An article in The Economist (of all places) talks about the difficulty comedians are having making jokes about Obama:
- David Letterman says that Obama is “cogent, eloquent, and in complete command of the issues. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
- Bill Mayer complains that Obama is “not fat, not cheating on his wife, not stupid, not angry and not a phoney.”
The two exceptions — who have the guts to make fun of Obama — seem to be The Onion, and Obama himself. The Onion greeted Obama’s election victory with the headline “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job”. And Obama joked that during his second 100 days in office, he would “design, build and open a library dedicated to my first 100 days” and “strongly consider losing my cool”.
4 Comments
Considering that Obama is a phoney, that’s an odd comment for Bill to make.
I read your Late Night Political Humor posts faithfully, and I appreciate that they’re laboring under a difficulty. I applaud their efforts anyway :-). My son is a stringer for The Onion, which tells you a little about his satirical view of the world. God bless ’em, they can skewer anyone.
There have been plenty of good jokes about Obama’s decisions. Leno talks about the tax-evading nominees to executive positions non-stop. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert make fun of how many of Obama’s statements are strangely similar to Bush Jr’s statements. Personally, I prefer that the humor be around the policies and the actions, rather than on the person themselves.
You know, reading the article, the examples they give from the Onion are all making fun of people other than Obama. For example the headline “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job” is really poking fun at America’s history of race issues and how African Americans tend to be given worst jobs than whites. The other examples made fun of Obama’s (sometimes over-enthusiastic) supporters, and the traditional news media (for fawning over Obama). But the only real jokes ABOUT Obama were from Obama himself.