Category: politics

making fun of obama

This article really made me laugh. :)

From AP, via Yahoo News:

By FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore, Ap Television Writer Mon Nov 10, 11:42 am ETNEW YORK – Where’s the funny in Barack Obama?

That question, which dogged TV humorists throughout the presidential race, has gained new urgency now that Obama is headed for the White House.

His victory last week signaled imminent hardship for comics who lampoon political leaders for a living. The laugh-a-minute 2008 campaign is history, and soon there’ll be no President Bush to kick around in comedy sketches or talk-show monologues.

Adding to the jesters’ plight: Obama will soon be sworn in as the next Punch-Line-In-Chief.

Here is a man who inspires admiration, excitement or, maybe, suspicion. What he doesn’t inspire (in any measurable quantity, so far) are cheap laughs.

“A dignified, thoughtful, charismatic, smart man who doesn’t run at the mouth,” summed up Craig Ferguson, host of CBS’ “Late Late Show,” in the aftermath of eight go-go Bush years for comics. “Is it a challenge to our creative juices to find something funny about Obama? God, yes!”

Right after the election, some TV wags were even waxing nostalgic on the air, however tongue-in-cheek.

On Comedy Central‘s “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart said he was already missing the Bush administration — and his own George W. Bush impression, which had served him so well at the anchor desk.

“As a comedian,” NBC’s Jay Leno echoed to his “Tonight Show” audience, “I’m going to miss President Bush. Barack Obama is not easy to do jokes about. He doesn’t give you a lot to go on. See, this is why God gave us (Vice President-elect) Joe Biden.

“When one door closes, another one opens up.”

True, as a six-term U.S. Senator and lately as Obama’s running mate, Biden has cemented his reputation for blurting out remarks before they’re vetted by his brain. (Item: Biden declared that “Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television” to address the nation when the stock market crashed in October 1929 — even though Herbert Hoover was president then and TV was barely invented.)

…

The host of HBO’s “Real Time,” comic Bill Maher describes himself as “a policy guy who tries to stick more to what politicians do than who they are.” But that doesn’t mean he’s immune to the problem Obama represents.

“It’s always better if the president is stupid, or fat, or cheating on his wife, or angry, or a phony. This guy is none of those things. And that,” said Maher with a laugh, “is really unfair.

…

Humor often relies on stereotypes and caricature, but comics haven’t yet sussed out how to caricature Obama, and so far he has defied any categorical stereotypes — even that of a black man.

Magician-comedian Penn Jillette recalled how “there have been jokes about Bush that had nothing to do with him being stupid or wrong — just about his being from Texas, since he has a slight Texas accent.

“But if you wanted to do black jokes about Obama, none of them are applicable: It’s as if he were from Texas, but without the Texas accent.”

dave barry, on the us elections

I loooove Dave Barry. :) This latest column of his, however, worries me a little bit because he actually sounds serious.

He “analyzes” the recently concluded elections, then says that he misses the 1960s, where the grown-ups “were capable of understanding a concept that we seem to have lost, which is that people who disagree with you politically are not necessarily evil or stupid.”

This is Dave Barry speaking. Dave Barry.

Read the article here, from the Miami Herald.

I’m posting an excerpt:

In analyzing the results of Tuesday’s historic election, the question we must ask ourselves, first and foremost, is: what the heck were the results of Tuesday’s historic election?

I personally don’t know. The Miami Herald made me send in this analysis before the election was actually over, so that it could be printed in a timely manner. This is part of the newspaper industry’s crafty plan to defeat this ”Internet” thing that has the youngsters so excited.

Anyway, my election analysis, based on weeks of reading political bogs, listening to talk radio and watching campaign ads on television, is that one of the following things is true:

• Barack Obama is our next president, which is very bad because he is a naive untested wealth-spreading terrorist-befriending ultraliberal socialist communist who will suddenly reveal his secret Muslim identity by riding to his inauguration on a camel shouting ”Death to Israel!” (I mean Obama will be shouting this, not the camel) after which he will wreck the economy by sending Joe the Plumber to Guantánamo and taxing away all the income of anybody who makes over $137.50 per year and giving it to bloated government agencies that will deliberately set it on fire.

• Or, John McCain is our next president, which is very bad because he is a 287-year-old out-of-touch multiple-house-owning fascist who will rape the environment and build nuclear power plants inside elementary schools and reinstate slavery and create tax loopholes that benefit only people who own three or more personal helicopters, after which he will declare war on the entire United Nations and then keel over dead and leave us with commander-in-chief Sarah ”Flash Card” Palin.

• Or, Ralph Nader is our next president, which is very bad because it means there has been a successful Klingon invasion.

• Or, the outcome of the election is being disputed because of irregularities such as unregistered horses voting in Ohio, or some Florida county tabulating votes in Roman numerals, or God knows what else, which is very bad because it means the next president will be selected via a giant Lawyer-Palooza court fight that will go on until it’s time to hold the Iowa caucuses for the NEXT presidential election.

So basically my analysis is that, whatever happened, we are, as a nation, doomed. We are also bitterly divided, because whoever wins, roughly half of us will despise the other half, and vice versa.