No one, and nothing, was sacred at St. Pat's breakfast

By Chris Cassidy
Staff writer

March 15, 2008 07:21 am

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SALEM — Newly elected state Rep. Lori Ehrlich had been sworn in for less than 24 hours when she arrived at yesterday morning's St. Patrick's Day breakfast.

"My colleagues warned this could possibly be my hazing," Ehrlich said.

That's because the annual jokefest generally spares no one and serves as perhaps the only acceptable time of year when local politicians can joke freely about such serious matters as sex scandals and gaping budget deficits.

Mayor Kim Driscoll couldn't resist tapping into the most obvious piece of comedy gold — the Eliot Spitzer prostitute scandal.

"He spent more on call girls in a year than I make in a year," said Driscoll, whose $80,000-a-year salary recently fell to 110th below a long list of police officers and firefighters.

The mayor was even able to joke about a recent crisis that brought the city bad publicity but ended with the community uniting in a show of solidarity.

"I'm talking about the bake-sale ban," Driscoll said. "We've eliminated all whipped cream from city limits. We're seeing contraband banana cream pies. But it was great we were all able to come together for lemon meringue."

Driscoll, a Hillary Clinton supporter, also tried to look for the silver lining if her candidate loses her bid for the White House.

"Think of all those great pantsuits I'll be able to buy on eBay," said the mayor.

After Driscoll spoke, a Hillary Clinton impersonator walked into the room, began shaking hands, then glanced over at the mayor.

"Nice suit," said the Clinton actor, Heidi Dallin of Gloucester.

Patrice Tierney was at the breakfast in place of her husband, Congressman John Tierney, who is an undecided superdelegate being heavily courted by both the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

"Do you need anything? Anything at all? Your car washed? Because my husband is available," the Clinton actor told Tierney. "That might be the best use of his time in this campaign."

State Rep. John Keenan, the host of the breakfast, seemed to get the most laughs by being unfunny. He wondered if anyone named John can tell a decent joke.

"John Keenan, John Kerry, John Tierney, Jon Blodgett — not a single one of us is funny," said Keenan. "Toilets are named after us. People like Gov. Spitzer are called johns."

The annual event at Finz on Pickering Wharf is a political fundraiser for Keenan, who is running for re-election, but has drawn big names the past few years. Gov. Deval Patrick tested out some of his one-liners for the annual South Boston breakfast at the Salem event last year.

Sen. John Kerry was expected to attend yesterday but had to cancel at the last minute to stay in Washington.

Senate Majority Leader Fred Berry was also missing.

When Kerry bailed on the breakfast, Keenan turned to state Rep. Charley Murphy of Burlington, who prepared for the joke-telling session by browsing the city's Web site.

"Is Councilor Lovely here?" Murphy asked. "What a great name — Lovely."

While on the city's Web site, Murphy stumbled across a question-and-answer page explaining how the massive school budget crisis happened.

"It was a 9,000-word dissertation starting with canon law and ending with, "Yeah, we pretty much screwed up," Murphy said.

City councilors, business leaders, lawyers and state officials also ate breakfast, sipped coffee and listened to live Irish music beforehand.

It even started with a prayer.

"Please God," Keenan said, "let me say something funny without offending anyone."

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Staff writer Chris Cassidy can be reached at 978-338-2526 or by e-mail at ccassidy@salemnews.com.

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