Making Fun of Barack Obama

"Dying is easy, comedy is hard." - Sir Donald Wolfit

The New York Times is reporting that humor is having a difficult time gaining traction with Barack Obama. On the heels of the New Yorker flap (covered by David Knowles here, and by me here and here), the Times examined the political humor landscape, and found it curiously Obama-free.

Why? The reason cited by most of those involved in the shows is that a fundamental factor is so far missing in Mr. Obama: There is no comedic "take" on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh, like allegations of Bill Clinton's womanizing, or President Bush's goofy bumbling or Al Gore's robotic persona.

"The thing is, he's not buffoonish in any way," said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson's monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Mr. Letterman. "He's not a comical figure," Mr. Barry said.

Humor is sort of a hobby of mine, so my first reaction was, "C'mon, these guys are just lazy. You can make a joke out of anything."

I did a quickie Google of Barack Obama Humor, to see what was out there. What I found will amaze you...

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...if you are easily amazed. I clicked on the About.com Barack Obama Humor Roundup, as it seemed a good place to get a fair sampling of what's out there. Before I get to that, though, here's my favorite joke from the Times article, by Bill Maher:

"I have this joke: What does he have to do? Dunk? He bowled a 37 - to me, that's black enough."

This joke works because it's really about white people. It would be like the English making fun of me for sucking at cricket; the joke's on them for liking cricket.

Most of the humor there, as Late Night writer Mike Sweeney notes in the Times piece, is about people peripheral to Obama, such as Rev. Wright. Those jokes that actually are about Obama fall, mainly, into two categories: He walks on water, or he's black, and that's a new thing for white people.

After reading the article, I thought about it for awhile, and it really was hard to come up with anything that didn't fall into one of these categories.

That's too bad. There's a lot of fun to be had by challenging stereotypes with humor. I would love to see an Obama parody of the famous Wayne Brady sketch from "Chappelle's Show." As the Times points out, white writers can't really get away with much racial humor, the way a black writer can.

So, why can't all of these late-night comedy shows just call down to the bullpen and bring in some black talent to handle Obama's at-bats? I guess you can only spread Larry Wilmore so thin.

A few weeks ago, I was mulling a "news from the future" story, where it turned out the most paranoid anti-Obamatics turned out to be right. I wish I had done it now, in light of the New Yorker cover, but constructing alternate realities gives me a headache. In the story, President Obama immediately enslaves the white race, but repeals the law a few weeks later, explaining, "I just couldn't wait to start telling them to 'Get over it.'"

The problem with this kind of racial satire, as with the New Yorker cover, is that you run into "Chappelle's Conundrum," where you get the wrong people laughing, for the wrong reasons.

Until late night shows either hire some more black talent and/or get more comfortable around the racial minefield, we'll have to rely on hysterical blog comments for amusement.

In the meantime, here are a few of my favorites from About.com:

"Barack Obama was in New Hampshire Sunday. When informed of this, President Bush excitedly asked, 'Did we catch 'em?' --Seth Meyers

"Well, congratulations to Barack Obama, the big winner of the Democratic caucus. Stunning victory. He got 57% of the youth vote, 35% of the female vote, and 100% of Iowa's black vote, a guy named Larry." --Jay Leno (Jay blew the punch line. It should have been, "and both black votes.")

"According to a new poll, Barack Obama has a 24-point lead over Hillary Clinton in North Carolina. Obama is doing particularly well with one important demographic: voters." --Amy Poehler

"During an interview, Vice President Dick Cheney's wife said that Vice President Cheney and Barack Obama are actually distant cousins. When Dick Cheney found out, he said, 'I knew there was something creepy about that guy.'" --Conan O'Brien

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