Why Obama is Not Funny

There are a lot of people up in arms over why jokes about Obama tend to get less laughs. I think the answer is simple: he’s not nearly as funny as other presidents and candidates. To wit:

• Obama does not have the personality to do anything like this:
  

  The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

• He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
• Obama does not also have weird trivia about him, such as holding a man-sized safe in his office or shooting someone in the face.
• Obama is also not John Kerry, perhaps the most tone-deaf candidate since the introduction of television. The impersonation of Kerry by Seth Meyers on SNL was as good as any impersonation on the show ever.
• Obama is also not John Edwards, for obvious reasons.
• Obama is also not Al Gore. Gore ran as sort of a caricature of himself, with exaggerated references of the lockbox, and of course the infamous “sighing” problem. Gore himself seems to have realized how silly he sounded at times:
  

  “My plan to put Social Security in an ironclad lockbox has gotten a lot of attention recently, and I’m glad about that. But I’m afraid that it’s overshadowing some vitally important proposals. For instance, I’ll put Medicaid in a walk-in closet. I’ll put the Community Reinvestment Act in a secured gym locker. I’ll put NASA funding in a hermetically sealed Ziploc bag.”

• Obama is also not the biggest political humor magnet of all time.
• Even compared to John McCain, age is a much more rich area for jokes than inexperience is.

I think the key is that Obama, as Ambinder noted today, has protected his image throughout this campaign. The memes about him are often not fodder for jokes. Inexperience is, clearly, but it’s not something easy to make any jokes about. Moreover, the untruths about him are defined so clearly as to really make comedy very difficult, particularly subtle comedy.

There’s probably something to the theory that a lot of Obama supporters are so desparate for someone like him to come along that they don’t find jokes about him funny. But I think the reasons go deeper than that. Avoiding the silly image mistakes and ridiculous personality traits of his predecessors is something Obama and his team probably deserve credit for. Maybe we’ll discuss this more in the podcast tomorrow.