Clinton had a humorist on staff, who wrote of his experiences in this Washington Monthly article.
I took for granted that the endgame of these ritual humor dinners was to ingratiate oneself to the audience–in this case, the press–and that the speaker should be his own primary target. From what I could tell, this did not come naturally to Bill Clinton. I had the feeling that he couldn’t understand why we had handed him pages of self-deprecating jokes to tell to the people who deprecate him for a living. To him, it must have seemed like appeasing Torquemada by placing yourself on the rack until you confess.
Link via Danger Blog!