Obama at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

[Terralthra]

God damn. He makes it look easy. Especially with the segue halfway through part II. Either he's a swimmingly intelligent man I'm proud to have as President, even if I don't agree with all of his politics, or he's the most gifted faker I've ever seen.

Feel free to move to Off-Topic if not sufficiently N&P-worthy.

[Thanas]

Wanda Sykes was great.

[KrauserKrauser]

Ok, good, did he have to use teleprompters?

If not, good for him, if so, par for the course.

[The Original Nex]

Ok, good, did he have to use teleprompters?

If not, good for him, if so, par for the course.

That was the first gag he did...

He appeared to be using notes...

[Lonestar]

Ok, good, did he have to use teleprompters?

If not, good for him, if so, par for the course.

Did...you really not get the joke there dude?

[rhoenix]

Ok, good, did he have to use teleprompters?

If not, good for him, if so, par for the course.

Try watching it first before you make comments, since you stuck your foot in your mouth there.

And while I'm on the subject - what do you think our President should do, in order to alleviate your obvious rabid hatred of teleprompters and prepared remarks? Develop eidetic memory?

To be honest, unless you give me a truly excellent reason in return for why our current President shouldn't use teleprompters, this whole issue sounds really, really weak sauce. Kinda like a person buying ice cream, and screaming at the attendant of this ice cream shop about how utterly horrible that ice cream is while devouring every bite.

[Androsphinx]

Amusing though the speech was, it's nothing compared to the totally serious response from the National Review

You may remember the evening of Sept. 29, 2001. On that evening, Rudy Giuliani appeared on Saturday Night Live. It was 18 days after the September 11 attacks. This appearance of the mayor of New York — who had spent almost three weeks comforting a shaken nation, mourning with families of the murdered, and leading — was widely considered a signal: We could laugh again. We needed to laugh. Heaven knows, Giuliani must have needed it as much as anyone.

Laughter can be a beautiful thing, a great gift in difficult times. A way to reach those who might not otherwise respond to you or your message. Laughter can also be something vicious, coming from a very dark place.

The latter is what enveloped our nation’s capital at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. Jokes about our former president and vice president. Jokes about interrogation. Jokes about gay marriage. Jokes about abstinence. Jokes about terrorism. Jokes about addiction. Jokes about abortion and embryo destruction. And the president of the United States was the headliner, responsible for some but not all of the shamefulness of the night.

The last time I was at the Naval Observatory was in December, at the then vice president’s Christmas party. Toward the back of the room was a screen displaying photos. There was humor in them — Dick Cheney wearing a Darth Vader mask — but they also documented what was overwhelmingly present in the eight years of the Bush presidency: We are at war. We are in a war not of our choosing. And the responsibility to protect and defend America weighed heavily on our elected leaders each day.

Cheney is on the sidelines now, and there is a new party in town. The new president, insulting the administration before him, told us in his inaugural that he was going to put away childish things.

But even the children were not left out of the jokes. President Obama used his daughters to make light of Air Force One’s Lower Manhattan flyover. Before Saturday night, there was no better visual symbol of this administration’s September 10 policy blindness. Air Force One might as well have been flying a banner that read “We Don’t Get It.” Obama’s joke about the incident could be considered the banner.

Following the president, Wanda Sykes said:

Mr. President . . . you’ve had your fair share of critics. . . . Rush Limbaugh, one of your big critics, boy — Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. So you’re saying, “I hope America fails.” You’re like, “I don’t care about people losing their homes, their jobs, or our soldiers in Iraq.” He just wants our country to fail.

To me, that’s treason. He’s not saying anything differently than Osama bin Laden is saying. You know you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight.

Too much?

You’re laughing inside, I know you’re laughing.

Rush Limbaugh: “I hope the country fails.” I hope his kidneys fail, how about that?

He needs a waterboarding, that’s what he needs.

And some of the most prominent luminaries in Washington politics, media, and popular culture laughed. You don’t have to be a “dittohead” to know that is shameful (and it would be just as shameful if the rant were about a left-wing host, at a right-wing gala).

