Modified On April 3, 2007
While driving back from a weekend engagement in North Carolina, we fielded an inquiry from Sean O’Driscoll, working on a piece for the AP on the viral video that featured the questionable rapping talents of White House advisor Karl Rove.
The question, as O’Driscoll framed it, was: Had Roves antics effectively killed the phenomenon of geeky white guys attempting to rap for the amusement of others? Our answer:
Brian McKim, editor of the online magazine for stand ups, Sheckymagazine.com, remembers novelty white rap becoming a club cliché 20 years ago, used by everyone from Mel Brooks to Rodney Dangerfield.
“You had a lot of white comedians who seemed to end their set with a rap. They thought they were being original– you know the incongruity of this white square rapper – but it was unhip even back then.” McKim saw the genre somehow “limp on and on” and hoped that the beyond-parody awfulness of Britney Spears ex, Kevin Federline, had killed it off completely.
“Hopefully, Karl Rove has also put one of many nails in its coffin. I don’t understand how it keeps going,” he said.
In all fairness to Rove, it seems he was dragged onstage at the Radio & Television Correspondents annual dinner by members of the cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway– of course, it was probably all worked out ahead of time, but the WLIIA boys probably wrote it up for him.
Read the whole thing for quotes from Weird Al Yankovich and SHECKYmag columnist Doug Hecox.