Spitzer Lampooned

Tonight's Inner Circle performance, a black-tie charity fundraiser held at the New York Hilton, took off the gloves and delved right into this week's political shocker, the Spitzer scandal and resignation. The manic events of the past five days required cast members, who are primarily New York radio and television personalities, to put in long hours both covering the unfolding story and re-writing portions of the script of their show to be up-to-the-minute as details of the tawdry affair were uncovered. Traditionally, the hammy corps of 100 journos creates an annual show to lampoon the sitting mayor. Immediately following the reporters' on-stage antics, the mayor has the chance for a theatrical rebuttal. Last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was joined on stage with cast members from Mary Poppins. This year, it was the cast of Xanadu. The fun-spirited give-and-take parry has been going on for more than eighty years. This evening's performance, called Young Mikenstein, a send-up of the Mel Brooks musical currently playing at the New Amsterdam theater, follows the wild campaign to create a monster-style replacement for our lame duck mayor. The Spitzer jokes, however, start early and don't let up. Watch for WCBS Newsradio 880's Rich Lamb as Michael Bloomberg, Glenn Schuck of 1010 WINS as a hilarious and inspired Igor, the CW11's Mary Murphy as a singing and dancing Hillary Clinton and Marvin Scott as NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein, as well as CBS 2's John Slattery as George W. Bush, among others. Photographs courtesy of Marvin Scott.

A Meal Fit for McCain, Hill, Barack or Even…You!

As the nation tuned in tonight to watch the results of Super Tuesday pour in, a small group of journalists got a taste of what the next president might be eating when he or she stays in New York. The Presidential Suite of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the New York home away from home for every sitting president since Herbert Hoover, is a surprisingly compact (2,000-square-foot) habitation thirty-five stories above Park Avenue. For the past twenty-three years, when the time has come for a meal in the Presidential Suite, the commanders-in-chief have called upon John Doherty, the hotel's executive chef. In other words, Doherty has cooked for presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush #2. And now, he'll cook for you (and your good friends), too. What does it take to sup like the president does? Book the Presidential Suite (cost, from $7,000 to $10,000 per night, depending on length of stay) and for $330 per plate, you, too, can dine on seared scallops with potato-chive mousseline (as Bill Clinton did in 2000); poached turbot with champagne-caviar sauce (as Ronald Reagan did in 1985); roast rack of lamb with saffron potatoes, candied eggplant and pickled onion (as George H.W. Bush did in 1992); and the so-called Chocolate Extravaganza (which George W. Bush tucked into in 2007). See dishes below. Designed to resemble the décor in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue, the accommodations in the Presidential Suite contain artifacts including a rocker bequeathed by John F. Kennedy (which yours truly tried out, see below)and crystal sconces provided by Richard Nixon. Although Doherty swears he never fielded any outrageous culinary requests from residents of the Oval Office, he admitted that his least challenging meals were the "pasta and vegetables" so favored by Bill Clinton. The only MENU no-no's were super-rich foods during the Reagan years (the Gipper suffered from diverticulitis) and of course, broccoli, which was verboten during the tenure of Bush #1. %%showphotos [setid=72157603859709085]%%