Even Edwards’ own staff didn’t ride to her defense, declining to comment on the speech. The most painful speech ever

Washingtonians sit through terrible speeches all the time: dry rules hearings, partisan floor lectures and, let’s face it, even the State of the Union some years.

So it was a bad day for Rep. Donna Edwards Thursday, when Washingtonians gathered at coffee pots and in lunch rooms across town and deemed her performance at the Washington Press Club Foundation annual dinner Wednesday night the most painful speech we’ve endured in a long time.


It was supposed to be a comedy – an annual ritual where a member of Congress entertains a wonky crowd of journalists, lawmakers, and all variety of political insiders with jokes you wouldn’t mind repeating to your mother.

But more people were wincing than laughing.

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“I survived the Donna Edwards #wpcfdinner speech of 2014,” tweeted Mike Memoli, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who sat through the fiasco.

Ed Henry, Fox News chief White House correspondent, retweeted him, and added the hashtag: #isitdoneyet?

Edwards’ speech, reportedly written by co-creator of The Daily Show, Lizz Winstead, might have sounded great on paper or in practice sessions in front of a friendly audience, but it came off as a Republican hate-fest sprinkled with the kind of sexual humor that made the buttoned-up crowd squirm – not laugh. It’s a reminder how hard it is to entertain a tough crowd, like one filled with cynical journalists.

At one point Edwards, a Democrat from Maryland, made the equivalent of a sexual battle cry to ladies in the room: “Come on, help me y’all: I want to give a really special shout out to Nancy Pelosi and all my sisters in the libido caucus — holla’!” she cried out, raising her hands above her head.

Reaction: blank stares and furrowed brows.

The next day, some attendees figured out she was mocking a recent speech by Mike Huckabee, who accused Democrats of telling women they’re helpless without “Uncle Sugar” and the government to control their libido with birth control.

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But it went over most people’s heads in the moment and was one of many cringe-worthy lines that setup mild-mannered Sen. Jeff Flake, a Mormon Republican from Arizona, to seem like a comic genius when he delivered such zingers as an introduction of his spouse as “my only wife, Cheryl.”

And if the reviews weren’t bad enough from the strangers in the audience, even Edwards’ own staff didn’t ride to her defense, declining to comment on the speech.

Edwards is going to keep her day job, but should she attempt comedy again— especially in Washington — heed this advice from POLITICO and other attendees Wednesday evening:

Know when to make your exit.

The audience did enjoy the opener to Edwards’ gig, a video spoofing the TV show, “Scandal.”

( Also on POLITICO: The show FLOTUS binge-watched)

Created by Revolution Messaging — whose founder Scott Goodstein was online director for Obama for America in 2008 — the skit had Edwards playing fictional character Olivia Pope, a political fixer who carries on an affair with a Republican president.

Edwards appeared on the ballroom’s big screen chatting on the phone with President Fitzgerald Grant, decked out in all white, swigging from a massive glass of red wine in an ode to Pope when she got a phone call from her other lover: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio.)

The crowd roared with laughter.

But five minutes of her talking, most attendees either tuned out and started scrolling through their iPhones, left the room altogether until she stopped speaking, or tossed back their glasses to gulp down more booze.

“I think everyone in that room wanted to drag their fingernails across their face,” said one congressional reporter attending.

Many agreed she should have quit while she was ahead.

“She could have stopped at the ‘Scandal’ video, I think everybody loved that – and not just because it sampled The Album Leaf song ‘The Light,’” said Matt Fuller, a House leadership reporter for Roll Call.

Another reporter at the event said “it’s okay to bomb” a voluntary comedy routine — “just wrap it up quickly and don’t let it drag on.”

But let it drag on she did.

At one point she seemed to compare Republicans to monkeys with typewriters who keep typing “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi” over and over again.

Some just got up and left.

“You can confidently say the urinals in the mens’ bathroom was full,” dished one reporter who left the room during the speech to use the restroom because it was so awkward.

At least a dozen people were milling around the lobby until she stopped talking.

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Keep the sex talk to a minimum

Perhaps it was the “Scandal” spoof that put her speechwriter in the mood, but Edwards took it a bit far.

“There are times when we still find time to work together,” Edwards said of bipartisanship, including work she has done with Flake. “And when I say together, I mean in a Cialis commercial kind of way.”

Yes, Cialis — the competitor to Viagra.

She went on to suggest how their work across the aisle was like two lovers trying and failing to cook up a night of hot love making. The two people — or political parties? — are gawking at each other thinking, “Oh, we’re gonna do it!”

… Then end up in “two different bath tubs.”

Reaction: Lots of wide eyes and stunned gazes.

Igor Bobic, assistant editor of Talking Points Memo, tweeted in all caps: “MAKE IT STOP” and “WHY DONNA WHY.”

Don’t be a bully.

Making fun of yourself is always a good call in comedy, a memo Flake received.

But Edwards didn’t get that message. Many thought her speech was flat-out mean.

Toward the end of her spiel, she knocked Flake for misspelling “shenanigans” during the National Press Club’s Centennial Spelling Bee a few months ago.

She spelled it for him: “S-h-e-n-a-n-i-g-a-n-s.” And in case the audience didn’t get it, she spelled it again, glancing over to ensure he got the point.

She went on to brag that she, on the other hand, actually won a spelling bee once.

“It’s never an easy task and it’s voluntary so you have to respect anyone who puts themselves out there, but it also requires a certain level of self-deprecation and humor – both of which were in the Congresswoman’s introductory video but definitely missing in her prepared remarks,” said Brian Walsh, former Hill staffer and partner at Singer Bonjean Strategies.

Edwards also laid the slap down on a group of Republicans she joined on a trip to Egypt for a congressional junket, including tea party firebrands Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Steve Stockman (R-Texas).

She showed a picture of the group on an overhead screen with an arrow pointing to her, an African American, buried in the back behind a bunch of white travelers.

She said the trip gave her “Stockman syndrome” — a condition, she explained, derived from hanging out with so many tea partiers that she said she found herself falling in love with more centrist Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

Crowd response? Crickets — and more reaches for wine.

Some in the audience didn’t even get it, they later told us. It was a play on “Stockholm syndrome,” where a hostage develops feelings for his or her captor. But not all captives feel that way.

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