Posted on 04/29/2009 9:50:31 AM PDT by presidio9
After 100 days, television comics are still trying to get a grip on Barack Obama.
It's not that Obama's opening days have been free of the criticism or embarrassment that feed David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien, "Saturday Night Live" and the rest of TV's powerful comedy machine.
When many of his appointees seemed to consider it optional to pay their taxes, Leno cracked that the IRS was going to start paying Obama a finder's fee.
When bailout money went to some of the executives who had dug the hole, Letterman joked that "the Big Three CEOs have promised they can't use the bailout money to give themselves big, big year-end bonuses. They said, 'Well, no, of course not. That's what employee pension funds are for.'"
Good joke. But it's not an Obama joke. It's a corporate-greed joke, and it reflects the caution with which TV comedians have approached Obama.
Conservative critics attribute this to the "mainstream media" being a hornet's nest of liberals that's been in the tank for Obama since the day they found him in the manger. Quieter whispers say joke writers limit their sting by avoiding any references that could conceivably have the slightest racial connotation.
Writers and comedians say the reason is more basic - that with any new public figure, you have to poke around until you find the right comic handles. Bill Clinton was always good for a sex joke, Ronald Reagan for a movie joke, George W. Bush for a joke about his losing battles with syntax.
As virtually all past Presidents could attest, there's a sense in which criticism doesn't really count until comedy writers can treat it as a general public assumption.
So far with Obama, that hasn't happened.
Leno foresaw this problem in November, saying he would miss Bush because Obama "doesn't give you a lot to go on."
Letterman joked in February that at Obama's first TV press conference, he was "cogent, eloquent and in complete command of the issues. ... What the hell am I supposed to do with that?"
While Stewart has done manger jokes, the Messiah thing has yet to stick firmly on a guy who picks his Final Four on ESPN.
"Saturday Night Live" shot and scored last year with skits about how the media worshipped Obama during his debates with Hillary Clinton. But those weren't Obama jokes, either. He was the straight man.
Part of the comedy problem is that Obama is media-good and media-smart enough to pre-empt some jokes himself.
When Leno asked him about the First Dog, he said, hey, that was just a campaign promise. Who believes those things anyway?
Good line. And eventually, TV comics will find a way to follow it.
The Top Ten Reasons President Barak Obama Delayed the Use of Deadly Force on the 'Somali Pirates:
10. They are potential campaign donors for 2012.
9. One looked like a former neighbor.
8. All were carrying DNC cards.
7. When BO's staff identified them as "Pirates",
Barak Obama thought they were from Pittsburgh.
6. Two of the four were registered with "ACORN".
5. Didn't want to support the use of firearms for protection, thus backing the stance of the 'NRA'.
4. Wanted positive confirmation that they were in fact, Not members of the Rainbow Coalition.
3. The Tele-prompter was broken and he had nothing to say.
2. No Photo-op existed.
and the Number # 1 reason...
1. They may be Relatives.
He’s got big ears, and he says uh and um a lot and misreads his teleprompter and can’t bowl and looks like a dork and capitulates to Communist dictators and...
The only criticisms the late night comedians have of Obama Mugabe so far is the dry cleaning costs on their blue dresses.
SNL made Janet Reno fair game for all those years and poked fun at Hillary and Bill. Let’s see a skit about Michelle Obama juicing with A-Rod to get her arms so big. Of course, the problem may not be so much making fun at their hero, it will be the fear of being accused of being racist for poking fun of the Obamas, a la, Garafalo (or whatever that two bit actress’s name is)
More commie propaganda from NY.
Have they thought of hiring a FReeper as their joke writer ???
The court jesters don’t want to be sent to the gulag.
they can’t find anything , er right off my head 57 states
we invested the car
bowing to the saudi king
dur dur dur dur dur dur where my teleprompter
the list is endless and they say they can’t find any material
what utter horse crap
how about they do not want o make fun of him and make him out the clown he is
They could steal jokes from FR if they wanted. Already there are phrases and terms lifted from here. We don’t even complain when Rush or Savage or Medved make use of them.
...David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien, "Saturday Night Live" and the rest of TV's powerful comedy machine... Conservative critics attribute this to the "mainstream media" being a hornet's nest of liberals that's been in the tank for Obama since the day they found him in the manger. Quieter whispers say joke writers limit their sting by avoiding any references that could conceivably have the slightest racial connotation... Leno foresaw this problem in November, saying he would miss Bush because Obama "doesn't give you a lot to go on." Letterman joked in February that at Obama's first TV press conference, he was "cogent, eloquent and in complete command of the issues. ... What the hell am I supposed to do with that?" While Stewart has done manger jokes, the Messiah thing has yet to stick firmly on a guy who picks his Final Four on ESPN. "Saturday Night Live" shot and scored last year with skits about how the media worshipped Obama during his debates with Hillary Clinton. But those weren't Obama jokes, either. He was the straight man.Conservative critics are 100 per cent correct. Thanks presidio9.
You cannot find what you are not looking for........................
Pathetic how everyone is so scared to joke about this twirp because of the fear of being labelled a bigot, a hate monger and intolerant. A$$ Hole Of The United States. There! That’s a start!
‘Tolerance And Apathy Are The
Last Virtues Of A Dying
Society’ - Aristotle
Garafalo also said post-2000 that it wasn’t hip to protest Clinton’s wars.
They are Stalinists. They may still be outraged about some things but damned if they are going to go public with that outrage and let it be used against their hero of the moment.
“how about they do not want o make fun of him and make him out the clown he is”
We have a winner!
They have only to look in the mirror.
we could find a lot of material, even in the election with the 57 states
how about spreading the wealth and when a guy ask him can you spread mine bozo replies er I meant yours to spread give it to me and then snatches it out the pocket and laughs while throwing the guys money around shouting we have to cut costs
his wife who charges into the Queen like a raging bull, how about her standing with her legs open like she has done a lot while wearing curtains
That’s because Obama IS the joke.
What boggles my mind is that during the 2008 campaign, there was an unsubtantiated rumor that Mrs. Obama may have said “whitey”. If you listen to Barack’s own audio version of his own book, he’s used the n-word as an insult.
I guess being half-African, he thinks he is immune from criticism for doing so.
They have avoided even he teleprompter jokes. Any joke made about this evil one, will never be uttered by any major comedian. They know it would be turned into a racist attack.
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