Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Has Obama Become Funny?

11 Comments

Apparently, SNL eviscerated the president in the opener last night, and the attack wasn’t even from the left. So what has changed? All through the campaign, and for months into the election, all of the comedy writers and comedians whose job is to make us laugh told us that there was nothing funny about Barack Obama. Now, I thought at the time that if they couldn’t find much to mock from this arrogant pomposity, they should find a new line of work. But I’m glad that they finally found something. I suspect that now that his polls are down, they’ll start finding a lot more.

11 thoughts on “Has Obama Become Funny?”

  2. I can imagine comedy skits (or Limbaugh-esque song parodies) revolving around Jeremiah Wright. But how to you do a skit about Obama’s Annenberg Challenge adventures with Bill Ayers?

  3. You do a skit about Mr. Obama’s Web video/radio address about his FDA nominee. He is sitting at a desk with his gaze pitched way over the level of the camera lense to look at the Teleprompter. He then goes into a litany of the horrors under the previous Administration . . . involving bad vegetables.

    He has this deadpan-serious look on his face, he speaks in the scolding tones of this grade-school nurse who was preaching to first-graders against nose-picking, and he launches into his characteristic cadences with long pauses for dramatic effect. No, his face is beyond deadpan-serious, he has the look of severe gas pains or having drunk too much colonoscopy-prep solutions.

    OK, I am quoting from memory, but it went something like,

    “In 2004, it was spinach . . .

    In 2006, peppers . . . possibly . . . tomatoes . . .

    This last year . . . it was peanuts . . . used to make peanut . . .
    butter. My daughter . . . eats a peanut butter sandwich
    . . . everyday . . . for lunch.”

    Now some will tell me, Paul, how can you find this funny, people have died from eating tainted peanut butter?

    True, but people die from slipping on their shoelaces and falling down the stairs. These food poisoning deaths are fortunately rare, and the rare instances that have been reported are evidence of vigilance of the Federal authorities in giving out warnings and recalling food products, rather than evidence of some systemic breakdown of the FDA. Furthermore, we have soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whether you blame this on the jihadis and think Mr. Bush did all the right things, or whether you blame this all on Mr. Bush, what is going on “over there” is a much bigger deal than the rare occurence of fatal food poisoning. But the food safety speech is given with the same gravity of “We will fight them in Fraaahnce, we will fight them on the sea and air, we will fight them on the beaches . . .”

    My wife and I just couldn’t contain ourselves when we saw this as a clip on the TV news.

  4. Now that our President’s status has descended from Messiah to somewhere below GHW Bush, it is once again to “speak truth to power” on SNL.

  7. Actually this is just another example of the shifting mood of the country.

    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/whose-recession-is-it-anyway/?ref=opinion
    November 20, 2009, 8:14 pm
    Whose Recession Is It, Anyway?
    By TOBIN HARSHAW

    [[[ A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday morning indicates that 38 percent of the public blames Republicans for the country’s current economic problems. That’s down 15 points from May, when 53 percent blamed the GOP. According to the poll 27 percent now blame the Democrats for the recession, up 6 points from May. Twenty-seven percent now say both parties are responsible for the economic mess.

    “The bad news for the Democrats is that the number of Americans who hold the GOP exclusively responsible for the recession has been steadily falling by about two to three points per month,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “At that rate, only a handful of voters will blame the economy on the Republicans by the time next year’s midterm elections roll around.”]]]

    People just want things to start changing for the better and are getting impatient about it. As the unemployment keeps edging up its going to get a lot more nasty out there as the public looks for a name to link with their pain.

  8. As more stories like this come out, I think a lot of people will start to wonder how they’ll get a job. Add in stories like this and they’ll eventually come to realize that the Left not only is ignorant of economics but they are hostile to the businesses that create jobs. Maybe they think the only legitimate jobs are working for government.

  9. Maybe they think the only legitimate jobs are working for government.

    That’s an unfair partisan attack — everyone knows this government will do its best to protect SEIU and ACORN jobs.

  10. But they saved 640,000 jobs! No. 2 million jobs. I have sex with my wife… Morgan Fairchild, yeah, that’s it.

  11. I keep waiting for someone to notice the weird thing he does with his hands every time he deplanes from Air Force One because he’s too cool to touch a hand rail.

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