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For stand-up comedians, pulling off a successful stint at the White House Correspondents' Dinner is an uphill battle. Your audience is famously stiff and they also happen to be some of the most powerful people in the world. As Brian Williams once told SNL's Seth Myers "[It's the] toughest room in the business – no man comes out unscathed. Even the knees of brave Achilles would go to jelly were he to stand behind that podium." And the same goes for presidents, who have to juggle the right balance between material that's sufficiently humorous and reasonably presidential. As such, jokes get scrapped and left on the cutting room floor all the time.
Often times, you never hear about what gets cut. But today, Mark Katz who used to pen jokes for President Bill Clinton, recalled a rather edgy quip from way back in 1998 that was never used.“It was, ‘Looking back, maybe I should have raised money in the Oval Office and had sex in the Lincoln Bedroom,’” Katz told The Washington Times. “I knew that was going nowhere. At the White House, people are very blunt about what lines you cannot cross." At the time, the Monica Lewinksy sex scandal was still fresh in the public's memory and you can imagine how the press might react. Still, Katz has some regrets the joke was never used. "My instincts are to address those topics," he said.