Sarah Palin meets the enemy -- we mean, cracks jokes and sings -- at winter Gridiron dinner

Dec. 7, 2009 11:45 AM PT

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‘It is good to be here and in front of this audience of leading journalists and intellectuals. Or, as I call it, a death panel.’

-- Sarah Palin at the Gridiron Club’s 2009 winter dinner

Sarah Palin continues to pull crowds -- even at the Gridiron Club’s winter dinner, where attendance Saturday was up 17.3% over last year. This isn’t the big Gridiron affair, mind you -- that one’s in spring. Still, the audience was full of journalists, well known for their warm embrace of the former Alaska governor.

For the first time in club history, the ‘off the record’ rule for events was partially lifted: Twittering was allowed, though not during speeches or songs.

Maybe Barney Frank‘s fans just absolutely, positively had to know what he was up to?

To think, after the same dinner 100 years ago, the New York Times printed that ‘of course, no woman has ever seen a Gridiron dinner.’

Palin, who has ‘the Twitter thing going,’ didn’t tweet from the dinner. Perhaps too busy speaking and singing.

Want the transcript of Sarah Palin getting her David Letterman on?

-- Christie D’Zurilla

to sign copies of her recently released book ‘Going Rogue: An American Life.’ Credit: Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images.

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