My three o’clock appointment today was one Randy Spassvogel, trade association representative for the Humorists’ Association of Cartoonists, Kibitzers, Stand-up Comedians, Allied Media Parodists and Satirists. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t resist. As he settled into the chair across from my desk, I just had to do it. “Knock, knock.”
Spassvogel threw me a quizzical look. “Yeah, sure, okay. Who’s there?”
“The interrupting cow.”
Spassvogel volunteered an indifferent shrug. “Oh, all right. The interrupting…”
“Moooo!”
“Not bad,” he admitted after he stopped laughing. “Where’d you get that one?”
“From one of my numerous nephews,” I explained, giving credit where it was due. “And now that I’ve broken the ice, what can I do for the HACK SCAMPS?”
“Alas, my dear friend Tom,” he lamented, “as they say, laughing is easy, but comedy is hard. And never, in the last twenty-eight years, has it been harder than it is now.”
“Could you explain,” I asked, “what has suddenly made things so difficult for your membership? Surely,” I pointed out, “men and women are still very different from one another, and amusing observations about that difference remain yet to be made, do they not? The world continues to be populated by fat people, who are today, as yesterday, fair game for comic ridicule, n’est-ce pas? Have the bakeries of America ceased to manufacture coconut cream pies? Has an acute shortage of banana peels suddenly developed? Is there no longer any human flatulence about which to raise the reluctant snicker? Correct me if I am wrong, but do there not continue, in our beloved game of football, to be wide receivers, but no narrow receivers; to be tight ends but no loose ends; and, to be strong safeties but no weak safeties? Don’t white people continue to be ridiculously inadequate, compared to persons of color, in their ability to dance, play basketball and copulate? Are not our sidewalks still littered with crack heads; our trailer parks still infested with rednecks possessed of a taste for malt liquor, wife beating, fishing and methedrine; and, our hinterlands still inhabited by people whose family trees do not branch? Aren’t there still plenty of reasons to laugh at vegans, homosexuals, those who practice yoga, those who eat quiche, those who can’t pronounce ‘quiche,’ those who don’t know who Gertrude Stein was, and, for that matter, those who do?”
“Good points,” my guest allowed, nodding his head sagely. “But when God sneezes, even Henny Youngman doesn’t know what to say to Him.”
“Let me guess,” I ventured. “You guys are all bent out of shape about Barack Obama.”
“Very nice guess,” Spassvogel observed. “What do you do for an encore – predict Monday’s closing Dow Jones Industrial Average?”
“There aren’t too many things beyond my pay grade;” I quipped, “however, I think you just named one. But what’s your problem with Obama, anyway?”
Spassvogel shook his head sadly. “It looks like the public isn’t going to let us make fun of him.”
“Oh, come on,” I protested, “that can’t be true. What about the cartoons? There’s that one Horsey at the Seattle Post Intelligencer did, with Barack sitting at his desk asking his aide if he has any more messages of congratulations, and his aide’s walking in with what’s obviously an ICBM wrapped up by FedEx, saying ‘This one’s from Moscow.’ And Toles, at the Washington Post, he had that one where there’s this huge, menacing dog in a cage, wearing a collar with a tag that says ‘The Economy’ on it, and Obama’s there, looking at it, saying ‘Got anything else?’ – you know, an obvious reference to him saying he’s going to get his kids a puppy for the White House. And then there’s the one that Matson at the New York Observer did, with a wild-eyed conservative standing in front of pictures of Karl Marx, Groucho Marx and Obama, yelling ‘Marxists!’ into a microphone.”
At that, Spassvogel stood up, strode over to my desk and leaned in about two inches from my face. “See? You’re making my point for me, Tom – what about all the other cartoons? What do they show? I’ll tell you what they show, Tom, they show Barack Obama doing the fist bump with Abraham Lincoln; Obama sitting in the Oval Office, pasting the Constitution back together; a map of the United States with the Obama campaign logo and the caption ‘Yes, we did;’ Obama making his way out of the wilderness onto the White House lawn with the caption ‘The Last Destination on Freedom Road;’ Obama astride a pile of dead elephants, saying ‘Not bad for skinny guy;’ and, the American Eagle on the Presidential Seal, all bandaged up and with a black eye asking ‘Can you swear him in today?’”
