In response to my previous post, cyberfriend Doug Hagler suggested a couple reasons why late-night hosts haven’t done much with Barack Obama up until he was (startlingly) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One, Joe Biden, I agree with; the VP is a walking punch line, giving them plenty of material to work with all by himself. Doug’s right to call him a “comedic sacrificial lamb.” He also has a point in noting that we’re not that far into the Obama administration, though if you look back eight years, I think you’ll find that that didn’t slow the likes of Jay Leno much in going after George W. Bush.His other suggestion, though, I think is off: that the President is “an articulate public figure” who doesn’t give comedians many opportunities to poke fun at him. You know, the guy gives a good speech, but get him off his teleprompter and he’s startlingly mortal—even Bush-like. Here’s a few examples:
Austrian is a language?
Halting the rise of privacy?
When TOTUS fails:
Thinking on his feet:
57 of 59 states, one left to go:
None of this is to imply that the President is stupid, because he isn’t; but were these lines all attributable to George W. Bush, they would have been fed right into the Bush-as-drooling-clown meme, and the jokes would have come cascading down. When Barack Obama says them? Crickets from the big guns of the media. Clearly, something’s uneven here.
Now, I don’t blame this on bias on the part of late-night hosts. I do think they’re biased to some degree—because who isn’t?—but I don’t think bias drives their routines much at all; for those guys, the driver is getting a laugh, and they’ll do anything within reason to get a laugh out of their audience. (And for Letterman—who’s either the most biased of the group, I think, or just the meanest—maybe not just within reason.) They’ve tried telling Obama jokes, and studio audiences haven’t responded. They don’t want to tell jokes that leave the audience cold, and you can’t blame them for that.
Part of this is that the President started off with such an elevated mood, with such elevated expectations, that many people didn’t want to diminish that any by laughing at him; part of it is that over the course of the campaign, Barack Obama became increasingly unable to laugh at himself, and so far he’s been running an administration that really can’t seem to take a joke. That doesn’t encourage public levity. It will be interesting to see if the laughter over the Nobel is an indication that public attitudes—as represented by talk-show studio audiences—are starting to change, or if it’s just a blip. If it’s the former, then the President had best relearn to take a joke, because as JibJab has known all along, he’s plenty vulnerable to satire.
Ok Rob, it's time for me to start collecting royalties. I'm going to want at least 10% of your proceeds from this blog, considering what a service I provide to you 🙂
I don't think I'm off, obviously. I think Obama comes off as nowhere near as much of an idiot as Bush did. He has his flubs, but they aren't as much of a daily occurrence. I also wouldn't characterize the Bush administration as eager to laugh at itself either.
I definitely think you should have mentioned the tendency to associate things like a rural accent, or even in some cases conservatism, with stupidity. I'm not saying that's warranted, but it does seem to come up a lot. I mean, how many TV characters are established as stupid by their New York accent? How about Mississippi? And are those stupid characters more likely members of the NRA? Or the ACLU?
I'm not happy with this (plenty of conservative, Southern family members who are smart, successful, etc.) but you can't ignore it.
Lastly, there's the racism issue. You can choose, as a white TV personality like Jay Leno, to make fun of a white person or a black person. Snap decision – which one do you write a joke for?
You can choose, as a white TV personality like Jay Leno, to make fun of a white person or a black person. Snap decision – which one do you write a joke for?
Fear of being accused of racism is definitely another part of this–especially given how free this administration has been with charges of racism.
As for the bias of the media, based in NYC/DC/LA, against non-urbanites, especially Southerners, and against conservatives–well, I'm in complete agreement there; and as I said, I do think the late-night hosts are affected by the bias of their milieu. It's odd, though, that I'm the conservative and you're the liberal, and you're the one arguing the media-bias charge while I'm saying something else is more the issue.
I will grant you that our current President doesn't publicly butcher the English language as often as his predecessor. He also doesn't say much in public without his teleprompter, where GWB did that far more frequently. Again, had President Bush refused to open his mouth in public without the teleprompter, we would have heard all sorts of derisive commentary from the media. The biggest reason "Obama comes off as nowhere near as much of an idiot" is that we don't have the media telling us he's an idiot.
And again, when it comes to the late-night folks, I think a lot of that is that their audiences just haven't wanted to hear it. I'm sure they'll never be as merciless toward President Obama as they were to President Bush, for reasons including their various biases, but when they can get laughs from Obama jokes, they'll tell them.