be required to take Friday's off as part of the sequester. So they'll lose at least 20% of their combined income. And it might get worse.

One of them sent me the same transcript via email. They thought the President's jokes were great.

They actually understand that the GOP caused this by taking the debt ceiling hostage last summer. They work for a government contractor.

And they used to be Republicans.

Now they know better, and even they thought Obama's joke about furloughing the joke writers was pretty good.

A lot more happens at those dinners than EVER gets reported. The president (of Gridiron, not the USA) opens by saying that "ladies are always present, and reporters are never present." Women weren't allowed as members in the beginning (1885). That is long past, of course. Helen Thomas was president one year, too, after all, and she was a member way before that.

Preparation for the dinner and show goes on for months, and spouses of Gridiron members are known as "Gridiron widows (regardless of gender)" in the months leading up to the event. It is quite an even to attend, and sometimes the jokes are brilliant, sometimes not. The year my dad was president, Dick Gephart was the Democratic speaker, and he sucked. He is just not funny. Bill Bennett, whose politics are abhorrent, was the Republican speaker. He was brilliant, funny as hell. But the stars of the night were Bill and Hillary Clinton. Clinton absolutely brought down the house. Hillary wasn't there (she was in Pakistan visiting Benazir Bhutto), but she left a video called "Hillary Gump," where she played a mock Forrest Gump. She could have replaced Jay Leno if that was any indication. Pat Moynihan, whom we all admired, got drunk early on and swiped Clinton's speech before he was to give it. Clinton got it back, but not before some sharp words with the Secret Service guy that was supposed to be watching it.

When your dad is president of the Gridiron Club, one perk (if you can make it, which I did, of course) is that you get to hang with POTUS and the VP if they are attending. This was the first time I met Clinton and Gore, and it was heady stuff indeed. I also met some other interesting characters, such as then-speaker Gingrich (never trust a guy who has a limp handshake like a dead fish), whom I heard make a comment on his "Contract With America" that definitely did NOT make the papers ("I think we bit off a little more than we could chew&quot .

Interestingly enough, though the American press is usually pretty good about not divulging lots of details of Gridiron, the Dutch press had a huge article on the last Gridiron I attended (the one with Clinton). They ran a huge section on the "Hillary Gump" video. I translated it for the White House, and actually got a nice response from Clinton's press secretary about it.

Gridiron is often seen by outsiders as an elitist kind of thing, but I think it is good for the top pols and press to be able to mingle at an event where they can talk and have fun and be sure absolutely no cameras or microphones are there to play "gotcha." I'll bet a LOT more gets done at these things than is ever told. I sure as hell got my eyes and ears opened the couple of times I've been at one, anyway, and I'm neither press nor politician.

I'm well aware that Gridiron is necessarily something that gets talked about a lot every March in DC, but very few ever can say they've been to one. My dad was SO thrilled when he became a member, and I didn't really understand yet what he was all excited about. When he took me to my first Gridiron in 1977, THEN I understood.

But few ever get a first-hand story, for obvious reasons. I figure I could shed a little light for my DU friends without violating the confidentiality, especially after all this time.