The Road to the White House…

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on July 6th, 2006

…is pockmarked with oodles of comedy potholes.

In the past, we’ve cautioned politicians and other officials to leave the joking to the professionals. Few politicians have a way with the joke… and trying to riff off the cuff while campaigning usually creates more misunderstanding than mirth.

There’s a clip from the June 17 installment of C-Span’s excellent and morbidly fascinating Road To The White House in which Joe Biden is depicted in Delaware, talking to a potential voter, an Indian-American. In the course of explaining how wonderful his relationship is with the burgeoning Indian-American population in The First State, he says:

You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.

The camera is tight on Biden’s face as he tries to sell the joke with an eerie half-smile/half-grimace. We can only assume that the “target” of the gag is less than pleased.

(As a joke, though, it’s abysmal. Aside from being offensive, it doesn’t make any sense. It lacks the necessary logic that even the best jokes need to avoid being insulting. And, outside the context of a comedy club or an after dinner speech, it just comes off as… boorish. Context is everything! We can only assume that he was flying by the seat of his comedy pants, trying to appear like a regular Joe, most likely battling a focus group factoid that pegs him as “humorless.” He failed miserably. Leave the joking to the pros, Joe. Or hire a writer!)

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