But Sykes wasn’t the core problem, as tasteless and awful as her jokes were. I keep going back to Sasha and Malia. The president used his daughters, two days after he let one of his staff take the fall for his administration’s use of everyone in Lower Manhattan and along the Hudson River on a clear morning as a prop in the Obama show. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered on a day not unlike that one, and his administration needlessly freaked out those who witnessed it. And he’s laughing.

Of course, that was his job Saturday night. To go to the Reagan Hilton and entertain the media and Hollywood audience. Presumably the crowd likes him (he joked about this too) and hates Rush. He knew what the crowd wanted and ran with it. It was unpresidential when Bush did that (remember looking for weapons of mass destruction at the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner?) and it’s unpresidential when Obama does it. And it’s downright shameful when done with the meanspiritedness that was on display Saturday night.

Somehow Dick Cheney, who continues to stand athwart unseriousness yelling “Stop,” is the enemy. Somehow Rush Limbaugh, conservative stalwart, the embodiment of capitalist success, a man who has struggled with adversity with an inspiring humility, is someone we’re to disdain so much as to laugh at the prospect of his kidneys’ failing. Somehow we are supposed to be pining for one of the nastiest men on television to do something that everyone laughing at the joke presumably considers torture to Sean Hannity, who, agree with him or not, is the happiest of warriors compared with Keith Olbermann.

The reviews of the president Saturday night were good, I keep hearing. But what happened Saturday night was not right. The same liberal elite that has brought us hate-crimes laws and speech codes spewed real venom. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is below the president, whoever he is (I thought this when Bush was president and I think it even more today). But that dinner Saturday night —in the jokes the president of the United States of America was willing to make and to laugh at — was beneath America.

The Weekly Standard have a Parody last page every week. Unfortunately, this wasn't it.

[Kodiak]

Rush Limbaugh + Capitalist Success + Inspiring Humility =

[Siege]

That National Review piece reads like something that could've been written by Watchmen's Rorschach. You can almost hear the gnashing of teeth in-between the vitriolic lines of text.

[Terralthra]

As someone with an English degree, I'm practically insulted by the poor writing in that National Review piece.

"The president used his daughters, two days after he let one of his staff take the fall for his administration’s use of everyone in Lower Manhattan and along the Hudson River on a clear morning as a prop in the Obama show."

What?

"Somehow we are supposed to be pining for one of the nastiest men on television to do something that everyone laughing at the joke presumably considers torture to Sean Hannity, who, agree with him or not, is the happiest of warriors compared with Keith Olbermann."

What?

[Darth Wong]

Somehow Rush Limbaugh, conservative stalwart, the embodiment of capitalist success, a man who has struggled with adversity with an inspiring humility, is someone we’re to disdain so much as to laugh at the prospect of his kidneys’ failing.

Rush Limbaugh is the embodiment of what is wrong with capitalism. He does not produce anything. He has no materially useful skills. He has a history of drug addiction. It is unlikely that he could function at all in any kind of career outside the media, yet he spends almost all of his time attacking the media: biting the hand which feeds him. Luckily for him, his fans are not intelligent enough to notice this disconnect, or the fact that he earns his money without the hard work ethic that he demands from all other Americans.

His only real job skill is to inflame the prejudices of the uneducated. In a true meritocracy, he would be paid roughly what he deserves: welfare.

[Patrick Degan]

Somehow Rush Limbaugh, fascist stalwart, the embodiment of cronyist success, a man who has struggled with addiction to hillybilly heroin with an arrogant denial of his own problem blah blah blah blahblahblahblah...

Corrected for accuracy.

[Crossroads Inc.]

You know, on the topic of the jokes, and how tastless they may or may not be... I find it as yet another example of the divide between 'valid' news channels and Faux news... In the past 24 hours I watched a serious of people, Even Olbermann, basically say "Sykes crossed a Line and really shouldn't have said that,"

By and large they denounced her...but moved on. At this point its pretty much dropped off the news ticker from CNN to MSNBC. Now then... let us go to Faux for a second where it has been NONSTOP news on the topic it seems all day. Right now, at 10pm Arizona time, there is an "Emergency Round table" .of FauxNews pundits going on and on about how Sykes needs to be "removed" as a figure, that she should resign her position, quite her job, that she basically needs to "Beg the American people for forgiveness of her actions."

