ShareThisFor 124 years Washington's Gridiron Club has been doing what Russian Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin once said no other nation in the world, even the democratic ones, would tolerate, poking fun at government institutions from the White House to Capitol Hill in its annual spring dinner. And not since Grover Cleveland in 1885 has a president in his first year of office missed the experience in what has become almost a rite of passage for chief executives.
That is until this year when Barack Obama apparently decided that a trip to Camp David in rural Maryland was more important than donning white tie and tails and listening to words and music that might not treat him with the kind of reverence that he has come to expect. It is the beginning of spring break at the private school his daughters attend. So apparently he and Mrs. Obama or perhaps she alone decided that subjecting one's self to the crass spectacle put on largely by a dying industry wasn't worth the trouble of delaying the vacation for a few hours.
After all, the stress of two months in the executive mansion dealing with the mess he more and more claims he inherited has been excruciating and has left them exhausted and in bad need of recreation and relaxation outside the confines of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Besides, who cares about the traditional press these days? It is utterly irrelevant that his own career was given a nice boost in 2006 when as a freshman senator he was tapped to speak for his party at the annual roast. Nor should it matter that the Washington press corps has been thoroughly battered by the economy and could use the same kind of deferential treatment many of its members clearly gave him during his run for the presidency. In fact, there have been a near record number of acceptances to the dinner based on the probability that he would attend.
Over the decades, "off the record" performances by presidents and even first ladies at this function have been the subject of great attention. Teddy Roosevelt took on the captains of American industry at one dinner, even outlining his famous antitrust policy. Jack Kennedy wowed a skeptical audience of some of the world's most influential people, including his political enemies, with his wit, and Nancy Reagan, dressed in a melange of cast off clothes, gave an outstanding on-stage surprise performance that was credited with completely changing her image.
Unlike the Alfalfa Club, which is made up mainly of lawyers and attended by a relatively few elitists (including Obama this year) and the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which has more to do with Hollywood and a cast of thousands than with journalism, the Gridiron is made up of 60 active members from the print and electronic media who spend months preparing. Its two main rules are that the Gridiron should singe but never burn, although it has come close many times, and to remember that no off-color material will be tolerated. In other words, it is the one time in a year often filled with partisan anger and divisiveness when animosities and incivility are put aside for an evening and replaced by self-deprecation and gentle irreverence. It has been called the one great leveling experience in American politics.
With the economic crisis and the plummeting fortunes of newspapers, the Gridiron has found itself straining to support the expensive dinner. Members have dug deep into their own pockets to supplement the declining support from publishers and broadcast executives. But the club and its historic spring fling have managed to weather wars, depression and snubbing by presidents across three centuries. In recent years Bill Clinton missed attending some dinners, largely because his wife was thin skinned, as did George W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson. But only a notoriously humorless Cleveland shunned the dinner his first year, until now that is.
The club and its famous irreverence will survive this snub, but it is seems too bad that one of those famous Obama promises of change apparently includes doing away with laughter at the expense of the chief executive.
(E-mail Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, at thomassondan(at)aol.com.)
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