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Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page began his career in journalism as editor for the Middletown Journal and Cincinnati Inquirer, and received his ...
Read more about By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services.
Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page began his career in journalism as editor for the Middletown Journal and Cincinnati Inquirer, and received his ...
Read more about By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services.
Comics Find Obama's Soft Spot
By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services
Comedy relies on surprise. "Saturday Night Live" has felt painfully
dull this season without Sarah Palin to kick around or Tina Fey to do
the kicking. Then it surprised the world this weekend. It kicked
President Barack Obama. Even more surprising, it got away with it.
Only a few months ago major comedians like Jon Stewart and Will Ferrell were lamenting with slack-jawed remorse how resilient Obama has proved to ridicule. How the comics missed the target-rich environments offered up by his predecessors.
Even the gifted Fred Armisen, who could pull off an Obama imitation almost good enough to fool the Secret Service, found jokes at Obama's expense fell flat. Audiences treated the man Oprah Winfrey famously pronounced "The One" as though he were a bank too big to fail, a balloon of hope too big to be punctured.
But that appears to have ended after Obama's failed attempt to help Chicago win its bid to host to 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Like one of those Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloons that had snagged on a tree, Obama's balloon of hope fizzled to earth.
It had to happen sooner or later. Armisen found Obama's comedic vulnerability not on his right, where he is predictably pummeled by certain pundits, but on his left, where supporters tend to muzzle themselves in defensive solidarity, even when they are unhappy.
In a mock presidential address to the nation, Armisen as Obama assures angry conservatives that they have nothing to worry about. "Because when you look at my record," he declares, "it is very clear what I have done so far -- and that is nothing. Nada! Almost one year and nothing to show for it!"
Armisen's Obama then checks off a laundry list of what he has not done: "Close (the prison at) Guantanamo Bay ... Out of Iraq ... Improve Afghanistan ... Health Care reform...." "No," "no, "worse" and "Hell, no," are the assessments of each.
And what about the left? "They're the ones who should be mad," he says, offering another checklist: "Global warming ... immigration reform ... gays in the military ... limits on executive power ... torture prosecutions." Here again, the answer was no to each.
As caricature, Armisen's skit passed the first test of comedy: it was funny. But was it true? Was it fact-based? And did it make a point worth making? There's a thin line between truth and a cheap shot, especially in politics where the line is always moving, depending on your audience.
Fact checkers give Armisen's checklist a mixed grade. Guantanamo is "stalled," for example, and Iraq and health care are works in progress, according to Politifact.com, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonpartisan fact-checking Web site. But Afghanistan has gotten measurably worse, not better. Obama soon has to decide whether to send in more troops or change strategies.
Politifact, operated by the St. Petersburg Times, monitors 500 promises Obama made as a candidate. So far, by their count he has accomplished 47 and compromised on a dozen more.
After his first nine months, it is hard to call him a slacker. But Team Obama can't afford to be too sanguine about facts. If there was a point the "SNL" skit makes it is how politics is based less on facts than perceptions. "SNL" often has signaled changes in public perceptions and created a few of its own.
"SNL" has a 30-plus history of redefining public perceptions of presidents and candidates, from Chevy Chase's bumbling klutz of a Gerald Ford and Al Franken's monotone-speaking Paul Simon (the late Illinois Democratic senator, not the singer) to Will Ferrell's "strategery"-planning George W. Bush and Amy Poehler's frighteningly ambitious Hillary Clinton.
"SNL's" message reveals, among other subtle insights, a repressed discontent on the left. They see a center-left president who often seems more concerned with the art of compromise on issues like health care, or inclined to put off issues like global warming and gays in the military, than with standing up for his core beliefs.
Obama came into office tackling two wars, a world economic crisis and an overhaul of the nation's health care system, just for starters. He has a lot that he's trying to do. Even so, SNL reminds the president, as he pursues what he's trying to do, that sometimes he needs to remind us of what he's done.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com, or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207.
(c) 2008 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
This news arrived on: 10/07/2009
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Posted Comments:
10-11-2009 16:35
JCE wrote:
So, Obama is the first to borrow from China? The first to implement these policies? Seems a little early for the right wing to try to rewrite Obama history. They are still having trouble rewriting Bush history.
10-11-2009 09:48
ssss wrote:
John Smith. Good luck with that. O is making things 100 times worse and it will take generations to clean up the mess hes about to put on this country. You can scream racisms, that evil white man all you want. It doesnt take the attention off his horrible policies. Lets go BEG the chinese for more money. Its that honorable?
10-08-2009 21:05
JCE wrote:
Linda P. is right. It goes beyond that, tho. Just because the republicans are fighting Obama on anything he does, and are able to stall or stop any reform, if the democrats were willing, they could help Obama. But as long as the people have no money to buy legislation, and refuse to use their brains or their votes effectively, or wisely, the special interests will always win. The congress is not of the people, it is of the rich. They are not working class, average or even middle class Americans. They are the rich elite, and they will listen to their bosses as long as the people refuse to be their bosses.
casey42 It is both parties who represent the system, and the oligarchs. It is only the republicans who are best at not representing the people. The democrats are wannabe republicans, but aren't smart enough to lie, cheat, steal, and be hypocrites as well as the republicans. But you have to give the democrats credit for giving it all they have.
MarineMom You are right. I just don't know how to give up, I have to fight. But the people are such a disappointment. You can't blame a cat for being a cat. So I am far more upset with, and disillusioned with, the people who cause, encourage, and otherwise allow the congress and the special interests to get away with it. Keith Olberman gave the best commentary on health care last night that there has ever been. Like him, I don't want my tax money going to unnecessary military actions, or the banks, or the insurance companies, and the oligarchs. I do, however, want it to go so no one has to die because they can't afford health care. One of the very few legitimate purposes of our government is to keep us safe from our enemies. They are failing with health care. It is hard to believe sometimes.
John W Smith III You are right.
casey42 It is both parties who represent the system, and the oligarchs. It is only the republicans who are best at not representing the people. The democrats are wannabe republicans, but aren't smart enough to lie, cheat, steal, and be hypocrites as well as the republicans. But you have to give the democrats credit for giving it all they have.
MarineMom You are right. I just don't know how to give up, I have to fight. But the people are such a disappointment. You can't blame a cat for being a cat. So I am far more upset with, and disillusioned with, the people who cause, encourage, and otherwise allow the congress and the special interests to get away with it. Keith Olberman gave the best commentary on health care last night that there has ever been. Like him, I don't want my tax money going to unnecessary military actions, or the banks, or the insurance companies, and the oligarchs. I do, however, want it to go so no one has to die because they can't afford health care. One of the very few legitimate purposes of our government is to keep us safe from our enemies. They are failing with health care. It is hard to believe sometimes.
John W Smith III You are right.
10-08-2009 17:55
John W Smith III wrote:
Republicans are boring.The American people know what they are all about angry white men,hate powerful women,bigots,and watching out for the rich.SNL doing the same thing they been doing for the last 35 years.They want to give the Republicans a little laugh because the only clowns they have is Rush and Glenn Beck.
We know you guys want us to stop blaming Bush and the Repulicans and some Democracts like Ben Nelson about the mess we are in,we will as soon as this administration clean it up.
We know you guys want us to stop blaming Bush and the Repulicans and some Democracts like Ben Nelson about the mess we are in,we will as soon as this administration clean it up.
10-08-2009 14:14
HHJ wrote:
We got a ACRON Community Organizer, what can you expect? Cut the man a break, he is like an on the job heart surgeon, better hope he learns something before he destroys our nation. If he was a baseball player he certainly would not be leading the league.
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