Did you hear the one about Barack Obama?
You didn't?
Well, that's because jokes about him are still forbidden to America's comedians.
As the Los Angeles Times' Greg Braxton wrote Monday, this breaks a long-standing tradition of comics jabbing at the White House resident as often as possible:
As late-night talk show hosts and other television comics who trade in political humor know, cracking wise about the new president, who marked his 100th day in office last week, is apparently not very funny for most of the people, most of the time. Not surprisingly, to guard against a frosty or uncertain reception, TV's leading political humorists have largely backed away from their ritual comic hazing of the president, a colorful tradition in the medium, especially in its late-night time slots, since at least the Nixon administration.
I'm sure this tradition goes back further than Nixon, as George M. Cohan's fabulous musical comedy "I'd Rather Be Right" took numerous shots at then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But I digress:
"If you're a comedian and you die and go to heaven, Bill Clinton is your president," said Robert J. Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. "If you're a comedian and you die and go to hell, Barack Obama is your president." [...]
READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment