Comedy in the Obama Age: The Joking Gets Hard (Making Fun of Obama is Racist, Impossible)

Time ^ | Richard Zoglin

[nickcarraway]

The crowd sitting elbow to elbow in the basement performance space at New York City's Comedy Cellar on a recent Wednesday night had pretty much had its fill of sex jokes, gay jokes, rants about New York cabdrivers and time-filling banter with the couple in the front row who had just gotten married a week ago. Then, a few minutes after midnight, James Smith, a lanky Australian stand-up who has appeared on HBO's Flight of the Conchords, bounded onto the stage for a 15-minute set to do something a little different. He talked politics.

Some of his targets were old reliables like Bill Clinton, fresh from his diplomatic jaunt to North Korea. ("We need to bring two hot Asian chicks back from North Korea in a private jet," said Smith, imagining the genesis of Clinton's recent mission. "Who should we get?") He delved into the economic crisis, pinpointing the bitter irony of banks' having to declare bankruptcy ("How do you f___ up your only job?"). And he waded fearlessly into perhaps the most treacherous satiric waters of all: the new resident of the White House. (See TIME's history of stand-up comedy.)

Making jokes about Barack Obama is the big test for political comedians these days, and like many, Smith did it mostly by talking around him. Obama could never get away with the kind of sexual shenanigans that Clinton did, he mused, because Michelle wouldn't stand for it: "She would impeach him herself!" Obama's election victory was inevitable the minute Oprah Winfrey endorsed him: "There's nothing bigger than Oprah. Oprah can do anything. 'Betcha can't make a black man President.' 'Watch me!' " The joke isn't Obama himself; it's the cultural shift — and the country's reaction to it — that he represents.

[reagan_fanatic]

Obama could never get away with the kind of sexual shenanigans that Clinton did, he mused, because Michelle wouldn't stand for it: "She would impeach him herself!"

A four year-old could have come up with a better line that that.

How pathetic.