The media’s tender loving care of and hypersensitivity in protection of Barack Obama is going to put a real crimp in attempts at Obama humor.
The latest survey of late-night jokes from the Center for Media and Public Affairs found 17 Obama jokes, about a third of Hillary’s and a tenth of President Bush’s. Then there’s Saturday Night Live.
Chicago Tribune TV critic Maureen Ryan started whining early in the week that Obama should not be impersonated by a white comedian (Fred Armisen). She huffed: "Obama's candidacy gives us solid proof of the progress that African-Americans have made in this country. I guess SNL still has further to go on that front." A reader poll alongside these complaints asked if Obama should be impersonated by an African-American: 74 percent voted for "Doesn’t matter," and a cranky six percent said "no."
But the media elite seems to be in the minority. Friday’s Washington Post carried a story by Paul Farhi further ginning up the "Fauxbama" controversy. He not only carried Ryan’s demand for a black impersonator, but added the radical-left British newspaper The Guardian, which screamed minstrel show:
The latest survey of late-night jokes from the Center for Media and Public Affairs found 17 Obama jokes, about a third of Hillary’s and a tenth of President Bush’s. Then there’s Saturday Night Live.
Chicago Tribune TV critic Maureen Ryan started whining early in the week that Obama should not be impersonated by a white comedian (Fred Armisen). She huffed: "Obama's candidacy gives us solid proof of the progress that African-Americans have made in this country. I guess SNL still has further to go on that front." A reader poll alongside these complaints asked if Obama should be impersonated by an African-American: 74 percent voted for "Doesn’t matter," and a cranky six percent said "no."
But the media elite seems to be in the minority. Friday’s Washington Post carried a story by Paul Farhi further ginning up the "Fauxbama" controversy. He not only carried Ryan’s demand for a black impersonator, but added the radical-left British newspaper The Guardian, which screamed minstrel show:
Haha -- those "objective jourrrrrnalists" sure hate it when someone makes fun of their candidate. You ever hear them bitch when someone makes fun of George Bush? I guess there have NEVER been any jokes about Bush that could be considered "over the line."
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1 comment:
It's racist to think that a person of color can only be portrayed by another person of color.
NBC's long-running Today Show is famous for such racism. When a person of color is interviewed on this show, they are always interviewed by a person of the same color. I'm not sure what their argument would be if they were ever taken to task on this but I'd love to hear them describe EVERYTHING except blatant racism.
I suspect they'd be acting like two magnets trying to touch common poles.
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