Modified On August 13, 2012
Christian Toto, writing in the Washington Times, wonders whether its “hero worship” that accounts for the lack of Obama jokes out there.
Quoted in the piece are Jeff Jena, Brad Stine, Julia Gorin, Glenn Beck, Linda Smith, Nick DiPaolo, Lee Camp and Jackie Mason.
From Smith:
“In New York, nobody wants to hear anything anti-Obama,” said Linda Smith, a stand-up comic, Obama booster and teacher at Caroline’s School of Comedy in New York. “And even if they do, right-leaning comics must walk through a historical minefield to mock the first black president.
Right-leaning comics? How about… comics? Isn’t that what comics do– walk through “historical minefields” to mock the president (regardless of his skin color)? Don’t we walk through similar cultural minefields to make light of heavy subjects like death, taxes, religion, race and abortion? How many of us have shared a green room with the comic who can’t wait to get up on the stage to do his/her new abortion bit? Where is that comic now, itching to try out the new Obama bit?
Why has the new president beaten the Hicks out of everyone? This article fails to explain it. But it offers an example or two of practical ways that comics have found to get to the Obama jokes and succeed.
Mason says:
“People love it. I don’t do it with hate. Even liberals laugh at it,” he said. “The truth of the matter is, if it doesn’t sound like hate, and it sounds like a legitimate joke, it’s OK.”
Good for him. (We assume he’s plying his trade in the same New York that Smith perceives as so touchy.)
Gorin, is “careful to create the right atmosphere.”
She said she begins the Obama part of her act by reminding audiences how her fellow comics have been taking flack for the lack of Obama jokes.
“That orients people the right way,” Miss Gorin said. “I’ll run into problems, sensitivities, without doing that.”
Comics figuring out a way to do what has up until now been represented as nearly impossible. Are they extraordinary? No. They’re just comics.