Word: bushing
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...With Bush's departure from the scene, much of the political urgency has drifted away from stand-up comedy. Pay a visit to a typical comedy club these days and you're more apt to get pummeled with details of the comedian's dating life than with his views on Obama's stimulus plan. "I'm not hearing a ton of political stuff," says Kevin Flynn, a New York-based stand-up who has a couple of Obama jokes in his repertoire but, like a lot of his colleagues, is still feeling his way along with the change in Administrations...
Ripped from the HeadlinesStill, the Bush years got stand-up comics reading the headlines again, and they haven't stopped. The economic crisis has been a hot topic for months, health care is coming on strong, and favorite targets like Sarah Palin and Clinton have helped out by refusing to leave the stage. But when it comes to Obama, the comics are still groping. Greg Geraldo, a club stalwart whose material was filled with anti-Bush gibes a few years ago, has moved on to Obama, but mostly to execute a deft pivot - like a bit on John McCain...
...nipples are bursting with hope! He's lactating hope!" Talking after a recent set at New York's Gotham Comedy Club, Black admits that Obama is difficult to make fun of but insists he's had no trouble finding political material. "For me, it was never Bush. It was the social issues. Just because Bush left office, that doesn't mean stupidity has fled the country...
Letterman, typically, managed to turn the comedian's predicament itself into the joke. For months after Obama's Inauguration, the Late Show host trotted out a nerdy staff writer to read his latest attempts at coming up with Obama jokes - all of which turned out to be lamely repurposed Bush jokes. ("Barack Obama is so dumb, when he was governor of Texas, someone asked him what the capital of Texas is, and he said, 'Capital T.' ") Still, the edge that crept into Letterman's comedy during the Bush years has, if anything, only gotten sharper. (Yes, he was forced...
...Brien's middle-of-the-road, Carsonesque wisecracks in particular ("President Obama's approval ratings have slumped to an all-time low, which explains Obama's new Secret Service code name: NBC") are looking comparatively tame now that he's opposite the increasingly politicized Letterman - whose contempt for Bush-era politics comes through in his interviews as much as his gag lines. (It may not be a coincidence that Letterman is beating O'Brien in the ratings.) Letterman may have wimped out in apologizing for his Palin joke, but it's hard to imagine O'Brien even cracking a Palin...