Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Crickets and Tumbleweeds....

I love a good joke. I admire people who can tell them—mostly because I'm not very good at remembering and telling them to others. I tend to step all over the punchline before I even get to it.

It's not that I'm incapable of throwing out one liners or can be be funny from time to time.

I just know that I pretty much suck at telling jokes.

In that regard, President Obama and I have something in common: He too sucks at telling jokes. Take these doosies he delivered at the recent White House Correspondents' Association dinner:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney couldn't make the dinner, Obama joked, because he was writing his memoir, "How to shoot friends and interrogate people."

Oh. Hehe. Haha. Nothing says laugh riot like something that was beaten to death* 3 years ago.

"Michael (Steele, head of the GOP) for the last time, the Republican Party does not qualify for a bailout. Rush Limbaugh does not count as a troubled asset, I'm sorry,"

Why not? Everything else qualifies as one.**

"No president in history has ever named three commerce secretaries this quickly," Obama said. The president's two top choices for the position dropped out.

OK, I'll cut him some slack here. This one is mildly amusing for the self-effacing angle. But as an old friend of Dad's used to say, "It could be funnier..."

Obama noted that he and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had been political rivals, but he assured the audience "these days, we could not be closer....In fact the second she got back from Mexico, she pulled me into a hug,"

Um, yeah.

But this was actually funny:

"I believe my next hundred days will be so successful that I will be able to complete them in 72 days," he said to a roar of laughter. "And on my 73rd day, I will rest."

That's a well deserved rest, Mr. President. Financially ruining the country takes a lot of a fella.***

Obama may certainly have a humble free "Harry, I have a gift" for speaking, but apparently God didn't include joke telling as a part of that package.

My suggestion is that Obama should hire the real Jon Favreau as his writer instead of Jon Favreau.

The former is pretty money on humor, baby.


*Get it? Huh? Do ya? Yeah, I'm crazy funny like that.
**See, Michael? You need me on that wall! You want me on that wall!
***Snark on!

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