is doing to herself…she looked amazing. So that counts for something, right?
