Whatever Happened to the Washington Reporters, 1978-2012

9. The Gridiron Club

108 NINE ThE GrIdIroN Club The sole purpose of the Gridiron Club, composed of current and former Washington journalists, is to throw a party.1 Male guests at this annual spring affair are instructed to wear white tie and tails. Women are resplendently gowned. All are seated at a giant gridiron-shaped table, the evening’s speakers at one end, the stage and orchestra at the other. over the evening, four musical skits are performed by club members, some of whom can carry a tune, supplemented by ringers known as “limited members,” who are of very good voice; they are accompanied by the Marine band, whose first leader, John Philip Sousa, composed a march in honor of the club. Skits alternate with four speeches, starting with the “Speech in the dark,” delivered by the club’s president, its most senior active member, who serves a one-year term. The opening speech is followed by speeches by individuals of Senate or Cabinet rank representing the democrats and the republicans, which are followed by a closing speech by the president of the united States. (Should the president not accept the invitation, the vice president usually fills in.) The evening is long and spiritually fortified. To give a properly received speech, according to Andrew Glass, “Speakers take their perceived weakest traits and most venerable qualities and exaggerate them to the point of absurdity.”2 When George W. bush was a no-show in 2007, Vice President Cheney began, “The president is really sorry he couldn’t be here tonight, but he had another obligation [pause]: his book club is meeting [audience laughs].” When barack obama was a no-show in 2009, Vice President biden began, “President obama sends his greetings. he can’t be here tonight because The Gridiron Club 109 he’s busy getting ready for Easter [pause]; he thinks it’s all about him [audience laughs].” The skits rarely provoke much offense, in keeping with the club’s motto that a gridiron “singes but never burns.” For a dinner at which President Clinton was to be a guest in 1998, during the Monica lewinsky scandal, club president robert Novak said that he vetoed “a wickedly clever parody of ‘Thank heaven for little Girls.’”3 The 600 Saturday night guests include senators, ambassadors, Cabinet members, Supreme Court judges, the military’s joint chiefs of staff, and, most important to club members: their bosses. Frank Aukofer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Washington bureau chief, recorded that his paper’s chairman sat next to President reagan at the 1985 Gridiron dinner and “reacted like a star-struck teenager.”4 The skits are repeated the next afternoon for a larger audience of members’ sources and friends. This “air of palsy-walsyness between politicians and journalists” is what the club’s critics find most objectionable.5 The club was founded by and for Washington print journalists. For most of its history, that meant white, male, mainstream newspaper and wire service reporters. Columnist Carl rowan was the first black member, elected in 1972; helen Thomas became the first female member three years later. Journalists from television, radio, and magazines were admitted in 2004. Each change was painful to some members. Arthur Krock, in actively opposing rowan’s election, recalled that “parodies in the Negro dialect were very popular and not subject to protest.” The admission of women came only after a “Counter-Gridiron” party drew a larger crowd than the Gridiron dinner itself.6 The print reporters who objected to letting in TV reporters dubbed them the “sparklies.” At the start of 2011 there were a dozen Pulitzer winners among the active or associated members.7 The club is really about the specialness of practicing journalism in Washington. “Sometimes I look out my window ,” said Andy Alexander, “I see the U.S. Capitol, I think wow! There’s nothing really better than this!”8 There are now sixty-five “active members .” Those who leave Washington or leave journalism get transferred to a nonvoting “associated” category. These are the type of reporters made famous in Timothy Crouse’s classic account of a presidential campaign, The Boys on the Bus, or the type who asks questions at a president’s news conference from the front 110 Whatever Happened to the Washington Reporters row. Their beat is essentially politics, whether reporting on government or elections. but after winning his Pulitzer for covering a presidential campaign and heading the...