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Why can't we joke about Obama?

In the NYT, Bill Carter takes the position that Barack Obama is impermeable to good satire. McCain is susceptible to jokes because he has one distinctive mockable quality: old age.

But there has been little humor about Mr. Obama: about his age, his speaking ability, his intelligence, his family, his physique. And within a late-night landscape dominated by white hosts, white writers, and overwhelmingly white audiences, there has been almost none about his race.

?We?re doing jokes about people in his orbit, not really about him,? said Mike Sweeney, the head writer for Mr. O?Brien on ?Late Night.? The jokes will come, representatives of the late-night shows said, when Mr. Obama does or says something that defines him ? in comedy terms.

?We?re carrion birds,? said Jon Stewart, host of ?The Daily Show? on the Comedy Central channel. ?We?re sitting up there saying ?Does he seem weak? Is he dehydrated yet? Let?s attack.? ?

That is so disingenuous. The best targets are the strong. Any decent political satirist should have an instinct to go after the most powerful individuals. I don't believe Sweeney and Stewart for one minute. The real explanation for the lack of jokes is some combination of the desire for Obama to win and the fear of seeming racist.

?The thing is, he?s not buffoonish in any way,? said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson?s monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Mr. Letterman. ?He?s not a comical figure,? Mr. Barry said.

Fire every comic writer who says that and bring in some people with brains and nerve.

Full post as published by Althouse on July 15, 2008 (boomark / email).