You Can’t Make Fun Of Obama
Maureen Dowd is actually worth reading for once:
If Obama keeps being stingy with his quips and smiles, and if the dominant perception of him is that you can’t make jokes about him, it might infect his campaign with an airless quality. His humorlessness could spark humor.
On Tuesday, Andy Borowitz satirized on that subject. He said that Obama, sympathetic to comics’ attempts to find jokes to make about him, had put out a list of official ones, including this:
“A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, ‘I was expecting the farmer’s daughter.’ Barack Obama replies, ‘She’s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American dream.’ ”
John McCain’s Don Rickles routines — “Thanks for the question, you little jerk” — can fall flat. But he seems like a guy who can be teased harmlessly. If Obama offers only eat-your-arugula chiding and chilly earnestness, he becomes an otherworldly type, not the regular guy he needs to be.
I don’t think most liberals are capable of laughing at themselves in general. Don’t believe me? Try cracking a joke about global warming in front a liberal once and see if you get a grin or an icy look.
But the thing was that in the past the entertainment industry recognized that there is a market for poking fun at liberals - mostly among everyone who is even a smidgen right of center - and so people like John Kerry were mocked routinely.
The problem with Obama is that he’s black. And the left’s Chosen One. He is to be above such petty annoyances as late night stand up routines, and for the most part the leftists in the entertainment industry on board with that.
After all, who wants to be the guy who cracks a joke at the expense of the candidate who media-magnate-unto-herself Oprah is now referring to as The One?
