Comics hope Obama can bring the funny

Caroline Hirsch knows funny. She has been running a comedy club since 1981 and currently presides over Caroline’s on Broadway in New York, one of the premier venues for jokers in the country. Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Rosie O’Donnell and Tim Allen, among many others, have graced her stage, and some of them have even told jokes about the president.

She thinks an Obama presidency will create an entire new comic frontier. “He will help raise the intelligence of the jokes,” she said. “And the minute he screws up, they will go after him like race is nothing. They’ll even play into the race card, in a good way.

“We all have stereotypes we know about each other. Even his quirky name. They’ll talk about his family. Everybody in that family is dressed so color coordinated. That will come out. And getting a new dog. Comics will make fun of him, but right now they haven’t had a chance to react. We don’t have anything yet. There’s not much to go on.”

Martin, who has also written for Maher’s previous show, “Politically Incorrect,” recalled how comedy writers in general reacted when Bill Clinton took office.

“With Clinton it was, at first, ‘They’re hillbillies,’” he said. “Then it was, ‘Oh wait, they’re smart.’ Then it was, ‘Oh, he’s a fatty. He stopped at McDonald’s while jogging. Then we got a gift at Easter, which was Monica. Then that’s all he was: a horn dog.”

Just like the electorate, audiences will divide into Republican and Democrat, fringe and mainstream. Some of the folks on the far left will be offended by anything said about Obama, just like those at the edge of the other camp bristled at jokes about Bush. Yet for the most part, Americans seem to be able to put their political differences aside and unite in the pursuit of a hearty guffaw.

“Most of the audiences play along,” Hirsch said. “You have comedians who are very liberal. Then there are some, like Nick DePaolo and Dennis Miller, who are very conservative. Most jokes are made by liberals.”

Veritable gold rush of material
That could also be cyclical. Since Bush has occupied the White House for the past eight years, most jokes were about him and his Republican colleagues. When President Clinton was in office, that certainly was a veritable gold rush of material.

“With Bill Clinton, we used him as an incorrigible horn dog who had sex with anything that moved,” Mulkerin said. “That may or may not have been the truth. But that’s the kind of stuff people expected as far as jokes.”

“That’s all we had on Clinton,” Morano said. “We’re still making fun of blow jobs.”

Martin said that although Maher is perceived as liberal, “Bill doesn’t like to be shoe-horned. He’s a liberal progressive libertarian, but he’s very conservative on other issues. Most of Bill’s material doesn’t push a political agenda, it’s more about exposing truths.

“It’s important for us to hold everybody across the political spectrum’s feet to the fire.”

No matter what jokes are mined during an Obama Administration, there will be a sense of melancholy among those who make jokes at other people’s expense, and especially the current president. Bush’s exit may mean we are seeing the end of a golden age of political humor.

“We could be,” Borowitz said. “But that’s a little like the Egyptians in the Old Testament bemoaning the end of a golden era of locusts. I’d rather have less satire and more peace and prosperity. We can always joke about something else — like Joe Scarborough.”

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