Spassvogel calmly turned and resumed his seat, staring me dead in the eye. “You want more examples? How about the one depicting Obama as St. George astride a dead dragon with the head of John McCain? How about another one with the Late Sainted Right Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, reaching down from the pedestal of History, welcoming Barack Obama to the adulation of the Ages? And if Lincoln and Martin Luther King in separate cartoons aren’t enough, how about both of them, in the same cartoon, each placing a fatherly hand on one of Obama’s shoulders? Or how about a cartoon that has Mt. Rushmore, with Obama’s head up there with Washington and all those other guys? Or the one depicting Wall Street financiers in rags, standing on the roof of the New York Stock Exchange, shining a Bat-signal onto the clouds that says ‘Obaman’ and saying ‘Patience – he’s coming’ while they gaze expectantly up into the sky? Christ Almighty, even the one lampooning him as FDR – cigarette holder, ‘All we have to fear is fear itself’ quote, that cheesy patented patrician grin the old bastard had, the works, I tell you – in the end, it’s a God-damned backhanded compliment!”
“Really, now, aren’t you getting a bit carried away?” I eased back in my chair, striking a posture calculated to make him relax. “It can’t be all that bad. What about Christopher B. Duncan, the Obama imitator on The Tonight Show? He did a routine where he imitated Obama and offered to have sex with Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office. Then he did an imitation of Obama doing an imitation of Donald Duck making love, an imitation of the Reverend Louis Farrakhan denouncing Hillary Clinton as a ‘she devil,’ and then described how he defended himself from the Fruit of Islam, who, he said, attacked him with bean pies.”
“Those weren’t jokes about Barack Obama,” Spassvogel insisted, “those were jokes about Hillary Clinton, Louis Farrakhan and Donald Duck!”
“Keegan-Michael Key,” I argued, “you know – the Mad TV Obama impersonator – he did Obama imitating Bill Cosby.”
“What’s the difference,” Spassvogel demanded, “if a comedian does Obama imitating Bill Cosby or Obama imitating Donald Duck? Either way, it’s not really a joke about Barack Obama, is it?”
“The Dave Chappelle Show,” I countered, “did an Obama video.”
“Right,” Spassvogel agreed, “they did. And it makes fun of Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and white women who are obsessed with Obama, but never actually makes a joke about Obama himself!”
“Maybe,” I continued, “but Dave did a pretty funny voice-over of Obama at a town meeting.”
“True,” Spassvogel agreed, “but the routine actually makes fun of marijuana smokers, not Obama – it’s supposed to be Obama complaining about how stupid they behave. Hell, Dave could have done that bit live, standing in front of his studio audience and gotten the same laughs. Using footage of Obama was completely gratuitous.”
“Well,” I countered, “Conan O’Brien wasn’t afraid to do that political advertisement parody where he calls Obama a liar for promising to make Conan his running mate and then selecting Joe Biden instead.”
Spassvogel shook his finger at me insistently. “Two things – first, the whole bit was based on an actual interview Conan did with Obama back in 2006, and second, it wasn’t funny. And the reason it wasn’t funny is that Conan created the whole thing himself instead of relying on our union’s writers, like he’s supposed to.”
“So,” I replied, “how about when Conan made that joke concerning the Obama family’s search for a pastor in the DC area, saying that they asked every preacher the same question: ‘Have you ever been videotaped screaming “Death to America?”’”
“There you go again,” my visitor protested. “That’s a joke about Jeremiah Wright, not a joke about Barack Obama! Look, Tom,” he continued morosely, “this is serious. Steve Breen, out at the San Diego Union-Tribune, he’s got a Pulitzer Prize, okay? So, the very first political cartoon he draws about Obama after the election, people are writing in calling him a racist just for drawing a caricature of Barack Obama! As if every political cartoonist since the invention of the printing press hasn’t drawn caricatures of politicians! They say Breen’s caricature looks like a sock puppet! I mean, really, so what? What if it does look like a sock puppet? Does anybody complain that Toles’ caricatures of George W. Bush in the Washington Post look like a chimpanzee?”
“They tell me,” I offered, “that Richard Belzer did a genuine Obama joke over at the Kennedy Center last Monday.”
“No way,” Spassvogel declared, slowly shaking his head with clear certainty. “Belzer’s shtick was, he tells the audience he has an advance copy of Obama’s inauguration speech, then he unfolds a piece of paper and starts shouting in fake Arabic.”
“Oh…” I conceded. “Right. Another joke that’s really about Obama’s critics, like that famous cover of The New Yorker last July. Well,” I remarked, “Obama got plenty of laughs on Dave Letterman. How about that?”
