Redressing the humor balance

Making fun of politicians is not only our right as Americans, it’s our duty. After all, somebody has to keep those guys (relatively) humble if we’re going to preserve democracy. Unfortunately, those who lead us in this important cultural responsibility—our late-night talk-show hosts—have been falling down on the job, unable to find a good way to poke fun at Barack Obama. Part of that is the candidate’s own resistance, which is worrisome; do we really want a president who won’t let us laugh at him? We’ve had presidents before who were bad at laughing at themselves (think Nixon), which was bad enough—but not to be able to laugh at the President? It’s positively un-American. Part of this too is that audiences are resistant, which is equally concerning; if we’ve started taking politicians, even one politician, too seriously to be able to laugh at them, something is seriously out of whack with us.Fortunately, there are a few people riding to the rescue. Andy Borowitz was good enough to pass along a list of five “campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes,” and Joel Stein (in the Los Angeles Times) has collected a list of suggestions for the rest of us. We also, thank goodness, have JibJab:

With their help, it is to be hoped that we can go forth and redress the humor balance. We’d certainly better, because Maureen Dowd is right:

if Obama gets elected and there is nothing funny about him, it won’t be the economy that’s depressed. It will be the rest of us.

(As a side note, I have to admit, I feel a little sorry for Sen. Obama. Not so much because of his touchiness, although I think being able to laugh at oneself is one of life’s great blessings; it’s because of his initials. People keep wanting to refer to him by his initials, and certainly as a Democratic presidental candidate, you want to be able to hang out with FDR and JFK—though maybe not so much LBJ; but he doesn’t want to be referred to as BHO, because that reminds people that his middle name’s Hussein, and that’s bad, or something. And yet, not even Barack Obama can make BO cool. What’s the guy to do?)HT for the Stein column: Bill