Utah's Spencer Cox gambles for laughs at D.C.'s bougie Gridiron Dinner 

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If you missed it, the reviews are in for the recent speech by Gov. Spencer Cox at the annual Gridiron dinner in Washington, D.C. He passed with flying colors.

The Gridiron Club was founded in 1885 and, for decades, was an exclusive bastion of the high-and-mighty players in the newspaper industry. By the 1970s, other media—including broadcast media—were allowed entry, and in short order, so were women.

Yep, the liberal bastion of print media was pretty much an old-boys club at nearly the same time as I was first being pulled into the communications department at the University of Utah. Truth is, I wasn't pulled in. By the time decent counselors got ahold of me, Journalism and Mass Communications—as the department was known back then—was the single department other than English that allowed me the fastest exit from what would become seven years of college education. It was a good move.

I like English and all—no offense to my old pals who I studied and read alongside—but I simply didn't see myself as finding joy in dissecting well-crafted sentences for the rest of my life. Instead, I learned to make a career of writing fractured sentences. The pay was barely better, but at least I was able to fully confront my demons and admit that I have no idea, even to this day, where to properly place quotation marks, or when to use an apostrophe, especially in the plural form when a word ends in "s."

Given I'm this far down another column-writing rabbit hole that I didn't seek out, I would like to tip my inkwell to two really fine University of Utah English department professors from my era: one a seaman, the other a gambler, both of whom had the temerity to move my dysfunctional education needle: Robert Steensma, my Shakespeare instructor, and David Kranes, who taught creative writing.

I'm a bit curious now: Is creative writing even taught at the university level in these days of whiny—albeit sometimes quite clever—social media snippets? Could Shakespeare have buttered his bread by mastering the art of the online blog or podcast? We shall never know and, thankfully, the rabbit hole has self-corrected.

Yes, ahem, at the aforementioned Gridiron dinner, where said journalism professionals along with a smattering of thicker-skinned politicians, gather annually, one of the stars of the show was Utah's own guv, Spencer J. Cox—he of the central Utah town of Fairview, which—he pointed out in his speech—is home to more turkeys than people. President Joe Biden also attended the event and reportedly was the first to his feet to lead attendees in a standing ovation for Gov. Cox at the completion of the speech.

I read the speech in it's or its (where oh where does the apostrophe go?) entirety and can validate that his words were indeed clever, his jokes funny, his tone self-deprecating and, his ambition on full alert. If either Steensma or Kranes were to grade his speech, I'm certain that each would give high marks.

Don't misunderstand. I have no idea if either would appreciate Cox's words, his delivery or how they were received by the audience. I'm merely saying that Steensma, an almost 40-year careered Navy man, would have warily appreciated the bipartisan Cox tone ("Who is this young proselyte?" he might ask, "Richard III or Henry V?"). While Kranes, who frequently wrote dramatically about the underbelly of casino life, would have focused pit-boss attention on this brash, self-effacing but ultimately strategic gambler, Cox.

The governor did make sure that everyone learned a bit about his "disagree better" initiative. As an elevator pitch, I like "agree better," better—but I grew up in a copper mine where disagreement could land you in a real mess, not on a turkey farm where agreement leads turkeys to slaughter.

If you're curious about reading his full speech, it's easy to find. But to give you a taste, I've grabbed a couple quotes for you:

"... and finally, as we approach another election, I want to thank the media in this room for standing up for democracy and protecting us from a power-hungry, narcissistic, misogynist. I mean, can you imagine how terrible our country would be right now if we had elected Mitt Romney in 2012? You deserve a lot of credit for saving us from binders full of women, dogs strapped on top of cars, and ... well that's just 47% of the things I remember you telling us about Mitt Romney."

I guess that's kind of a knee-slapper in D.C. It does give a fair contextual foil to how a certain line was delivered by former President Donald Trump at the single Gridiron dinner he attended in 2018:

"There's talk about Joe Biden, Sleepy Joe, getting into the race. Give me a break. The guy who keeps making outrageous statements thinks he has a shot at being president? Guy makes outrageous statements. He's going to be president? He doesn't have a shot."

Trump is not only not funny, he's also not The Amazing Kreskin.

While the Gridiron dinner is an obnoxiously exclusive affair, it does offer a chance to express across-the-aisle respect and an opportunity to be seen as a clever, likable human—i.e., electable. Cox did that (and yes, dear reader, I know exactly the really shitty bills that the governor has signed into law this year and in past years). So, I fairly wonder if Spencer J. Cox is going to endorse Trump, a man not endorsed by his wife, Abby, nor by his lieutenant governor, Deidre Hendrickson.

What will the Cox roll-of-the-dice gamble reveal? Is he Iago or Cordelia? Or better, can he be a Brutus, who ultimately succeeded with an honorable gamble.

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