Bill Clinton’s Excellent Adventure in Show Biz

Got to agree with Bob Dole. Hollywood does produce its share of subpar slop. It’s a sad comment on the state of the Industry when you turn on TV and the funniest thing going is a Bill Clinton speech.

On C-SPAN.

In reruns.

But there he was the other night: The Cutup in Chief, doing a comedy routine at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Assn.

A reporter, said Clinton, had recently asked him if he had figured out his bumper sticker slogan yet. Bumper stickers? said Clinton. I haven’t even thought about November yet.

Ba-da-bum.

Then he did his bit. Giant bumper stickers:

Don’t blame me. I voted for me.

It’s the Incumbency, stupid!

My other car is Air Force One.

If you can read this, I’ve lost my motorcade.

Maybe there’s just something inherently funny about the Supreme Wonk doing shtick, but the guy got laughs.

Too bad he was eclipsed in the coverage by Don Imus, the New York talk-radio host whose occasionally funny but irremediably rude jokes caused a coast-to-coast stink. As the Clintons flanked him on the dais with frozen smiles, Imus skewered the first lady for her missing files and the president for his alleged womanizing. No one laughed. And the effect was like a scene from childhood where you watch your buddy tell a filthy joke about the teacher without realizing she is standing right behind him. Any audience fascination was due to the train wreck factor.

Imus also picked on Newt Gingrich, who sat near Clinton, with a parody of a country tune (“A Boy Named Newt”) and joked that Pat Buchanan lost a relative at Auschwitz--”a guard who fell out of a tower.”

He saved his tackiest stuff--by far--for the network news guys, some of whom probably wished a war would break out somewhere, anywhere, so they could have a reason to leave. Imus mocked Sam Donaldson’s hair, Dan Rather’s sanity, Tom Brokaw’s diction and Peter Jennings’ marital woes.

The audience groaned.

The cameras found Rather and Donaldson, who feigned smiles and chuckles. (I say feigned because it is inconceivable to me that a man self-conscious enough to compensate for hair loss with an immobile toupee would find humor in someone pointing it out over the public address system in a room of 3,000 peers.) The dinner table companions of the two seemed to be trance channeling the newsmen’s true feelings: They wore frozen expressions and stared straight ahead.

Imus kept wiping at the sweat that was running into his eyes. He was flopping, but it didn’t matter. He’s a shock jock. He was doing his job . . . on everyone.

The White House was not pleased.

Press Secretary Mike McCurry said the Clintons “fled the scene as quickly as they could.”

The chairman of the broadcasters organization sent a letter of apology to the Clintons.

Imus described the group as “gutless weasels” and said they should apologize to him.

And lost in the fuss was the only news that the evening spawned: an apparent White House attempt to suppress the rebroadcast of the program. And then, an apparent cover-up of the attempt to suppress.

Oh dear: Imusgate.

Will these humorless White House operatives never learn?

After all, the president was funnier than Imus. The president acquitted himself with wit and style. The president mocked himself.

Instead of giving the show the proper, pro-presidential spin, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry contacted C-SPAN to ask that the program, carried live Thursday, not be rebroadcast over the weekend. And then, in a press briefing, McCurry claimed he had only asked that C-SPAN review the performance to see if it was the sort of thing they wished to broadcast.

This is like a University of California regent writing a letter to a UCLA admissions officer asking for the reconsideration of a rejected student, then pretending he wasn’t trying to use his influence to get the student admitted. (If I may strain credulity with such a farfetched analogy!)

These people throw their weight around then pretend they have no heft. And they wonder why they have credibility problems.

“Imus bombed,” McCurry should have said. “But we’ve been asked if the president can replace Whoopi at the Oscars next year. We’re hoping like hell he has a scheduling conflict. Should know in November.”

* Robin Abcarian’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.