Mirth of a Nation

Mark Katz once had a rather unusual job; he used to write jokes to be sprinkled into the speeches of a sitting president. Now Katz has penned a book about his adventures at the White House called “Clinton & Me.”

Washington Monthly has published a piece that features excerpts of the book. In it Katz writes, “He opened the door and I jumped to my feet. Watching the president of the United States enter the room is always a startling sight. Of course, the sight he encountered might have caught him off-guard too: a nervous guy in a tuxedo secluded in a dimly-lit holding room with a stack of pages in one hand and an egg timer in the other. Although this was the fifth humor speech I had prepared for President Bill Clinton since he'd taken office, we were about to have our very first one-on-one meeting.”