Cerise was out of town this weekend, which was a shame, because if business hadn’t called her away from Washington this weekend, she could have attended the one hundredth anniversary White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Hilton with me. As it was, I told Veronica and Gretchen about it, in case they might be interested, and they both declined – Veronica had a date with a certain federal prosecutor who has a handcuff fetish, and Gretchen turned up her twenty-something nose at the opportunity with the comment that “the whole thing is like, a huge nerdfest” and her friends would never stop teasing her about going there if they ever found out she attended it at all, much less with her boss. So I asked my sister Rose if she would like to go. I originally figured her schedule would be so hectic that she would be forced to decline, which is why I asked Veronica and Gretchen first, but much to my surprise, Rose moved heaven and earth to arrange for babysitters, postponement of a confirmation rehearsal, coaching of a high school valedictory speech and God knows what else to turn out in a strikingly beautiful evening gown for the occasion. Kudos to her brother-in-law, Arthur, who, as a result of filling in for Rose, survived on a combined total of six hours sleep Friday and Saturday. Naturally, as soon as the shindig at the Hilton was over, however, poor Rose had to exchange her heels for flats, throw a shawl around her shoulders to keep out the unseasonable night chill, hop into her SUV and drive back to Fairfax, post haste, leaving me to attend the afterparties alone.
And after the afterparties, I stopped by the Round Robin for a nightcap, where I encountered Schoenfield, one of Obama’s gag writers. Yes, Virginia, politicians have writers for their jokes as well as for their speeches. But despite his profession, poor Schoenfield didn’t look too jovial when I saw him.
“What’s the matter,” I inquired as I sat down next to him at the bar, “you look like you just bombed at the Improv.”
“Pretty close,” he murmured ruefully. “I just bombed at the one hundredth anniversary White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Or at least, my writing team did.”
“Yeah,” I concurred, “a lot of Obama’s jokes fell kind of flat, I must admit. Who came up with the idea of having a couple of guys in tuxes run out there at the beginning of his routine and put those ferns on either side of the podium?”
“I did,” Schoenfield choked out after a huge swig of his beer, followed by shot of scotch and another prodigious draught of brew. “It was supposed to be ‘Between Two Ferns,’ get it?”
“Sure,” I responded, “I got it. So did everybody else.”
“Okay,” he nodded, chugging yet more beer, “so how come nobody laughed?”
“As a matter of fact,” I consoled, “as I remember, couple of people did.”
Schoenfield looked me straight in the eye. “Did you?”
“Um, no,” I confessed.
“And those other people,” he muttered, “the ones you said laughed – they didn’t either. They just snickered, that’s what they did.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I conceded.
“So tell me,” Schoenfield demanded, “you got it – everybody got it, but how come nobody actually laughed at my ‘Between Two Ferns’ sight gag?”
“Well,” I said, “probably because it just wasn’t all that funny.”
“How about the joke he told about 2013 being so bad for him, the forty-seven percent called Mitt Romney to apologize?” Schoefield asked as he signaled the bartender for another boilermaker. “I mean, really, when it comes to sophisticated self-deprecatory wit, how do you get much better than that?”
“It was sophisticated, and it was self-deprecatory,” I observed, “and it was… sort of witty, too, but, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“Jokes aren’t supposed to make sense!” Shoenfield protested.
“Not entirely, of course,” I allowed. “It’s that one point of nonsense or misapprehension which makes the punchline. But the premise of a joke is supposed to make sense. If a joke lacks its own internal logic, then there’s nothing with which the punchline’s nonsense or misapprehension can contrast, and hence, no laughs. And the premise doesn’t make any sense – what on earth would the forty-seven percent apologize to Mitt Romney for?”
“For… for… um… being insulted by Mitt Romney calling them freeloaders,” Schoenfield offered as his next boilermaker arrived.
“Okay,” I continued, “and when was the last time anybody apologized to you for being offended by something you said?”
