'Desperate Housewife' Laura Grabs Stage from Bush

(Reuters) ^ | 5/1/05 | By Karey Wutkowski

[Rebelbase]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First Lady Laura Bush grabbed the stage from President Bush at the White House correspondents annual dinner on Saturday and confessed to all his early bedtimes had turned her into a "desperate housewife."

Laura Bush, who is often seen smiling sweetly at her husband's side, stood up just in time to rescue the audience of political heavyweights and Hollywood celebrities from Bush's retelling of a joke about steel rail "cattle guards" that bombed before a Montana town meeting in March.

"Not that old joke -- not again," Laura Bush said, as her husband willingly relinquished the stage.

"I've been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there," the First Lady told the audience. "Well, I've got a few things I want to say for a change."

One of her main targets was the president's bed time.

"I said to him the other day, 'George, if you really want to end tyranny in this world, you're going to have to stay up later,"' Laura Bush said. "Nine o'clock and Mr. Excitement here is in bed, and I am watching 'Desperate Housewives' -- with Lynne Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife."

Laura Bush also ribbed her husband for his notoriously rowdy youth, but said they were meant to be together.

"I was a librarian that spent 12 hours a day in the library. Yet somehow I met George."

Laura Bush's string of one-liners generated hearty laughs from the audience, which included celebrity names such as Richard Gere, Mary Tyler Moore, Venus and Serena Williams, Goldie Hawn and Elle MacPherson, as well as journalists and politicians.

The roasting continued as comedian Cedric the Entertainer took the stage, even though he conceded that "I thought I could follow the president. The first lady is something different."

He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has two sides to her, one that's all business and one that has street credibility.

"Condi is the person you see on television with the nice hair, and then there's Leezza, the one with her hair wrapped up on the phone with her girlfriends watching BET (Black Entertainment Television)."

[LisaMalia]

Look at the look on Dubya's face . . . he's having as good a time as Laura is. He seems like he's enjoying the hell out of her monologue!

I agree. He was loving every minute of it!

Laura Bush has grace and class, the real kind, not the fake kind that some former First Ladies are known for. She showed a side of herself last night that we all knew was there...a wonderful sense of humor.

Unfortunately, some on here are too busy passing judgment to get it.

[farmer18th]

The kind of woman I would like go out and have a drink with.

Family type, heah? Good old red state salt of the earth type, heah? It's all very funny when the elites make fun of infidelity, but when they come to you to pay for all the fatherless children, I hope you and the first "lady" are sober enough to pay up.

[Gabz]

What on God's Green earth are you rambling on about?

What does an absurdly funny joke, funny because it is so absurd, have to do with fatherless children?

I happen to be a loving mother and wife who enjoys a good laugh and being a mature responsible adult.

I'm terribly sorry you find me so offensive - but that's your problem, not mine.

[farmer18th]

Lynn Cheney doing the same thing would be ludicrous and absurd. And funny.

And, I suppose you won't open the door to degrading? This is the work of the court jester, not the leader of the free world--or his wife. If you don't think this is an example of moral decline, can you see Mrs. Eisenhower making these sorts of jokes, or even Mrs. Truman? In the 19th century, only a whore would have degraded herself this way.

But what does the past tell us? What can we possibly learn from a culture that had no welfare state because it didn't elevate comedy at all costs to the highest shelf in the pantheon?

Perhaps she should have told some down south Cracker jokes? Would that have been appropriate?

[Servant of the 9]

If you don't think this is an example of moral decline, can you see Mrs. Eisenhower making these sorts of jokes, or even Mrs. Truman?

Neither was known to have a sense of humor.

In the 19th century, only a whore would have degraded herself this way.

Yes, because they were aping 19th century middle class English mores.

In the 18th century, our founding fathers would have found it perfectly reasonable behavior. They had healthy bawdy senses of humor, and of the absurd.

SO9

[Matchett-PI]

Matchett-PI: "Please list the all the ways you think that Jesus didn't "really mean it" when he said Christians are free, ace."

farmer18th: "If you love me, keep my commandments." --Jesus"

That's your answer?

[farmer18th]

In the 18th century, our founding fathers would have found it perfectly reasonable behavior.

You still don't get it. I've read my share of 18th century newspapers and they had both a baudy sense of humor and a willingness to rip down houses of ill fame--but the public statements of public leaders was a far different matter. Laura did just as much damage with this as Betty Ford did with her daughter "living together" comments. We can only have a light-handed government when we have self-rule--and Laura Bush thinks she's free to make any gutter joke she wants. That's very sad--both for the country and the moral obtuseness it has manifested in some of these yuppie lite conservatives here.

[Gabz]

Neither Mrs. Eisenhower or Mrs. Truman were given the opportunity to tell any sort of joke during this dinner during their husband's administrations.

The ever so slightly off color innuendo joke told by Mrs. Bush last night are nothing compared to past dinners.....

[farmer18th]

You seem to be saying that Christ's sacrifice was tailor made so that you are FREE to sin all you like. That is so patently absurd, and self-serving, it doesn't require a response.

[Matchett-PI]

"For he that is dead is freed from sin."

"Tell me how the first lady making whore jokes represents freedom from sin?" ~ farmer18th

As soon you can name the human being (Christian or otherwise) who is free from sin.

Those whom God has freed aren't under the penalty of their sin. Jesus paid their penalty. You didn't KNOW that, ace?

[farmer18th]

Those whom God has freed aren't under the penalty of their sin.

Apparently you don't know that, or you have cheapened it, by making an argument for cheap grace. When Paul speaks to the new church, after enumerating grievous sins, he says "such WERE some of you."

Do you want a lesson in past and present tense?

[Matchett-PI]

"You seem to be saying that Christ's sacrifice was tailor made so that you are FREE to sin all you like. That is so patently absurd, and self-serving, it doesn't require a response."

You are free to sin.

Do you know anyone who doesn't?

All Christians are free to love God and do as they please.

This is a "hard saying" for spiritually immature mentalities like the SNL "Church Lady"

Isn't that special?

[mabelkitty]

Yes, she did.
She also said they would not have told anybody, but Ruth Ginsberg and Sandra Day O'Connoer saw them.

[mabelkitty]

It's just you.
This was a private dinner for a private organization.
You wouldn't even be hearing about it if the remarks came from W.

[mabelkitty]

Not true.
I saw it at least three times in a four hour period.
Both jokes.

[Matchett-PI]

Matchett-PI:"Those whom God has freed aren't under the penalty of their sin."

farmer18th: "Apparently you don't know that, or you have cheapened it, by making an argument for cheap grace. When Paul speaks to the new church, after enumerating grievous sins, he says "such WERE some of you." Do you want a lesson in past and present tense?"

The works-based spiritually immature aren't in a position to give "lessons" to anyone. You prove that you "don't get it" if you think I'm making an argument for "cheap grace".

[mabelkitty]

Then don't expose your children to it.

[mabelkitty]

The good ole days - when the bluest of blue comics Don Rickles ran the Friars Roasts.

[farmer18th]

The works-based spiritually immature aren't in a position to give "lessons" to anyone. You prove that you "don't get it" if you think I'm making an argument for "cheap grace".

Are you, or are you not, defending Laura Bush's incredibly poor Christian witness? Would Paul, or Jesus, or Peter have praised a sister who makes a joke about going to a strip joint? Is that--or is that not--your Christian witness? Let's get specific.

[Robert_Paulson2]

spot on.