"Hillarious" jokes about Obama

So, of course my post from yesterday has context. It is this: Occasionally people make jokes about Obama and occasionally those jokes are completely tasteless and utterly upsetting for the majority of the population. This crazy cartoon on the cover of the New Yorker is difficult to understand. Now, it's funny that just last week my father and I were talking about how people are always making little quips about how the cartoons in the New Yorker are over their heads. I'm always thinking that maybe I'm missing something because I don't find the jokes difficult to understand so much as not always funny. Enter this cartoon. I've got to be missing something here. I mean, I like John Stewart very much but he was going on and on about how the popular media has exaggerated the severity of this cartoon. It's just a cartoon, he was saying, what's everyone getting so worked up about? (I'm paraphrasing so I didn't use quotation marks. Is that right?) I really think that this cartoon is terrible. Some have called it "tasteless and revolting" and I think it is. It is racist, these people and I agree, to use racial and ethnic stereotypes in this context, even if there is some back-and-forth switch-a-roo in which the cartoonist is making fun of the way that the conservative media is portraying this couple. Knowing that The New Yorker is a liberal publication, I'm assuming that the old switch-a-roo is what's going on here. I think the problem has to do with the fact that not everyone is in on the joke. Also, there is the fact that the joke isn't all that funny in the first place. So, this is what the whole, "We're not allowed to make jokes about Obama," story was referring to. One super bad-taste joke spoiling the whole bushel. I'm going to say, to those who are now saying that Obama can't take a joke, that the problem isn't with Obama and his constituents so much as, in this case, a really really bad joke. I guess that even liberals have forgotten that Muslims actually count when we're talking about not throwing around stereotypes.

So, here's where I bring it all together, linking today's post with yesterday's: As I see it, there are at least two camps among the people that I know. One of these camps holds John Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel (I think) and involves people who think that this New Yorker cartoon and other Sarah Silverman-style humor that is blatantly bringing out racist stereotypes, that just puts all the cards on the table, is one of the steps toward opening up our minds to each other. That this sort of thing helps us to move forward. In opposition is the other camp which, I suspect, holds those who may have heard or remember having heard, lots of racist and oppressive things being said in earnest and with hate. These people are smart people and understand that the new version of humor that we're talking about is satirizing that hateful sort of talk but they also have noticed that the new humor is the same as the old humor and that a lot of hard work and dilligent awareness-making went into getting to where we are today, where this sort of thing is uncommon. History matters, say these people.

SO (drumroll please), I think that it is the war between these two camps that maybe keeps down jokes about Obama. There are the New Yorker cartoonist-types rattling to make the obvious jokes that no one is comfortable hearing (and that many people are actually dramatically offended by). Then there are the people who are saying, "Forget race. Let's make fun of how he's a picky eater. That's funny." (i.e., Maureen Down). The problem with this compromise is that, no matter how we want to think differently, it's very hard for people to laugh at picky eater jokes and ignore what is probably an elephant in the living room, in terms of the offensive jokes. So, that, I think, is what Jimmy Kimmel was referring to when he said, "reverse racism." Right? He means that people are totally tied in knots over the race issue and can't figure out what to do about it. So, it's racism that causes folks not to make jokes about Obama. But, it's "reverse racism" because it's a weird and convoluted 21st century racism that people don't quite understand. Is that what he meant?