“Damn it,” Schoenfield complained, “if you dissect jokes like frogs in biology class, none of them look funny! Because tragedy plus time equals comedy, and if you dissect comedy, it all looks like the tragedy it comes from!”
“So, by that theory, the tragedy of the Healthcare.gov rollout,” I surmised, “after time, became, ‘In 2008 my slogan was “Yes, we can.” In 2013 it was “Control Alt Delete,”’ correct?”
“Yeah, sure,” he agreed, taking another quaff from his new glass of beer.
“But the problem with that joke’s internal logic is,” I observed, “the Healthcare.gov rollout wasn’t tragic, it was ridiculous. It was a joke in and of itself. You can’t expect people to laugh at a joke about another joke, can you?”
“They didn’t laugh at his joke about CNN not being able to find their table,” Schoenfield whimpered. “We figured that one would bring the house down, but – nada, bupkis, zilch!”
“That’s because,” I explained, “it isn’t CNN that’s been looking for a lost airliner and can’t find it, it’s the governments and international organizations that CNN is covering who can’t find it.”
“What about our joke that the people from MSNBC were overwhelmed because the audience at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was the biggest one they’d ever seen? Can you tell me why nobody laughed at that?”
“Because people on television,” I reminded him, “never see their audience. All they ever see is a studio full of television cameras.”
“Oh, right,” Scheonfield grumbled disconsolately as he downed a shot of scotch with a beer chaser. “And that destroys that internal logic of the joke you were talking about, huh?”
“Sure does,” I affirmed.
“So what about the joke,” Schoenfield challenged, “where Obama notes that an American finally won the Boston Marathon for the first time in thirty years and then says that’s only fair, since a Kenyan has been President for the last six. How about that? How come nobody laughed at that one?”
“The members of the audience who were hip and well-informed knew that the American who won the Boston Marathon was actually from Somalia and therefore they couldn’t possibly think that was funny,” I told him, “and the ones who were uninformed reactionary conservative troglodytes and didn’t know that, also by virtue of being uninformed reactionary conservative troglodytes, didn’t find anything amusing about having Kenyan in the White House.”
“I was certain,” Schoenfield softly wailed between swigs, “that the marijuana jokes would kill.”
“If a black standup comedian makes marijuana jokes,” I opined, “that’s one thing. But if a black President of the United States, the head of a federal government that is probably, at that very moment, arresting people for marijuana possession starts making pot jokes, that’s not funny – that’s outrageous and offensive.”
“Gee,” Schoenfield wondered aloud with a frankly puzzled expression, “do you really think so?”
“It certainly explains,” I proposed, “why nobody laughed at Obama’s pot jokes, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, well,” he shot back with a hint of resentment, they sure raised the roof when we had Obama say, “Let’s face it, FOX, you’ll miss me when I’m gone. It will be harder to convince the American people that Hillary was born in Kenya.”
“That was the Clinton supporters cheering and applauding Hillary,” I pointed out. “Nobody was, in fact, laughing at that remark. And the one after that, where Obama said he could remember when a super PAC was just him buying Marlboro 100s instead of regulars – that had to be the lamest joke I’ve heard in at least six months.”
“Oh yeah?” Schoenfield bristled. “Well, let me tell you something, buddy, let’s see you go ahead and make up a decent joke about super PACs! We have to work with what we got, you know?”
“My sympathies, of course,” I mollified. “Obama’s joke about Sasha inviting Bill Clinton to career day instead of him did get a chuckle out of me.”
“Actually,” Schoenfield confided, “that wasn’t… really… a… joke. But keep it on the QT, okay?”
Just then, two burly gentlemen in dark suits closed in on either side and lifted him up, each grabbing one of his arms.
“You!” the fellow on my side of Schoenfield snarled, “forget everything this guy said to to you or face the consequences!”
“Looks like the presidential comedy writing staff meeting scheduled for Monday morning just got moved ahead about thirty six hours!” Shoenfield shouted back at me as they hustled him away through the crowd.