Ho-ho: Reporters Yuk It Up with Bush at the Gridiron Club Dinner

Spectacular humor from the Gridiron Club’s annual dinner. The invitation-only club is “Washington's oldest and most prestigious journalistic organization. Its 65 active members represent major newspapers, news services, news magazines and broadcast networks,” and exists specifically to have this “press roast” every year.

President Bush headlined the annual Gridiron Club political press roast Saturday night, but Vice President Dick Cheney was the main target of the humor.

Cheney's well-publicized Texas hunting accident last month, drew ridicule from the press corps and all the speakers, including the president.

Bush pointed out that the vice president's full name is Richard B. Cheney.

"B. stands for bulls eye," Bush said to laughter from the hundreds of reporters and officials from the administration and Congress. The press, Bush joked, blew the matter way out of proportion: "Good Lord, you'd thought he shot somebody or something."

…Bush said that while pundits speculate about whether Cheney or White House political adviser Karl Rove run the government, it's another person who actually pulls the strings. Cheney, Bush said, tells him what to do but Cheney's wife, Lynne, tells the vice president what to do.

"Lynne, I think you're doing a heck of a job. Although I have to say you dropped the ball big time on that Dubai deal," he said, in a joke about the controversial ports deal.

But Bush wasn’t the only one with some good humor up his sleeve. The reporters themselves chimed in with some funny songs, too—about the Democrats.

"What do we stand for? We don't know. What's our platform? We ain't sure. All we know is Dubya's got it wrong," reporters sang, using a nickname for Bush.

The travails of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California also came in for a ribbing.

"This job is a zoo, I don't have a clue," a reporter sang. But then "Dubya messed up with the ports. I don't know why, but thank you, Dubai."

They also “dressed as sick chickens for a bird flu skit, as the Incredible Hulk to poke fun at Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who likes to wear a Hulk tie while waging fights in the Senate, and as Cheney hidden behind a Darth Vader mask.”

Oh, that wacky press.