"Questionable?" According to whom?

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on January 12th, 2009

The Miami Herald has a piece on the South Beach Comedy Festival. (That link takes you to the stubby article on the UPI.com page. Who even knew that UPI was still around? The larger Herald story is here.)

The headline?

“Obama a questionable comedy target”

No question mark at the end. It’s a fact, dontcha know.

At least one comedian has… balls:

Lisa Lampanelli said while most TV comedy writers appear hesitant to poke fun at the incoming head of state, she and her fellow stand-up comedians are fully prepared to dish Obama dirt at the South Beach Comedy Festival this month, The Miami Herald reported Sunday.[…]

“I’m not scared to make fun of anything. And I don’t think any comic should be.”

What’s this? We’re lauding the chutzpah of the woman who was once our mortal enemy? The woman who called SHECKYmagazine “a bunch of ass-lickers?” (It was 1999. It’s so long ago, it’s almost like it never happened. And, since a lot of our first three or four years were wiped out by a worm in August of ’03, it’s like it never happened!)

The short excerpt ends on this note:

Comedy Central Director of Talent JoAnn Grigioni suggested to the Herald that some comedians’ hesitancy to target Obama is due to the Democrat’s lack of overly apparent flaws.

Amazing, what? The Director of Talent for the foremost purveyor of standup in all of cabledom says that our president-elect has no “overly apparent flaws.” Jaw-dropping.

He’s a carbon-based life form. He’s a human being. He has flaws. Many of them (if you’re paying any attention at all) are apparent. Hell, even Jesus H. Christ himself had flaws!

Let’s try to outline this dilemma yet again. By proclaiming that someone– a man, a woman, a president-elect– has no flaws and therefore is exempt from teasing, there are certain unavoidable side-effects. Not the least of which is that it implies that anyone who does find a flaw (and who subsequently exploits that flaw in the name of comedy) is (fill in the blank– Insensitive? Racist? Mean-spirited?). Is the “skunk at the garden party” effect, to use the vivid metaphor.

Of course, comedians don’t need permission to joke about someone. They never have. As Ms. Lampanelli points out, she’s never been “scared to make fun of anything.” And, for the most part, comedians have dealt with such proscriptions by going at them head-on– In fact, the easiest way to get a comedian to joke about something is to tell him that it’s sacred!

But we’re sensing far too much acquiescence out there in Standupville. And, oddly, these days, the proscription is coming from inside the camp– comedy writers, comedians and cable television execs are saying that this Obama fellow is a tough nut to crack. Such talk has a slightly chilling effect on the rest of us. If you deny that, you’re living in a dream world. (And if you think that, once again, we’re overstating things, note that Ms. Lampanelli used the word “scared” in her statement to the Herald. Indeed, the reporter, James H. Burnett III, cites “fear of a politically correct backlash” as one of the reasons for the dearth of Obama gags.)

But, as so often happens in the world of humor, it could go either way: When such talk prevails, it’s not a stretch to imagine that anyone who makes fun our new leader might be regarded as a pariah… or perhaps a genius (for finding humor where none was believed to reside).

Stay tuned.

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