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T

hese lyrics may not
sound familiar, but ac-
cording to the political
comedy troupe Capitol
Steps, the melody will surely
ring a bell.
"We sing this to the tune of
Alan Sherman's famous camp
song," says Elaina Newport,
founding member of the Capitol
Steps. "It always gets a laugh,
especially from Jewish audi-
ences."
But this is just one of many
musical parodies and skits that
the Capitol Steps will be per-
forming on July 4 at the Ann Ar-
bor Summer Festival. Skilled at
getting laughs out of the na-
tional headlines, the Steps
rapid-fire satirical repertoire in-
cludes poking fun at politicians
and people in the news. And al-
most no one holding an office in
Washington, D.C., is spared.
"This year will really be fun
with an election coming up,"
laughs Newport, who has per-
formed for four presidents, from
Ford to Clinton. "Bob Dole is
running for president; Newt
Gingrich is always in the news;
and Ross Perot pokes his head
up once in a while. They are all
so much fun to do."
Do they have a favorite pres-
idential target? "Bush because
of Dan Quayle," Newport an-
swers without hesitation. "Let
me tell you: it was hard tr ding
Quayle for Gore."
Needless to say, the political
humor comes naturally for this
Washington, D.C.-based cabaret
troupe, given the background of
its members. The 20 men and
women were all former con-
gressional staffers, lawyers, leg-
islative aides and the like who
know the ins and outs of Penn-
sylvania Avenue and Capitol
Hill. While they were not

a

Tip

Phone

It's no wonder that we won the
Nobel Peace Prize ...

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trained as entertainers, they
learned to find humor in the
stickiest of situations.
The company was formed in
1981 when Newport, along with
co-worker and Harvard grad Bill
Strauss, was asked to provide
entertainment at a Christmas
party in the office of then-Sen.
Charles Percy. Deciding that a
Nativity play wouldn't be any
fun, and joking that they
couldn't find "three wise men
and a virgin in Congress," they
opted to search the front-page
news, pick hot topics of the day
and turn them into hilarious
numbers.
'e tried to figure out what
would bring in some laughs, and
we actually rehearsed and prac-
ticed our material, which
amazed people," chuckles New-
port, a staffer who graduated
from the University of Maryland
with a degree in business. "To
our surprise, some people who
attended actually liked our skits
and asked us to entertain
at their parties. More people
started to call us, and the rest is
history. But we thought that if
we were going to keep perform-
ing, we had better make this a
bipartisan group and add peo-
ple from the House, balancing
both Democrats and Republi-
cans."
It didn't take long before New-
port and Strauss were in de-
mand, and they eventually had
to quit their day jobs and expand
their troupe. Over the past 13
years, the Capitol Steps has per-
formed in 43 states, recorded 15
albums and appeared on sever-
al national television shows, in-
cluding "20/20," "The Late
Show," "Good Morning America"
and "Entertainment Tonight."
Many celebrities and politi-
cians who have been targets
themselves, including Larry
King, Sam Donaldson, Surgeon
General Koop, Fawn Hall and
Vice President Gore, have either
performed with the group or
hired them for their own parties.
In fact, the Capitol Steps per-
formed at Al Gore's 49th birth-
day celebration.
"Clinton was there, and both
he and Gore were cracking up,"
Newport recalls. "We did the
Gore diaries, comparing them to
the Packwood diaries. We said
that Al Gore has been keeping
diaries all these years. We read
from them and, of course, they
were deadly dull."
Although it's the men and
women in public office that are
the group's most visible targets,
there are some people and scan-

