If you were really, really cool, you spent Saturday night at the Renaissance Hotel, which hosted the annual Gridiron Dinner, one of the hardest tickets to get in town. The evening features some of Washington’s most notable journalists and politicians (read: President Bush) and the reporters spend most of the evening performing skits and songs skewering both themselves and the pols across the room.
Some of the highlights:
-A retooling of Jimmy Buffet’s “Volcano,” with the chorusfeaturing “Al Gore” singing “Oslo.” Said “Gore”: “My country has devoured the Earth.” -Bloomberg’s Al Hunt shaking and grooving it in drag during his impersonation of Rudy Giuliani. -Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, addressing criticisms of her Republican Party that they have had a rough year. “It’s okay, we’ve already started the outreach–in a bathroom in Minneapolis.” –Bob Novak in a huge cowboy hat, doing his best Ron Paul. -Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell dressed up as Laura Ingraham. -Journos tweaking “Son of a Preacher Man” to say “Huckabee Creature Man.” -Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus impersonating Sen. Trent Lott. –Helen Thomas dressed up as Condoleezza Rice as she interviews Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. -Former Houston Chronicle columnist Cragg Haines doing his best impersonation of Texas Governor Rick Perry. -CBS’ Bob Schieffer describing the Gridiron Dinner as “vaguely patriotic and a little cheesy.”
–Clarence Page on his knees (to reduce his height) as he pretended to be Rep. Dennis Kucinich. He and “his wife,” Elizabeth, performed the famous Sonny-Cher duo, “I Got You Babe,” which included such lyrics as “You hooked me with that piercing in your tongue” and “You’re my Keebler elf / we’ll run again in 2012th.” -Former LA Times reporter Ron Ostrow saying “You can always tell the old journos; they talk about ‘the press’ and not ‘the media.'” -And who says that the Fourth Estate and the White House don’t get along? In his remarks, Bush told the crowd that “democracy requires a free press,” and after he performed his own song, Bush enjoyed a sustained standing ovation from the room of reporters.
