Check out the video of Bush at the White House Correspondent’s Association Dinner (Nerdprom) in this Anchoress post, and compare it to Obama’s thin-skinned, snippy attacks on his adversaries. And consider Bush’s deportment in light of how the press brutalized him at every turn – to the point of exposing legal, effective anti-terror programs in order to strike at him politically - compared to the worshipful treatment the media accords Obama.
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GWB: the exemplar of that old saw that nice guys *always* finish last. (I really do miss him.)
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I don’t think that short clip embedded in the Washington Post shows very well the point you’re trying to convey. Obama actually does tease himself at least once in that clip. Of course, the Washington Post picked that part because it’s one of his best jokes of the whole standup. It just happens also to be the one time out of the whole routine where he mocked himself. Coincidence? Obama could clue into this correlation and realize that poking fun about himself would make him way funnier — but he won’t do it. And neither will SNL, which suffers from the same Obama reverence and therefore sacrifices a TON of good laughs it could otherwise have. (I’ll always remember that stupid clip they did where the joke was that Obama was too cool.)
But aside from that, I also noticed that the liberal atmosphere seemed to stifle Jay Leno’s performance a bit. It seemed like any time Jay would start to poke political fun at Obama — even really lighthearted fun, as he usually does — the audience would get real uptight and wouldn’t respond well. I think people have been conditioned to believe that it’s completely improper to make fun of Obama. And so for this reason, Leftists just can’t generate good comedic entertainment.
I also meant to add, though, that I did consider his use of vulgar humor to be extremely unpresidential.
Is this post a hat tip to Bush and not necessarily a bash on Obama? Is it fair to praise the valedictorian and bash the salutatorian? They both achieved a level of greatness.
As a man of a shade of brown similar (and darker) than Obama, I think the response that we are seeing, both from Obama, and (as Drew so nicely pointed out) the general public is partly due to the fact that the race card has been played. Sadly, on one side some allow racism to still be a factor, and on the other some allow the suspicion of racism to be a factor. I believe that God knows the heart; that’s his job; I try not to worry about judging such issues. Of course the same issues arise for other reasons as well: his political career, his political party, his religious standing, his religious upbringing, his current choices, etc…
Even still, we have seen Obama poke fun, among other things, of himself and his ethnicity. Laughter doeth good like medicine and our nation is still not at optimal health. In my opinion, I think it is best when we as a nation can laugh with him instead of at him (or GW Bush for that matter).
At my job, I routinely (but carefully), make jokes about race, because when we step back and look at it, is it or should it be really that serious of an issue?