What’s So Not Funny?
By Steve_in_KC on January 2, 2009 at 9:50 AM in African Americans, Barack Obama, Daily Show, Humor, Saturday Night Live
Like many people who visit No Quarter, I used to be a big fan of Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and even David Letterman. Around March or April of 2008, I could no longer stand their bias against Hillary Clinton, and I stopped watching all three.
What made it even worse was that their “hip” New York audiences would go stone cold silent, or even boo, if they made any jokes at Obama’s expense. There was a classic moment when Jon Stewart made a small joke about Obama and the audience kind of moaned disapprovingly. He raised his eyebrows and said, “It’s OK to laugh at him.” The audience wasn’t so sure.
Stewart had learned, and demonstrated, the problem with Obama as regards humor. His minions will not tolerate dissent. And no satire! And mocking is right out!!
Too late, these political funnymen realized they backed the wrong horse, to the detriment of their careers. G.W. Bush was a mainstay of political humor. He was a virtual fountain of funny. Funny looking. Funny talking. Funny ideas. Funny fuckups. As Bugs Bunny would have said, “What a maroon!”
Here is a cursory comparison of the difficulty comedians face with the change in administrations. You can see in the table below how the styles of the outgoing and incoming presidents differ, and the problem this presents to the gag guys.
| Bush = Funny | Obama = Not funny |
| Nucular | Nuclear |
| Crawford, Texas | Chicago, Illinois |
| Switchgrass | Blackberry |
| Former Cheerleader | Former Communist |
And there are some things that are taboo purely because of racial sensitivities. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard Bush called The Chimp, with pictorial side-by-sides and all, but any comparisons of Obama to any type of primate will be shouted down as racist. Early in the primaries, for example, a bar owner in the South thought Obama’s ears looked like the children’s book character, Curious George, a monkey. He had some T-shirts printed up comparing the two. As a result, 70 million liberals had cardiac incidents.
Perhaps the fact that the above-mentioned programs are taped in New York City is a large part of the problem. I think they would find jabs at Obama would get much bigger laughs if they moved their studios to some place like Atlantic City or Las Vegas. Think about it… these are places where people like Jeff Foxworthy and Don Rickles draw huge cheering crowds. Alcohol may play a role in that, but that may be what’s needed to get white people to overcome their fear of laughing at a black president. I’m sure there’s a certain bar owner in the South who would agree.
Another alternative location would be Chicago. I’d bet good money that most of the folks there don’t have to overcome a sense of awe and reverence in order to get a good laugh at the expense of their hometown politico. In fact, maybe these comics should send some talent scouts to Chicago to find some writers who aren’t intimidated by Obama’s worshippers. They probably have a ton of gags about Obama and his Chicago connections. They’re proud to say Chicago has the best politicians money can buy.
Saturday Night Live has had a white guy playing Obama, which upset some people, but that makes sense to me because Obama is just as much white as he is black. So they’d have to have a “mutt” play him to make that right with the critics. And SNL has been about the only show I have seen satirize Obama at all. What comes to mind is the famous skit from the primaries in which Obama crowds Hillary during the debate and the moderators fawn over him. Having done that bit, it can’t be done again because it wouldn’t be funny twice. In fact, it kind of makes people uncomfortable with the truth in the concept of the media being “in the tank” for Obama from the start. They should keep in mind it’s a very short distance from being in the tank to being under the bus.
Past presidents were openly satirized, no matter how popular they were. Kennedy had imitators who got laughs just by doing his accent. Accents have always played well in presidential satire. There have been lots of presidents lately with Southern accents, and they were all roundly mocked.
I remember back in April when Hillary was campaigning in the Rust Belt, and she let her twang come out, knocked back a beer and a shot, and spoke from the back of pickup trucks. But hey, she’s from Arkansas, you know. That got plenty of attention from the comics, but nobody pointed out that Obama was talking hip-hop slang with a “brutha” accent at plenty of rallies, and putting on a nasal “honky voice” at others. Most of the time, to my ears, Obama sounds like Richard Pryor did when he put on his “white” voice in some of his stand-up routines.
And how will it go over when comedians first make fun of Michelle Obama? She’s the only person I know who’s “smile” looks like a Fu Manchu moustache. When she was listening to Hillary’s speech at the Convention, the corners of her mouth touched her collarbone. And if you’ve seen the old pictures of her before her cosmetic surgeries, she’s gone through more de-Africanization than Michael Jackson. I know many women have snarked about her taste in clothes, and I’ve wondered myself whether her clothes were selected by a fashion consultant or an upholsterer.
I think what it’s going to come down to is that black comedians will be the only ones allowed to make jokes about the Obama family. I think there will be a rise in prominence of black comedians who do Obama impressions and make fun of the Obama family in ways that only another black person could get away with.
Jon Stewart has already been using a black surrogate-correspondent to make all the jokes that may involve Obama’s racial makeup. Dave Letterman is such an old white honky, he doesn’t dare joke about Obama in any way that could be construed as racial; what’s he going to do, have a running joke about his “suit pants” to replace Hillary’s pant-suits? Stephen Colbert is so hard to read, you never know when he’s serious or not anyway. He can probably get away with more because he is pretending to be a Right Winger (See? He’s not being a bigot, he’s mocking bigots!).
I can’t help but think that these guys will be hard-pressed to stay on top of their games, and some may decide on early retirement. Or others may make that decision for them. Let’s see, we can have Eddie Murphy take over Letterman’s Late Show, Chris Rock can replace Jon Stewart, and Wanda Sykes would be perfect for the Tonight Show.
So, all you folks in the mainstream political comedy business, you got what you wanted. You helped get Obama elected. Now let’s see what you can do when you don’t have George Dubya Bush to kick around anymore.
Hey, great name for a country mock band: Dub and the NeoCons! I need to file a copyright on that!
by Ronald Scott
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