Obama Kills Satire ( 03.10.11)

Posted by hpayne on March 10, 2011

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“Pretty heavy ad hominem attacks on Obama lately. You join the KKK? Or did you run out of ‘toon substance? You criticize Obama for using a teleprompter?” reads a typical email from a Democratic reader today (in addition to my post as View editor, I draw local cartoons for the News – and national cartoons for some 40 syndicated clients).

Aside from the standard Democrat meat that any critic of Obama is a racist, the reader is incredulous that a political cartoonist would criticize the president of the United States.

If you’ve been watching late-night comedy lately, you might well think the presidency is off limits. In the partisan universe occupied by SNL, The Daily Show, David Letterman, and Jay Leno, Obama jokes have become an endangered species. It is without precedent in my 25-year career.

SNL used to be the benchmark for presidential caricature – Phil Hartman nailed Bill Clinton and Dana Carvey made a career out of Bush Senior – but I can’t remember the last skit in which the program lampooned our leader. Obscured by Bill Hader’s hilarious parody of Charlie Sheen this weekend, for example, there was nary a mention of a president who is deeply unpopular, a spinless joke for avoiding hard budget choices, and whose haughty, uplifted chin and dependency on a teleprompter are the natural stuff of impersonation.

Yet not even Seth Meyers – SNL’s fake headline news anchor – could find any humor in our current White House bumbler-in-chief.

Stewart, Leno, et al are little better. Stewart – the most talented of the lot – has become a tired partisan. On Tuesday, his team even tried to make heroes of the cowardly Wisconsin legislators holed up in Illinois. Really.

President Obama has been the death of late night satire. But, I reassured my “You join the KKK?” reader, I have not succumbed. I am no jester to the Obama court. Where’s the fun of satire if you can’t lampoon the president?

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