Name: Cokie Roberts on Letterman, February 19, 1992
Uploaded: 2019-09-17T18:10:56.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Cokie Roberts on Letterman, February 19, 1992' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-09-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Cokie Roberts on Letterman, February 19, 1992' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-09-17. Transcript available.

so i'm not completely dumb there is a primary in south dakota oh there is yeah
and coincidentally
her father lives out there i see so i asked the kid from colorado i say have
you been watching
the winter olympics and he says no and then he puts five golf balls in your
mouth and then you
kind of realize why he's he's got a hobby he doesn't need to watch tv our next
guest can be seen
regularly on abc's this week with david brinkley and also with peter jennings
on world news tonight
and she is heard covering the political scene for national public radio ladies
and gentlemen
please welcome cokie roberts cokie
thank you very much this must be i guess this is the time of year or the time
in a career
that you either love and thrive on or just dread and becomes drudgery and and
fills you with hate
and anxiety which which is it for you well i didn't dread it as much as i just
found out that
i would because i'm sorry i i wonder why it is that after a year and a half i
come on after stupid
human tricks oh no no they they were like opening for you they were sort of i
don't want to say
setting the mood for you but you know i can do one you have one for us i can anton
you know it helps if you paste that up there with a little beer
uh uh first of all let me may ask you uh oh here it is we have it and oh we saw
it already um let me
ask you about your name is that all right cokie i've not heard that name i don't
think uh you know
i've heard corky but not cokie have you imagined why i might have such a name i
mean yes have bad
things come to mind no no not nothing bad i mean just you know but i ruminate
about it from time to
time well it's not quite as bad as desert storm country blossom whatever the
rest of it was but
it's almost like that it's mary martha corinne morrison claborn boggs roberts
wow now that's that
is certainly some name it's catholic yeah yeah and southern and then how how do
we get cokie out of
that is is cokie like the first initial of all of those names no no figure that
out no no my brother
tommy couldn't pronounce corinne which was the main one right time so and so it
all it became cokie
when you were a kid when i was an infant born yeah you know came home from the
hospital and he screwed
it up and there it was but uh but uh various times in my illustrious career
various bosses have tried
to get me to be more formal on the air and uh uh when i went to national public
radio frank mankowitz
was the boss there and he he suggested that i sign off with my full name and i
i said that it would
probably take more air time than we had for the pieces so yeah not enough time
in the broadcasting day
for that so he he backed out yeah but you know it's the kind of thing once once
you hear it once
it's fine it's a cokie oh her name is cokie there was a period when i thought
that when i got to be
a lady of a certain age that i should probably return to corinne but now i'm
that age and no cokie
it's fine it i find it uh it becomes you thank you uh now let's talk a little
bit about uh you and
the primary i guess you spent all day yesterday in new hampshire didn't you or
maybe all night and all
um what what can you tell us about that process and about the situation in
particular up there that
that we ought to know should we know anything do we learn anything from this
did you see
paul song the first thing you should know is that his charisma did precede him
into the studio
this is this is his standard line if you don't have charisma marry it and uh
and nikki songas came
in first so he uh he does allow his charisma to proceed well yeah they're a
team then yes they're a
team and in fact the south dakota thing that you were talking about i the
reason he brought up his
father-in-law his father-in-law is a football hero of ancient days in south dakota
so that this uh
liberal greek american from massachusetts will suddenly be an all-american
football son-in-law
in south dakota and expects to ride in on his father-in-law's cleats now let me
let me ask you
some some so you know we could do that as a trick one of these guys uh but let
me ask you a pedestrian
a pedestrian question here it was my observation uh all kidding aside he seemed
uh scared and now i
would be scared to going into somebody else's show but is the more stupid human
tricks yeah under any
circumstances but now he's won the first big contest so what those two things
uh combine to give us what
what is his political future i guess is what i'm trying to say seriously yeah
um well he is he's got a
a tough road to hoe as we political analysts say he's he's won a neighboring
state but now he's got
to go into states where no one's ever heard of him and and where he has he
gives this very serious
economic message and i don't know whether people want to hear that or not well
yeah but we're told
he's got to raise a whole lot of money yeah to give that message in new hampshire
you can meet
every single solitary person in new hampshire and they hold it against you if
you don't meet them
um although i'm beginning to hold it against them for meeting them but uh but
at least they're not
in iowa uh but uh that's no no wait a minute what what what what is the matter
with iowa well i always
get in trouble on this one because iowans hate me but uh it's it's what the
hell happened out there
iowa is really cold now new hampshire's cold but iowa is unbelievably cold and
it's far distances
new hampshire you can get around in a short period iowa you drive eight hours
you see nothing for all
you should try those uh local hometown newspapers in iowa those people go so
crazy in the winter that
i'm not making this up there's a headline a week of you know a farm woman buries
husband under dining
room table you know and digs him up in spring that kind of thing it's true and
you it is it's a it's a
place that can people can get very stir crazy in the winter time and uh and
politicians get particularly
stir crazy and you go and you cover a campaign out there and what this involves
is millions of
politicians running around and meeting every single person in iowa of whom they're
about six uh over
and over and over again and uh and then the night finally comes the entire
international media is there
there are forest of satellite trucks and dishes and all that and you go and sit
in somebody's living room
there are more of us than there are of the people there and the way an iowa
caucus works is that that you
say you know all the gebhart supporters in this corner all the simon supporters
in this corner all the
babbitt supporters in this corner you know all the jackson one so everybody
gets up and they go to their
corners and uh then i'm not making this up and then if somebody it's like a mary
k party or something
except you don't get made up and uh and if somebody doesn't have enough
delegates enough people in their
corner uh to reach a fifteen percent threshold then they can't send their
delegates onto the county
convention that's what we're talking about here so what will happen is mary sue
will say or mary k um
will say oh come on uh peggy come on over to my corner because i want to go to
the convention
they start to share that's right and so her corner will be the jackson corner
for instance right and
so then jackson reaches the threshold and we all go on the air and say in a
surprising move jesse
jackson has just come in second in the iowa caucus we didn't have to do that
but you know when you
say negative things about people in iowa you're forgetting one thing they're
very nice people
there are interstates out there they can get in their cars and they can come
here and find you
that's true but i'm not going to be here for long very very careful uh do me a
favor say hello to
those boys down there in washington on the david brinkley show uh george will
and sam donelson and
those other lunatics my guys nice to see you koki thank you very much for being
here koki roberts
yeah kids we have to pause for station i'd like to get to see you right back