Monday March 19 1:06 AM ET

Gridiron Club's Annual Dinner

By LAWRENCE L. KNUTSON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Since 1885, presidents and the reporters who cover them have been turning out in white tie and tails for a skit-and-run evening of song and lampoonery.

The Gridiron Club's annual stiff-shirt dinner is an assault of dubious humor garnished with political poison ivy. It is a teething ground for aspiring politicians and an opportunity for image-enhancing self-parody by those already at the top.

Next Saturday night, the Gridiron's 116th anniversary, George W. Bush becomes the 20th president to endure, and perhaps to exploit, an evening of reporter-produced humor largely aimed at him.

The Gridiron - named for the griddle, not the football field - has produced some arresting moments:

-Nancy Reagan in 1982 repairing a hole in her reputation by appearing and singing in a grab bag of wildly mismatched ``Second Hand Clothes,'' making fun of her own penchant for expensive high fashion.

-John F. Kennedy in 1958, preparing for his run for the White House two years later while reading a fake telegram from his wealthy and controversial father: ``Dear Jack. Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'm damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.''

President Taft once likened Gridiron's skits and songs to a public test of character.

``After some training I was able to smile broadly at a caustic joke at my expense, and seem to enjoy it,'' he wrote. The 350-pound Taft had much to seem to enjoy. During one long Gridiron evening he was lampooned in song as ``Eating Through Georgia.''

But Taft said the evening had its benefits.

The guests, he said, ``size up a man by what he says or what he does when subjected to Gridiron tests, and by those tests he rises or falls.''

Grover Cleveland had just been elected president in 1885 when a band of 15 journalists founded the club, dedicated it to good fellowship and sent out invitations to the unwary.

Cleveland repeatedly declined. He apparently believed he had already been sufficiently roasted by the press.

Club members weren't expecting much when Benjamin Harrison did accept in 1892, mostly because no one had ever suspected him of harboring a sense of humor.

They were wrong. Harrison swept the roomful of reporters and writers with steely eyes and deadpanned, ``This is the second time this week that I have been called upon to open a congress of American inventors.''

The dinner in 1902, the first year of Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, featured a Washington Star reporter, in a bear suit, commenting on Roosevelt's hunting exploits - from the bear's point of view.

A Gridiron historian, James Free, reported in his centennial history of the club that the 1907 dinner was shut down to quell a shouting match between the irrepressible Roosevelt and a Republican senator.

Herbert Hoover, already beset by the Great Depression, accused the Gridiron of ``a slump of humor'' at the 1932 dinner. That was after he was hit with these lyrics: ``Rockabye Hoover, in the tree top; When the wind blows, the market will drop; When the boom breaks, the prices will fall; and down will come Hoover, (Vice President) Curtis and all.''

Al Gore in 1994 was serenaded as ''2-0-4 pounds of bore.''

But Gridiron has never really been a fight to the finish. The club motto promises that ``the Gridiron will always singe, but never burn.'' Washington Post columnist David Broder once called the annual affair ``the night of the long butter knives.''

Like all clubs, Gridiron has its traditions. The club's symbol, a griddle outlined in clear-glass lightbulbs, hangs over the head table. The U.S. Marine Band marches in brassily as the dinner opens. The club's president always delivers his speech ``in the dark,'' although no one can say why.

And the last song of the evening is always ``Auld Lang Syne.''

Sometimes the jokes have been on the jokesters.

That happened in 1948 when the Gridiron chorus prematurely waved farewell to President Truman, a candidate for election, and sang, ``Now is the hour, for us to say goodbye.''

When Truman returned as a winner in 1949, the Gridiron changed its tune. ``Voters everywhere gave us the bird,'' the Gridiron chorus sang, stepping up to a serving of fresh crow.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, a target for years, summed up the Gridiron experience at the 1935 dinner:

``Since 1885, the Gridiron Club has continued its entertainment, free of all responsibility. It has suffered from nothing worse than acts of exhibitionism ...''

In the end, FDR said, ``It is good for all Republicans, Democrats, Socialists and Communists to sit at these tables and laugh at themselves, and at each other.''

---