It was just a few short months ago that Jon Stewart on the Daily Show had to tell his audience it was okay to laugh after he made a mild witticism directed toward Barack Obama about his switch on campaign financing. It was at that point that a few of us wondered if the comics and writers who shape much of the national conversation would ever be able to lay a glove on the Illinois senator or whether his race gave him a cloak of immunity, shielding him from the barbs and bon mots of the late night comedy crowd and Comedy Central gang.
We needn’t have worried. It turns out the comedy writers were actually desperate for material with which to skewer Obama but the candidate was so new on the national stage that there was no overarching, defining character trait that the audience would have a common frame of reference with which to understand the humor and laugh.
Why? The reason cited by most of those involved in the shows is that a fundamental factor is so far missing in Mr. Obama: There is no comedic “take” on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh, like allegations of Bill Clinton’s womanizing, or President Bush’s goofy bumbling or Al Gore’s robotic persona.
“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.
This is true - up to a point. The fact is, it is very hard to make fun of someone unless you are willing to subsume your personal feelings and treat the subject as just another bozo slipping on a banana peel. The mainstream press is still having a hard time getting beyond their goo-goo eyed worship of Obama’s talents as a stump speaker so it is no wonder that comedy writers and performers would have problems zeroing in on the candidate’s many faults and idiosyncrasies.
There is no doubt, several representatives of the late-night shows said, that so far their audiences (and at least some of the shows’ writers) seem to be favorably disposed toward Mr. Obama, to a degree that perhaps leaves them more resistant to jokes about him than those about most previous candidates.
“A lot of people are excited about his candidacy,” Mr. Sweeney said. “It’s almost like: ‘Hey, don’t go after this guy. He’s a fresh face; cut him some slack.’ ”
While the right had been laying into Obama for months about his pomposity, his overly high opinion of himself, and his overweening confidence about winning the election, the general public did not see these traits in the candidate until just recently. It was left to Obama’s ideological allies at The New Yorker to start chipping away at the marble facade that shielded the candidate from ridicule and thus, from being portrayed as exactly what he is; a human being with imperfections and a too lofty opinion of himself.
The New Yorker cartoon was notable for the breakthrough in portraying the candidate - even if the target of the satire were his opponents - as something less than a cross between Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ. Touching on all the groundless fears of the right with regard to Obama’s Muslim heritage and his lack of patriotism was nevertheless seen as validating those fears because the idiocy of Obama supporters posited that folks in flyover country weren’t sophisticated enough to see that the joke was actually on them.
Beyond that, the reaction of the Obama camp itself revealed a humorlessness and a surprising sensitivity to criticism that showed a campaign that was taking itself way too seriously for its own good. Any bunch that uptight about a cartoon was bound to step in it sooner or later. This they did with a series of gaffes over the next few weeks that highlighted the candidate’s overconfidence along with an almost regal sense of entitlement that fully manifested itself in prickly responses to a new ad campaign that the McCain campaign began to run.
The fake presidential seal, the constant use of the royal “We” when speaking, the references to himself as president, and finally, his foreign trip last month all worked to shed the image of ice blue perfection so carefully crafted by the campaign and resulted in the candidate becoming fair game for comics, pundits, and late night talk show hosts:
But growing Obama fatigue among voters after his pseudo-presidential visit to Europe and the Middle East has unleashed a wave of satirical fire, mocking Mr Obama for his apparent belief that he has the election in the bag.
Last month Jon Stewart, host of the satirical news programme The Daily Show, had to tell his audience that they were allowed to laugh at Mr Obama after a joke fell flat.
But Mr Stewart made comedic hay during the Illinois Senator’s international trip, mocking his progress through the Holy Land, where he said the candidate stopped “in Bethlehem to see the manger where he was born.”
Late night comic Jimmy Kimmel also cracked a joke at Mr Obama’s expense: “They really love Barack Obama in Germany. He’s like a rock star over there. Impressive until you realise that David Hasselhoff is also like a rock star over there.”
The jokes are important because they increasingly draw on evidence that voters are tiring of Mr Obama’s elevated opinion of himself, the wall to wall coverage of his pronouncements, and the feeling that he should concentrate on voters back home.
But it has been the McCain campaign’s ridiculing of Obama as a world celebrity and poking fun at his messiah-like image that may have done the most damage and actually had an impact on the polls. The blow up over the ad that compared Obama to such celebrities as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton scratched at the soft underbelly of the Obama campaign by attacking the phenomenon of his candidacy and questioning the intelligence and judgment of his most rabid supporters.
This is the risk McCain runs with ridicule; the probability that in addition to his main target Obama, collateral damage will occur when the barbs strike the innocent as well; in this case, the legions of Obama fans who believe their candidate can do no wrong and speak of him as if he is a religious icon. Not that McCain had any chance in swaying these voters but Americans don’t like to see people like that picked on and it could lose him votes among independents and conservative Democrats if his pot shots were seen as cruel and unfair to the Obamabots.