Im not surprised by HOW they reacted, really I expect it... Its just that its like they have NOTHING ELSE to beat the drums on right now.

[Terralthra]

Removed from what position? She's a stand-up comedienne. That's all she does. What are they proposing, comedy clubs blacklist her?

[Darth Yoshi]

Why not? It worked in the 50's.

But holy shit. Humility? Limbaugh? This is the fuckwit who made fun of Michael J. Fox for having Parkinson's.

[SirNitram]

Removed from what position? She's a stand-up comedienne. That's all she does. What are they proposing, comedy clubs blacklist her?

Yes.

If the GOP believed one-tenth of the vile they spewed, they'd not care(Freedom!), but they are a cult and she insulted the cult leader. In a sane country, people would recignize all that happened was a comedian mocked a radio show host, in short, barbs thrown between two professions only slightly more useful than telephone sanitizer.

But the GOP is going apeshit, because no matter how much they frantically deny it, they don't see Rush as an entertainer. They see him as a conservative leader.

[Androsphinx]

Although the attention it is getting is ridiculous, there is a half-decent point hidden within the complaints. Insofar as it serves any purpose, the Correspondents Dinner is supposed to be a chance for journalists to make fun of the President in a relatively relaxed environment.

Saving the harshest and most pointed comments for the opposition -is- a cop-out, especially when Sykes did it with all the grace and humour of a steamroller. Was that the really best joke about waterboarding she could think of?

[Thanas]

Christopher Hitchens seems to have had a particular lovely comment about Sykes:

Christopher Hitchens was of course the last man (barely) standing, and he had some choice words for the evening's headlining comedian, Wanda Sykes. "The president should be squirming in his seat. Not smiling," he said. "The black dyke got it wrong. No one told her the rules."

Also, I don't understand the outrage about Sykes. Bush was lauded for bumbling around looking for WMDs and making jokes about the war he engineered and what happened? Nothing. But no, don't critizise Limbaugh.

[Androsphinx]

Also, I don't understand the outrage about Sykes. Bush was lauded for bumbling around looking for WMDs and making jokes about the war he engineered and what happened? Nothing. But no, don't critizise Limbaugh.

To be fair, the National Review thought that the whole idea is a disgrace, under both Obama and Bush, which is a point of view I can understand.

[Elfdart]

Christopher Hitchens seems to have had a particular lovely comment about Sykes:

Christopher Hitchens was of course the last man (barely) standing, and he had some choice words for the evening's headlining comedian, Wanda Sykes. "The president should be squirming in his seat. Not smiling," he said. "The black dyke got it wrong. No one told her the rules."

Also, I don't understand the outrage about Sykes. Bush was lauded for bumbling around looking for WMDs and making jokes about the war he engineered and what happened? Nothing. But no, don't critizise Limbaugh.

The idea of a whiskey-drenched holocaust denier like Hitchens whining that a comedian was out of line is farcical. Wanda Sykes rules and Hitchens is a boozing has-been who sold his soul to the neocons. George Galloway described him perfectly:

"You're a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay. Your hands are shaking -you need another drink!"

and

"What you have witnessed is something unique in natural history — the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug. The one thing a slug leaves behind it is a trail of slime."

Fuck Christopher Hitchens.

[Androsphinx]

[quoteT]he idea of a whiskey-drenched holocaust denier like Hitchens whining that a comedian was out of line is farcical.[/quote]

Evidence?

[Flagg]

Fuck Christopher Hitchens.

Amen. The only reason I bought his book is because I know the proceeds will be going directly into destroying his liver.

[Elfdart]

From an article on MSNBC by Jonathan Broder:

Once seated in a booth, and freely sipping his free red wine, Hitchens advanced a theory more revealing than anything going on at the Hudson theater," Epstein wrote in his notes at the time. "His thesis, to the shock of everyone at the table, was that the Holocaust was a fiction developed by a conspiracy of interests bent on 'criminalizing the German Nation.'