“Maybe,” came Spassvogel’s rejoinder, “but interviews don’t count. That’s Barack getting laughs with his own material. Same thing goes for all the other interviews on all the other shows Obama’s done so far – it’s not original comedy material created by our union’s writers. I mean, really, unless he pays dues and carries our card in his wallet, what do we care how funny Barack Obama is? Look, Tom,” he proclaimed, leaning toward me for emphasis, “you have to make a distinction between Obama the presidential candidate and Obama the President. If anything, making fun of him when he’s President is a much more sensitive subject. Sure, nobody had any problems with us making fun of George W. Bush, but Bush is stupid. He talks like an idiot and can’t string half a dozen words together into a comprehensible English sentence. What’s more, he looks ridiculous – like Alfred E. Newman’s love child or something. And then there’s Dick Cheney, who spent eight years upstaging Bush and making him look like a superfluous fool, plus all the absurd decisions Bush made, all the lying, that mess in Iraq, all the favoritism to his rich friends and wealthy special interests, his obvious disregard for the poor and unfortunate, his totally unrestrained contempt for the middle class – the list is practically endless, Tom! Don’t you see? For eight years, George W. Bush practically wrote all our material for us! And for eight years before that, Bill Clinton did the same thing; and before that there were twelve long years with George’s daddy and Ronald Clueless Reagan doing the honors! But now, with Barack Obama, we’ve got a President who isn’t going to give us a single, solitary punch line! Obama’s got gravitas, he’s competent, he’s articulate, he’s clever, he’s organized, he’s highly intelligent, and oh, Jesus, that list is nearly endless, too, and not one item on it is good news for comedy writers! And that, Tom,” he concluded, “is why I’m here, with you running your meter at rates even New York taxi drivers don’t have the nuts to charge. So, now, you – Mister world-class Brainiac – ” he settled back, satisfied that I understood the situation, “make with the high-price consulting already.”
“Vaughn Meader.” I waited while my statement sunk in.
“The comedian?” Spassvogel’s face was a tapestry of bewilderment. It’s moments like that which convince me my consultation rates are, if anything, somewhat less than they should be.
“Exactly,” I affirmed. “Abbott Vaughn Meader. Remember what he was famous for?”
“Doing comedy about John F. Kennedy,” Spassvogel answered, as his eyes turned toward his left hemisphere, a sure sign that the wheels were beginning to turn. “Oh, yeah…” he exclaimed quietly. “Yeah… yeah… right!”
“Obama’s a lot like Kennedy,” I commented. “He’s young, he’s a visionary, he’s got huge popular support, he’s from a minority group everybody used to think couldn’t ever produce a President, his wife is attractive and stylish, his kids are young and cute…”
“A black Kennedy!” Spassvogel nearly shouted at the realization. “And Meader…”
“Did the only kind of humor…” I interjected.
“… anybody would tolerate…” he extrapolated.
“… about a President everyone regarded as some kind of god,” I concluded. “Good-natured humor,” I pointed out. “Humor that poked respectful fun at the charismatic young President’s charming idiosyncrasies, that made light of his foibles and displayed knowing sympathy for the enormous burdens of his office.”
“So give me an example, boy genius,” Spassvogel ordered.
“Sure,” I told him confidently. “Take for instance, this one: Kennedy is at a press conference and one of the reporters says ‘Mr. President, how do you respond to your critics’ claims that the Kennedy Administration is turning into a dynasty?’ Kennedy says ‘No, I don’t agree with people who say that, neither does my brother Bobby; and I’m sure my brother Teddy disagrees with them, too.’ Get it?”
“Uh-huh.” Spassvogel eagerly nodded his head. “And?”
“And,” I went on, “the equivalent joke today would be something like: A reporter asks Obama if there are too many white men in the Obama Administration, and Obama says ‘No, I don’t agree with people who say that, and neither does Joe Biden.’”
“Not bad,” Spassvogel admitted after he stopped laughing. “I think I get the idea. So – what’s our next step?”
“How about,” I suggested, “I prepare a comprehensive review of all of Meader’s Kennedy jokes and construct updated versions of them that illustrate my recommended approach? You could put together a white paper in Adobe PDF format and distribute it to the HACK SCAMP membership mailing list. Inside of a week, everybody in your union will be back to work, all safe and sound, meeting their deadlines and cracking side-splitting Obama jokes the public will love.”
“Deal!” Spassvogel leapt up, clearly a man instantly transformed by the power of an idea. “Do it! Send the deliverable and an invoice over as soon as possible!”
“My pleasure,” I assured him as he shook my hand and turned toward the door. “Oh, by the way, Randy…”
“Yeah?” He paused, his hand on the door knob.
“Why did the lobbyist cross K Street?”
Spassvogel smiled resignedly. “I don’t know. Why?”
“To take a consultation with Tom Collins.”