One or two people have mentioned to me that I seem to be partisan in my selection of articles. It isn’t that I don’t have any articles making fun of Obama, they are just dwarfed in number by all the articles about McCain.
Finally, I have a defense. The International Herald Tribune asks “What’s so funny about Barack Obama” and realizes “Apparently, not very much”. Their conclusion? “Want Obama in a punch line? First, find a joke”.
It’s even harder on the joke writers for late night TV shows, who have plenty of “McCain is old” jokes, “Bill Clinton is a womanizer”, “Bush is an idiot”, or even “Gore is a stiff” jokes. But Obama? Mike Barry, who has written political jokes for everyone from Johnny Carson to Letterman, says “The thing is, he’s not buffoonish in any way. He’s not a comical figure.”
Even when someone makes a joke about Obama, it often doesn’t work. When Jon Stewart made a joke on The Daily Show about Obama changing his position on campaign financing, the tough audience reaction prompted him to say “You know, you’re allowed to laugh at him.”
So now The New Yorker magazine tries to joke about Obama on their cover. I posted that here, but the reactions to it are turning out to be funnier than the cover itself.