"He explained that no evidence of German mass murder had ever been found -- and what gruesome artifacts had been found had been fabricated after the event," Epstein wrote. "What of the testimony of
Nazi generals at Nuremberg about the death camps, I asked. He explained, without missing a beat, that such admissions were obtained under Anglo-American torture. I then asked, 'But what happened to the
Jews in Europe?' Hitch shrugged and said, 'Many were killed by local villagers when they ran away,' others died natural deaths, and the remainder made it to Israel.

For more:

Link
Another Link

[Androsphinx]

I'm sorry, but that's not at all convincing. Hitchens on occasion holds deeply unpleasant views, and is a well-known controversialist, but third-hand quotations and sloppy innuendo don't make him a Holocaust denier. Here are some selections from what Hitchens himself has written about the Holocaust in passing, which indicate his views to be entirely mainstream - albeit with a maximalist view on freedom of speech.

LA Times, 2001

It's not too much to say that by the end of the trial, the core evidence for the Holocaust had been tested and found to be solid. The matter of Irving's reputation as scholar and researcher--which was the ostensible subject of the hearing--was so much "collateral damage."

Slate, 2004

But then, you were not brought up by Mel Gibson's father, who has repeatedly and recently stated that there was a population explosion among European Jews in the years 1933-1945 and that the Holocaust story is mainly "fiction." Young Gibson, when asked about this by Diane Sawyer, told her not to press him (which she obediently did not). But when asked by Noonan, he replied by saying that "My father has never told me a lie." It's not fair to expect Mel to trash his father. But he could have said that the old man was a fine daddy, albeit with a few odd ideas of his own. It was his very decided choice, however, to say that his male parent was an unvarying truth-teller. Why pick on that formulation? It's unlikely that Gibson Sr. has made a secret of his viciously anti-Jewish views when talking to his son, who shares with him a fanatical attachment to the Latin Mass and a deep hostility to the "liberalism" of the present pope.

Newsweek, 2008

As the book develops, Buchanan begins to unmask his true colors more and more. It is one thing to make the case that Germany was ill-used, and German minorities harshly maltreated, as a consequence of the 1914 war of which Germany's grim emperor was one of the prime instigators. It's quite another thing to say that the Nazi decision to embark on a Holocaust of European Jewry was "not a cause of the war but an awful consequence of the war." Not only is Buchanan claiming that Hitler's fanatical racism did not hugely increase the likelihood of war, but he is also making the insinuation that those who wanted to resist him are the ones who are equally if not indeed mainly responsible for the murder of the Jews! This absolutely will not do. He adduces several quotations from Hitler and Goebbels, starting only in 1939 and ending in 1942, screaming that any outbreak of war to counter Nazi ambitions would lead to a terrible vengeance on the Jews. He forgets—at least I hope it's only forgetfulness—that such murderous incitement began long, long before Hitler had even been a lunatic-fringe candidate in the 1920s. This "timeline" is as spurious, and as sinister, as the earlier dates, so carefully selected by Buchanan, that tried to make Prussian imperialism look like a victim rather than a bully.

[Elfdart]

Actions speak louder than words, and having a holocaust denier as a guest in your home when his Jew-baiting is (in)famous around the world shows one's true colors more than a column in Slate.

Hitchens on occasion holds deeply unpleasant views, and is a well-known controversialist,

Deeply unpleasant? That's an understatement. Aside from being a war whore with a deranged two-decade obsession over Bill Clinton's cock, he's also a racist and homophobe who is eager to soil himself in public for attention. Even his book about religion is just the work of a sideshow carnival barker out to lure the rubes into watching him debate fundies. It's like pro wrestling, with Hitchens playing the heel opposite religious babyfaces in front of slack jawed crowds.

By the way: "controversialist"? No, Hitchens is just a troll. And what better way to troll than to be a special pleader for a neo-Nazi who claims the Nazi Holocaust never happened?