Is An Obama Presidency A Blow To Comedy?

Okay, so Don Rickles stopped being funny around the year I was born, but Eugene Robinson makes a point when mentioning in his WAPO article how Rickles’ recent Obama/Basketball joke bombed. Eugene Robinson – Comedy Tomorrow, History Tonight – washingtonpost.com While Rickles has made a career of racial stereotypes, President-Elect Obama does love basketball. He plays it almost daily, but to mention it in a joke clearly doesn’t play well. Even Jon Stewart tried to make fun of him (not racially) and his audience didn’t laugh. He responded by saying, “We can make fun of him people. It’s okay.”

Notice how people reacted to my photo-shopped pic of him smoking? Crybabies. And what about this picture? Clearly the best Presidential/Messiah/Romance Novel and kind of gay drawing ever, but while cartoons depicting Bush as Hitler or a monkey are acceptable, will this be considered treason?

While Bush offered comedians more material than they could have ever dreamed of, Obama is going to be much more difficult for three reasons.

First, Obama is black, so there is the stereotype issue which, like political correctness, is a bummer for good comedy. There will be people out there who will lash out at anyone who makes an ethnic joke even though comedians have made “white boy” jokes about Bush before. They’ve also made somewhat derogatory jokes about his relationships with blacks and Hispanics. Can they do that with Obama? Since he so clearly doesn’t fit into any of those stereotypes I think it should be okay. His election is the best symbol we have of “they’re not all like that,” so can we take the joke?

Second, there is also the likability factor. Let’s say that Obama will get a 2-year honeymoon. If he does good, he’ll be able to keep those favorable ratings and some people don’t like to make fun of leaders they respect and like. I do, but a lot of people don’t. SNL has gotten a lot of mileage out of making fun of his Messiah status and speaking style and they clearly have a preference for him, so maybe it does work?

Finally, dude is pretty clean. Over the last 2 years, the American people have been impressed with his calm and control. He doesn’t reveal himself emotionally, giving us view into his flaws, and he is very disciplined in everything he does and says. With the exception of the “clinging to guns and religion” comment about PA voters, he hasn’t made many mistakes worthy of making fun of while the McCain camp made them daily. Here, I feel the only option is to make fun of the fact that he is so confident, disciplined and smart because let’s face it, that’s pretty annoying.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like racist jokes, but part of what is great about America is that we can make fun of our leader’s faults and flaws and still like them and part of dealing with our racial issues and stereotypes is making fun and laughing about them. We’ll have to see how it goes.