Get over it.

iht.com

The New York Times has an interesting piece about the problems late night shows are having making fun of Barack Obama, inspired by the outrage of the most recent New Yorker cover, which is pictured at right. (Aside: Honestly, people, it's the friggin' New Yorker. It's called satire. Please read Gary Kamiya's piece on Salon and get over yourselves.)

The article talks about how Obama seems to be immune to the likes of Letterman, Leno and Stewart because he doesn't fit into the same, easy mold of a caricature as most politicians: Dubya is stupid, McCain is old, Gore is a robot.

There are also other issues at play here. The majority of late night writers, hosts and audiences are white so touching upon his race is a definite no-no. David Alan Grier, a black comedian who will deservedly get his own Comedy Central show in October, says he doesn't face these problems. "Those guys really can’t go there. It’s just like the gay comic can do gay material. It comes with the territory,” Grier told the Times. Stephen Colbert also has a get out of jail free card because, as he puts it, "my character on the show doesn’t like him. I’m expected to be hostile to him."

But what should have been expounded upon in the Times' piece, is the Obama-as-Messiah complex adopted by most of his supporters. Jon Stewart touches on it a little bit, saying: "You know, you’re allowed to laugh at him … People have a tendency to react as far as their ideology allows them." It's easy for these audiences to laugh at a figure they don't like but when it's their guy on the line nobody thinks it's funny. Tina Fey caught shit when she addressed this in an interview with Reader's Digest:

RD: What pleases you more, applause or laughter?
Fey: Laughter. You can prompt applause with a sign. My friend, SNL writer Seth Meyers, coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, "Woo-hoo." It means they sort of approve but didn't really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] The Daily Show.

It's okay to laugh at Barack Obama. He's a politician, he makes mistakes, he'll say something ridiculous now-and-again and it's the job of the late night shows to catch him on his crap. Obama isn't god — even the Almighty seems cool with people laughing at his expense. Sometimes.

Despite this, though, it is far easier to poke fun at McCain than Obama. The late night shows are going to have to be creative if Obama takes the White House in November. Maybe that's an angle the McCain campaign should be exploiting: A vote for a McCain is a vote for comedy.

Obama: Not funny