I can't stand Bill Clinton. I think he is morally reprehensible, a pathological liar, an obsessive-compulsive womanizer, and first in a long line of those responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
However, I have to hand it to the man -- he is brilliant and witty. I had to laugh at the story in the Wall Street Journal of his subbing for Obama at last night's annual
Gridiron Dinner. Here are excerpts from the
WSJ story:
Clinton Returns to Washington, Needling Himself, Obama and the Press
...
Mr. Clinton, known to friend and foe alike as a gifted political orator, showed he hasn’t lost much in that category in the nine years since he left the White House. Presidential speeches to the Gridiron—an organization of Washington journalists—are supposed to be humorous, and Mr. Clinton knew the drill well from his time as a regular dinner guest during his term.
So he got loosened up at Saturday night’s white-tie dinner with a joke at his own expense: “I have been waiting to stand in for President Obama for a long time,” he said, “ and since they turned me down for Dancing with the Stars, I had nothing better to do.”
He said President Obama called to asked him to fill in because the current president was busy in the White House “polishing up his Nobel Peace Prize.” Obama, he said, asked: “You’ve got one of these, don’t you?”–a joke rooted in reports Mr. Clinton is unhappy that the current president got a Nobel Prize after only months in office while Mr. Clinton failed to be awarded one after long efforts to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East.
...
Elsewhere in his remarks, he noted he was speaking on the night before the start of spring, “otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming.” Of the current vice president, he said: “Vice President Biden, God bless his mouth.”
He praised a speech given earlier in the dinner by the night’s Republican speaker, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, thusly: “Orin, he’s the wittiest of all the Republicans. That ‘s sort of like saying he’s the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs.”
...
But, perhaps inevitably given the capital’s fixation with the weekend effort by Democrats to push a health bill over the finish line, Mr. Clinton returned to that theme at the end. In a reference to Democrats’ controversial attempts to offer sweeteners to win the votes of wavering lawmakers, he cracked; “I flew here from Cleveland, and I flew out of the Dennis Kucinich Airport”—a suggestion that Ohio Democratic Rep. Kucinich must have gotten something flattering in return for his decision two days ago to vote for the Obama bill.
Here are some more lines from
FoxNews:
... Clinton, who stood in for President Obama, said Democrats are going to pass health care. "It may not happen in my lifetime, or Dick Cheney's, but hopefully by Easter," he said referring to his and the former vice president's heart ailments.
Obama, who's preparing for Sunday's probable House vote on health care reform, spoke to the dinner via videotape, saying that when he called Clinton to stand in for him, the former president said, "Let me clear my schedule for the next three years."
...
In another reference to his health, Clinton said his favorite cocktail now was "Lipitor on the rocks," referring to the widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering medicine.
He said that when Obama appeared recently on Fox News the president was "keeping his word about meeting with hostile leaders without preconditions."
In a poke at Obama's combative chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, the former president said, "I found Rahm. I created him. I made him what he is today. I am so sorry."
In the 1990s, Emanuel worked in Clinton's White House.
Very funny man ... wouldn't want to be on his bad side, though.
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