J. Michael Waller, Annenberg Professor of International Communications for The Institute of World Politics wrote a paper in 2006 about ridicule in the public arena and found that the tactic of using ridicule as a weapon could easily backfire:
Laughing at someone – ridicule - is another matter. It is the use of humor at someone else’s expense. It is a zero-sum game destructive to one of the parties involved. Like a gun, it is a dangerous weapon. Even in trained hands, it can misfire. Used carelessly or indiscriminately, ridicule can create enemies were there were none, and deepen hostilities among the very peoples whom the user seeks to win over.
In nearly every aspect of society and across cultures and time, ridicule works. Ridicule leverages the emotions and simplifies the complicated and takes on the powerful, in politics, business, law, entertainment, literature, culture, sports and romance. Ridicule can tear down faster than the other side can rebuild. One might counter an argument, an image, or even a kinetic force, but one can marshal few defenses against the well-aimed barbs that bleed humiliation and drip contempt.
In fact, the Obama campaign had a response to the McCain ad; they played the race card. It’s the only comeback that would have had a greater impact than Obama being accused of being weightless and shallow so they deployed their most potent weapon - with surprising results.
The media to a large extent and much of the public came down on McCain’s side and agreed the ad was not racist - especially after first David Axelrod and then the candidate himself agreed they were injecting race into the argument after first denying any such thing. In effect, McCain’s ad turned the tables on the Obama camp by placing them in the position of attacking McCain supporters with the equally potent race card weapon - and it blew up in their faces.
Another McCain ad which was much more in jest referred to Obama as “The One” and interspersed video of the candidate’s speeches with humorous bits like Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea. The difference with this ad is that the campaign wisely refrained from attacking Obama supporters. This one was aimed directly at Obama’s supercilious opinion of himself.
In both ads, Obama supporters found themselves stretching the point on racism beyond the breaking point, entering the realm of self parody. The specter of Keith Olberman actually talking about the “phallic symbols” in McCain’s “Celebrity” ad bordered on the surreal. And David Gergen laughably referred to ”coded signals” in the “The One” ad by solemnly informing us that Moses was actually code for “uppity.” It was like a logic sickness gripped many Obama surrogates who were examining these ads sometimes frame by frame to glean the last ounce of race baiting from them. Needless to say, their revelations were given short shrift by the American people.
It seems likely that the Obama camp will not pull the race card any time soon when the McCain campaign is in the process of ridiculing him.
Indeed, McCain seems disinclined to change his strategy. By attacking what is perceived as their opponent’s strengths, they are whittling away at the Obama mystique while the media plays into their hands and spreads the message far beyond any ad buys the campaign makes. The McCain campaign’s most recent target is Obama’s speaking ability:
John McCain is mocking the oratorical gifts of Barack Obama, recommending that he “should consider someone with a knack for brevity and directness, to balance the ticket.”
“Taking in my opponent’s performances is a little like watching a big summer blockbuster,” McCain sneers in his weekly radio address, “and an hour in, realizing that all the best scenes were in the trailer you saw last fall.”
Obama delivered the Democrats’ officials radio address Saturday, mentioning “Sen. McCain” four times during a policy remarks about Iraq and balancing the budget. McCain snarks at Obama 10 times in his own address.
McCain’s gibe about a less windy running mate is part of a continuing effort by the Republican’s presidential campaign to turn Obama’s strengths against him.
Obama is popular with younger voters, and Americans usually vote for the more likable presidential candidate. So using political jujitsu, McCain used TV ads to portray his opponent as an air-headed celebrity more in the mold of Paris Hilton than commander in chief.
The danger with this line of attack is that everyone knows Obama can deliver a great speech and mocking one of his obvious gifts could redound to McCain’s disadvantage if it is seen he is being churlish or envious rather than making the point that delivering a great speech while actually saying something relevant and important are two different things. It’s a good point but McCain leaves himself open to counter thrusts by Obama. The candidate will speak before 70,000 people in Denver in what will be one of the more dramatic political scenes in many years. It is hard to see how McCain can make the same claims about Obama’s speeches after the voter sees so many people screaming their delight and the commentators no doubt falling all over themselves in trying to outdo one another in singing the speech’s praises.
Bob Dole had much the same problem in 1996 when running for president. Dole’s biting wit could cross the line at times and rather than being funny, his barbs could be cruel and sound unfeeling, attacking not just Clinton but his supporters as well. He was going to lose anyway so you can’t say this tactic necessarily lost him the election but there is no doubt that at his worst, Dole didn’t help himself when it came to his use of sarcasm and ridicule.
Not so Ronald Reagan. Perhaps it was his genial personality or his gentle delivery that smoothed the rough edges of his ridicule but, to take one example, his famous line delivered when confronted by anti-war protestors holding up signs saying “Make Love, Not War” and Reagan quipping “They didn’t appear they could either” drew laughs from his opponents as well. Reagan, like Lincoln, used humor sparingly but effectively. And it was used to make a valid point, not gratuitously simply to score points against an opponent.
How long McCain can continue to ridicule Obama probably depends on how much fodder the Democrat gives his ad people to use. Are we ready for a more humble, less pretentious Obama? Somehow, I don’t think he has it in him to think of himself as anything less than how he sees himself now.