Twice a year a terrific crash in the darkened ballroom of the New Willard Hotel in Washington startles the President of the U. S.. his Cabinet, Class A senators and congressmen, prime foreign envoys, many a tycoon of business and politics. Suddenly a jester rushes in upon them with the first jape to start one of the Washington newsmen’s famed gridiron club dinners.
Last week gridironing was again ushered in with a crash.
Gridiron President Roberts: What is that awful noise?
Member in the Dark: I’ll bet they’re keeping Johnson out of this dinner by an inadvertence.
Jester: Not at all! They’re keeping out Senator Brookhart and it’s no inadvertence.
For laymen a gridiron evening constitutes a stiff examination in political current events. For professional politicians it is a trying game like “Truth.” Last week President Hoover good naturedly watched his “Commission-a-Month Club” recess before it became a “Commission-a-Minute Club.” The Hoover “Naval Yardstick” was brought forth in an elaborate box which proved to be empty, though a gridironer insisted it contained “the same yardstick that was used to place agriculture on a parity with manufacturing.”A counterfeit Harry Ford Sinclair raced through the ballroom brandishing a revolverin pursuit of the man who said you could not put 100 million dollars in jail. The President’s efforts to make Washington a model dry city were parodied with “The Song of Firewatha in the Land of Many Ha-Has.” The Hoover “new patriots” were revealed as patrioteers; erstwhile Hoover advisers (Dr. Work, Horace Mann, James Francis Burke) appeared as ragged continentals, badly frost bitten out in the cold.
All in the best humor President Hoover watched the ridicule pile mountain high. Then he made a speech which, by custom, was not reported. Other speakers: New York’s Mayor James John Walker, Wisconsin’s Senator Robert Marion La Follette.
Among the 400-odd gridiron guests: Tammany Chief John Francis Curry, Sugar Lobbyist Herbert Conrad Lakin, Senatorial Host Walter J. Fahy, National City Bank President Gordon John Rentschler, the Governors of Missouri, Kansas, Virginia, Maryland; Senator Grundy (very popular), but not Senator Brookhart.
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