Once again President Barack Obama wowed ’em as he assumed the role of Comedian In Chief at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner — a dinner where newspeople mix with politicians and celebrities and the highlight is always the political zingers. And Obama delivered a lot of them.
Here’s the full video of his remarks and YOU decide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rItO_UgaTM
Of course, when a President gets up and delivers this kind of speech it’s written for him by someone. They key is in the delivery and Obama — with a few rough edges — has good enough timing to be a pro. The Politico’s take on it:
President Barack Obama took aim at Republicans, the media — and himself — at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner – beginning and ending with the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov.
“I usually start these dinners with a few self-deprecating jokes, but after my stellar 2013, what could I possibly talk about?” the president joked.
“At one point things got so bad, the 47 percent called Mitt Romney to apologize,” Obama added.
And there was more:
The president deadpanned that the rollout of Healthcare.gov “could’ve gone better,” but said it was turned into one of the year’s biggest movies, before showing a title screen for the film “Frozen.”
At the end of his 20-minute remarks, Obama brought out Kathleen Sebelius to “fix” a technical problem that he was having with a video he wanted to play for those in attendance at the Hilton.
Obama also took aim at Republicans, including Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
“These days House Republicans are giving him a harder time than they give me, which means orange really is the new lack,” Obama joked.The president also riffed about Washington gridlock at the expense of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the Bridgegate scandal.
“Gridlock has gotten so bad, you’ve got to wonder, what did we do to piss off Chris Christie so bad,” Obama joked.
Obama eventually turned the jokes to the media, including CNN’s recent coverage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, noting that he just returned from Malaysia. “The lengths we have to go to to get CNN coverage these days,” Obama joked. “I think they’re still searching for their table.”
“MSNBC is here, they’re a little overwhelmed. They’ve never seen an audience this big before,” the president joked.
There’s more so go to the link.
GO HERE to read the full transcript of Obama’s remarks.
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.