Just a few weeks ago, it seemed nobody could make a joke about Barack Obama. The New York Times published a front-page story declaring that “there has been little humor” about Obama because “there is no comedic ‘take’ on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh.” Television comedy writers fretted that audiences didn’t want to hear anything even slightly negative about the Democratic nominee. The political press corps went nuts over a satirical New Yorker cover that wasn’t even directed at Obama.
And this was about a man who made up his own pretend presidential seal and motto, Vero Possumus; a man who, upon securing the Democratic nomination, said, “I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”; a man who has on a number of occasions seemed to forget that he is not, or at least not yet, the President of the United States, who has misstated the number of states in his own country, who has forgotten on which committees he serves in the U.S. Senate. Professional comedians — and their audiences — couldn’t find anything funny about any of that?
Now, after Obama’s world tour, there are already cracks in the Times-imposed conventional wisdom. Confronted with something of an official ban on Obama humor, there is emerging a new strain of Obama humor — zings at the candidate’s hauteur, his presumptuousness, and, especially, his most zealous admirers in the press.
Last week, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show got an enthusiastic reception from his audience with a routine about Obama’s media entourage. Stewart tossed to the team of reporters who were said to be traveling with the Obama campaign, some of whom had abandoned John McCain to cover the more exciting Democrat. They were positively giddy about Obama.
“The commander-in-chief,” said one.
“Did you see when the president hit that three-pointer?” asked another.
“Nothing but net,” said a third.
Stewart interrupted. “He’s not the president.” Pause.“Barack Obama’s not the president.”
A confused silence. “Are you sure?” the reporters asked.
Stewart wondered whether the reporters were “nervous that this maybe plays into the idea of the press being a little Obama-centric, a little sycophantic.” Not at all, they said, exchanging stories of this or that treasured contact with the Great One. A moment later, Stewart asked what they learned during the trip.
“I’ll tell you something, Jon,” said one. “Barack Obama kinda gives me a boner.”
Stewart dutifully faked embarrassment and exasperation. “Anything else?” he asked. All the others raised their hands. They, too, were, well, thrilled to be in Obama’s presence.
“I’m not talking about boners,” Stewart said.
“Seriously,” said one last reporter. “They should call this guy Barack O-Boner.”
The audience loved it. And this was the same program on which, a few weeks earlier, a frustrated Stewart said, “You’re allowed to laugh at him” after the audience sat on its hands during a bit on Obama’s flip-flop on campaign finance. To be fair, in that same routine, Stewart had made fun of Vero Possumus, and the audience laughed. But Stewart’s jokes had the feel of a sympathetic voice telling Obama he had made a mistake, not a voice of biting ridicule. The lesson from all that is that, with his pro-Obama audiences, Stewart can’t make a joke that says, “This guy thinks he’s God.” But he can make a joke that says, “Look at these idiots who think Obama’s God.”
Who knows? From there, perhaps, it might be just a short hop to the man himself.
Others have already taken that step. Last Friday, as Obama traveled, Gerard Baker of the Times of London published a sharply funny essay entitled, “He ventured forth to bring light to the world.” In Baker’s Biblical telling,
It came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.
The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.
When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: ³Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?
Baker, whose paper was filled with friendly accounts of Obama’s trip, was making fun not just of the Obama phenomenon but of the man behind it as well. And by doing that, both he and Stewart ventured into territory where, so far, only one man has regularly traveled. Rush Limbaugh has not only been criticizing Obama’s politics but ridiculing his pretensions, his gaffes, and the excesses of his most passionate advocates in the press — in other words, treating him like a real, live, presidential candidate, subject to the same scrutiny as everyone else. Last week Limbaugh, through his in-house comedian, Paul Shanklin, played a new satire of Obama, “One Night in Baghdad,” set to the melody of “One Night in Bangkok”:
And if you’re lucky in your eyes he’ll glance
I can feel a tingle running up my pants.
There are those in the press who look down on everything Limbaugh does. But his sharp, relentless, daily parodying of Obama and the Obama phenomenon can move the narrative of the campaign — no matter what the New York Times says.
– Byron York is the NR White House correspondent.