A couple of the jokes from last Saturday’s Gridiron Club dinner. From Hillary Clinton:
“In the Clinton administration, we used to say in eight years, we’ve added more than 22 million new jobs,” she said, offering Bush a lesson in campaign spin. “You guys could say: ‘Since 1993, our country has created 19 million new jobs.’ ” The Clinton administration also used to say it had “moved millions from welfare to work,” to which Bush could add, she quipped, “We’ve made that journey round trip.”
Clinton acknowledged Cheney, who was sitting in for the president at the head table. “I actually saw the vice president as we were walking in,” she said. “I was getting out of my car . . . he was getting out of Justice Scalia’s.”
There was more. “The truth is, I know Vice President Cheney, and I know that he believes in the separation of the three powers: Kellogg . . . Brown . . . and Root.”
From Dick Cheney:
“I always feel a genuine bond whenever I see Senator Clinton,” he countered. “She’s the only person who’s the center of more conspiracy theories than I am.”
He recalled attending a Wyoming Gridiron. “Out there, between courses, they exchange small arms fire,” he said.
As for the president, Cheney said, “He’s at the Iraqi Gridiron dinner — white tie and turbans.”
I think Hillary wins the comedy competition there. What was that joke about turbans? It not only isn’t funny, it’s kind of culturally… I dunno, I don’t wanna be politically correct, but it’s just not… funny.
Among the other jokes that night:
Instead of grinning through the four-hour, white-tie roast, Bush hunkered down at the Crawford ranch with Mexican President Vicente Fox. That gave Gridiron president Al Hunt, columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a television commentator, his opening: “That pretty much sums up the White House philosophy: Why waste time with newspaper reporters when you can spend quality time with Fox?”
