Here’s the full video of President Barack Obama’s monologue at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Some great jokes with a serious finish:
UPDATE: Here’s the Speilberg’s (satire) upcoming Obama movie (with Obama playing Daniel Day Lewis):
The attention is always on the jokes (at the beginning of the speech) but the serious note (at the end) is also of significance. Here’s how the ABC News blog frames it:
Amid the glitz and glamour, humor and levity normally surrounding the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Obama injected a somber tone to the annual soiree as he invoked the memories of those affected by the Boston Marathon bombing and West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion earlier this month and praised not only the work of the first responders in each of those tragedies but also the journalists dedicated to covering them.
“These have been some very hard days for too many of our citizens. Even as we gather here tonight our thoughts are not far from the people of Boston and the people of West, Texas. There are families who are in the Midwest who are coping with some terrible floods, so we’ve had some difficult days but even when the days seem darkest, we have seen humanity shine at its brightest,” the president said at the Washington Hilton Hotel Saturday. “We’ve seen first responders and national guardsmen who dashed into danger, law enforcement officers who lived their oath to serve and to protect, and every day Americans who are opening their homes and their hearts to perfect strangers.
“We also saw journalists at their best, especially those who took the time to wade upstream through the torrent of digital rumors, to chase down leads and verify facts and painstakingly put the pieces together to inform and to educate and to tell stories that demanded to be told.”
The president doled out particular praise for newspapers like the Boston Globe, who provided detailed information to the public as its city coped with a major terrorist attack.
“If anyone wonders for example if newspapers are a thing of the past, all you need to do is to pick up or log on to papers like the Boston Globe,” the president said to applause. “When their communities and wider world needed them most, they were there, making sense of events that might at first blush seem beyond our comprehension and that’s what great journalism is, and that’s what great journalists do.”
AND THE JOKES:
But while the president, who was accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama, presented a serious tone for a portion of his speech, he also took some time to poke fun at himself, even highlighting some of the criticisms and perceptions some hold of him.
“Look I get it, these days I look in the mirror and I have to admit I’m not the strapping young Muslim socialist that I used to be,” Obama said to laughter.
“I’m also hard at work on plans for the Obama library and some have suggested we put it in my birthplace but I’d rather keep it in the United States,” Obama joked.
Pointing out his flap when he called California Attorney General Kamala Harris the “best looking attorney general,” the president joked, “As you might imagine I got in trouble when I got back home. Who knew Eric Holder was so sensitive?”
The president also addressed his recent “charm offensive” with members of Congress as he tries to reach across the aisle to Republicans.
Go to the link and read it in its entirety.
FOOTNOTE: Notice at one point how he singles out Bill O’Reilly. “That’s another rap reference…Bill..” As with Donald Trump one year ago, Obama seems to enjoy these speeches as a way of shooting zingers that he might not normally be able to shoot.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.