Is Obama too inscrutable to impersonate? (OH PLEASE!)

Salon ^ | September 29, 2012

[SMGFan]

Obama's blend of cool and reserve has proven tough to imitate, and it's dragging down "Saturday Night Live"

[Yaelle]

Barf. No, the problem is that they only copy his hokey mannerisms. They don’t mock his content.

Because if they mocked what h e actually says, their audience would vote Romney.

And that is not why they are on the air.

[originalbuckeye]

I thought Fred Armison did a reasonable impersonation of Obama. But then I read they were going to have Jay Pharoah do Obama this year so it wouldn't be too ‘personal’. I think SNL received a call from the WH, much like Gallup did. It went along the lines of ‘why do you have a white guy doing me? We will sue you for racism if you don't have a black guy doing me and he doesn't ever insult me’.

[happilymarriedmom]

I get the impression that anybody, News outlet, Comedy show, any media in the national spotlight has to watch themselves or they will be denied access to the One. The pansy in chief is so thin skinned that any fun made of him makes him feel bad and won’t let you play anymore.

[longfellow]

Really? Well wait til my political cartoon site goes up. Then we will see but to avoid racism charges I will only make fun of his white side.

[cookcounty]

Amazing that so far no comedian has camped out on Obama's distinctive trademark hesitation phrase:

Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, yo'-yo'."

Hard to put into letters, "yo'-yo'" is his nasalized "you-know, you-know" substitution that he likes to tack on when "Ah-ah-ah-ah-" hasn't quite bought him enough think time.

Maybe people will think its a racist thing if you criticize his speech patterns, but that's impossible. Obama was raised by white people, if he has a "eubonics" tendency, it's strictly an affectation he acquired for the purposes of manipulation.

[a fool in paradise]

Douchebags like Barack are easy to knock. They ain’t even trying.

[Incorrigible]

I thought this was pretty good and surprising from SNL:

SNL Thursday Special Mocks Obama’s Promise That Things Will Get Better: ‘I See Employed People’ Like That ‘Sixth Sense’ Movie
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/snl-thursday-special-mocks-obamas-promise-that-things-will-get-better-i-see-employed-people-like-that-sixth-sense-movie/

[stevem]

It’s nearly time for the press, pundits and comedians to start saying Obama was just too smart to be President.

[crosshairs]

How do you impersonate a horse’s ass?

[windcliff]

I had hoped they would do a skit of the pizza man hugging and lifting up the pos.

[RobinOfKingston]

Inscrutable, hell. He needs to be scruted vigorously this Nov 6.

[x]

Actually, that applies to Michaels & Co. more than to Obama.

It's not that Obama's so inscrutable that he's hard to imitate.

It's that they don't want to go out on a limb.

They don't want to take a chance at imitating him.

They'd rather leave him an untouchable, undefinable oblong blur.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Surely they can find one actor who can pretend to be a homosexual, cocaine addicted, marxist, muslim golfer.