Last year, the choice for the comedian to deliver the gags at the White House Correspondents Dinner was Craig Ferguson. The 2007 choice was Rich Little. Both were safe choices after the ’06 Stephen Colbert debacle.

This year, it was Wanda Sykes who had the honor.

The reaction to Sykes’ performance has been interesting to say the least.

Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood blog has the entire performance embedded. Finke was not amused.

But I do think her overall performance was inappropriate for the room, and I say that as a liberal Democrat. Sykes herself was prescient when she began her performance with these remarks: “This is truly an honor to be here. It really is. I keep getting asked the same question, ‘Are you nervous? Are you nervous?’ With this administration, what is there to be nervous about? If I do a good job, I get great press. If I screw it up royally, Tim Geithner gives me a bonus.”

Actually, Wanda, if you screw it up, you get great press. Just ask Colbert. (Reports of his antics rocketed around the world… and his name was spelled correctly. And, as one blogger pointed out, when you type in “White House Correspondents Dinner” into Google Images, a photo of Colbert at the WHCD podium dominates.)

And, while we disagree with her on those rare occasions when she pays attenion to comedians, Finke is quite sensible when she observes:

I’ve been to the White House Correspondents Dinner. And, if history is any judge, then comedians asked to perform there seem to do best when they joke with gentle jibes rather than go for the jugular. Someone should have reminded Wanda Sykes about that before tonight. Because not since Don Imus roughed up Bill Clinton at the annual event has a comedian been so mean-spirited. Certainly, Stephen Colbert wasn’t to George W Bush. But, unlike Imus or Colbert, Wanda Sykes didn’t lay a glove on the sitting president Barack Obama. Instead, she reserved her barbs for people who weren’t there: Dubya, John McCain, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. I’m not saying pols and media don’t deserve to have the piss taken out of them. But even watching the WHCA dinner on television, viewers saw the room grew very quiet and then erupt as Sykes seemed to cross the line with what was more harsh partisanship than funny comedy.

Actually, out of a 15-minute set, Sykes really only went too far on three or four jokes. The CSPAN mikes picked up an odd mixture of laughter (nervous laughter, probably) and mild buzzing which most likely was that kind of talking folks do when they’re not quite certain that they should laugh– more of a “Did she just say that?” kind of a reaction than a genuine guffaw.

There were some well-written gags– The Sean Hannity “middle-seat in coach” joke and the Hannity-Olbermann joke were worth repeating, as was the Cheney/stranger joke, which derived its humor from its absurdity– but the set was uneven and a lot of the material was heavy-handed. CSPAN’s camera caught Obama doing the ol’ taking-a-drink-of-water in the aftermath of one of the more controversial jokes. Not good. (Of course, folks will interpret that how they want. But, we’re pretty certain he was uncomfortable. As comedians who have provoked the uncomfortable drink of water on more than one occasion over the past couple of decades, we know the maneuver when we see it.)

We heard a reaction from WSJ’s John Fund while guesting on The John Batchelor Show last night. Fund said that Sykes’ set did little to bring about the president’s promise of a bipartisan tone but, perhaps more importantly, it put the president in an uncomfortable position. He even suggested that Obama might have considered issuing a brief apology. Fund and the other panelists agreed that the performance was inappropriate.

It wasn’t a bomb, but it was by no means “hilarious!” as some commenters on various blogs and news sites have tried to maintain. The WHCD is not an easy gig, but it’s nothing that should present this kind of difficulty for a professional comedian. We’re puzzled as to the strategy employed by Sykes and some of her predecessors. And doubly puzzled by the folks who weigh in on the controversy who call her “brave.” There have been some ballsy WHCD performances in the past, but this was not one of them. Had she truly wanted to go the brave route, she might have cooked up a couple of gay marriage jokes and made the POTUS squirm a bit. Instead, she did the exact opposite of brave– aiming many of her more caustic jokes at easy targets (Cheney, Bush, Limbaugh, et al) and, as Finke points out, nailing “people who weren’t there.”