‘Desperate’ Laura tells all

‘‘Not that old joke — not again,’’ Laura said, as her husband willingly relinquished the stage. ‘‘I’ve been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there,’’ the First Lady said. ‘‘I’ve got a few things I want to say for a change.’’

One of her main targets was the President’s bed time. ‘‘I said to him, ‘George, if you really want to end tyranny in this world, you’re going to have to stay up later’,’’ Laura Bush said. ‘‘Nine o’clock and Mr Excitement here is in bed, and I am watching Desperate Housewives — with Lynne Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife.’’

Laura Bush also ribbed her husband for his notoriously rowdy youth, but said they were meant to be together. ‘‘I was a librarian who spent 12 hours a day in the library. Yet somehow I met George.’’

Laura Bush’s string of one-liners generated hearty laughs from the audience, which included celebrity names such as Richard Gere, Mary Tyler Moore, Venus and Serena Williams, Goldie Hawn and Elle MacPherson, as well as journalists and politicians.

The roasting continued as comedian Cedric the Entertainer took the stage, even though he conceded that ‘‘I thought I could follow the President. The first lady is something different.’’

He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has two sides to her, one that’s all business and one that has street credibility. ‘‘Condi is the person you see on TV with the nice hair, and then there’s Leezza, the one with her hair wrapped up on the phone with her girlfriends.’’ —Reuters