While most kids were running home from school to watch “Speed Racer,” one little 10-year-old boy was rotating the dial to something with more drama and suspense: the live Senate Select Committee On Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Watergate hearings.
Hey, some kids had the hots for Trixie or Chim Chim, but Mark Katz loved to hate Nixon. He didn’t know why, but he knew it was fun. Everything he knew about Nixon came from the in-depth coverage in Mad magazine. Mark and his brother Robby wrote some Nixon jokes:
Q: What did Ehrlichman say when he walked into the Oval Office and saw Haldeman?
A: Testing. Testing. One, two, three.
Hysterical–when you’re 10.
This passion for politics led Mark Katz to a gig as a joke writer for Michael Dukakis.
“You are looking at the guy who made Mike Dukakis so funny,” Katz told me during a recent stop in Chicago to promote his new book “Clinton and Me: A Real Life Political Comedy” on the “WGN Morning News.”
Well, he would have, if Dukakis had listened to him. The funniest thing about Dukakis was watching a 5-foot Democrat with Count Chocula eyebrows put on an army helmet and ride in a tank–but that wasn’t supposed to be comedy, and “tank” is exactly what happened to his 1988 presidential campaign.
Katz, who is a one-liner writer-for-hire to any Democrat, hoped he would have more luck when he was asked to help President Clinton in 1995 after Clinton was ripped in the media for giving a 90-minute State of the Union snore-a-thon.
Katz wrote some jokes for Clinton’s next speech four days later at Washington’s Alfalfa Club, and he hit on a technique for lightening up the presidential podium: an egg timer, which the president would pull out, set to five minutes, then reset as needed. Clinton balked at the idea. “You can put the egg timer away,” Clinton said with a glare.
On the night of the speech, though, the president was bombing. Suddenly, he reached into the pocket for the emergency gag–the egg timer.
According to Katz, it was the one authentic laugh of the night.
“It was a lesson in humor that he needed to learn, quite honestly, which is: Humor in Washington is best used when it’s self-directed. That’s kind of the first rule in Washington politics. Second rule is, ‘Repeat as necessary.’ The third rule is, ‘Once you’ve been sufficiently self-deprecating, you’ve acquired the right to be self-deprecating on behalf of others.’ “
One year later, Katz developed rule No. 4: Things are only as bad as the things you can’t joke about.*
* See Monica Lewinsky.
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lpotash@tribune.com
