Punchline in Chief

By Graham Hillard

Thursday, December 17, 2020

 

The incoming president of the United States is a hair-sniffing malarkey farmer who has as much business hosting Tales from the Crypt as he does a state dinner. Perhaps the nation’s comedians ought to say so?

 

That such a charge should be necessary in a free country is evidence of the extent to which progressives have come to control most thought. In 1992, Saturday Night Live’s famous McDonald’s sketch could, without letting down the side, portray President-elect Bill Clinton as a gluttonous womanizer. (“There’s gonna be a whole bunch of things we don’t tell Mrs. Clinton,” a fry-stealing Phil Hartman boasted to an aide.) Today, one is as likely to hear a quip about vegetable RNA as about the man who will soon occupy the White House. According to a recent study by George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs, the month of September saw a predictable surfeit of political jokes on the late-night programs of Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert. Of the jibes in question, 455 were directed at President Trump. A mere 14 concerned his electoral opponent.

 

The problem is not, it should be clear, that Joe Biden is too serious a man to provide grist for the comedy mills. A two-bit hack with a one-bit brain, the new president has a certain low cunning but can’t remember where he put it. Like the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Biden has made a career of being in the right place at the right time. So absurd a figure is our future leader, in fact, that the nation’s jokesters should be throwing whoopee cushions into volcanoes to thank the humor gods. That they aren’t sheds light on a tacit arrangement that is both obnoxious and detrimental to the country: Democrats, no matter how foolish, must never be made into punchlines.

 

Presidential mockery was long a nonpartisan tradition in this nation of rascals. In 1860, the satirical magazine Vanity Fair ran an Artemus Ward parody that featured Abraham Lincoln blushing “like a maidin of sweet 16” before a gaggle of office-seekers. The year 1789 saw the publication of a George Washington caricature in which the oft-praised father of his country entered the capital on an ass while receiving hosannas. For Teddy Roosevelt, the provocateur of the day was the inimitable Will Rogers, who, in 1911, joked that a New York audience “must remember Roosevelt, don’t you?” (TR had been out of office for less than three years.) And who can forget the era of partisan newspapers, which regularly lambasted presidents as, for example, a hermaphrodite (Adams), an atheist (Jefferson), and an insufficient supporter of the military (Madison)?

 

For chief executives of the 20th century, the scorn of humorists was often expressed in political cartoons. In one classic of the genre, a stoop-shouldered Woodrow Wilson offers an olive branch the size of driftwood to a daunted dove of peace. In another, Franklin Roosevelt coats tax hikes in sugar to force them down the throat of a sickly public. To the surprise of exactly no one, Richard Nixon was a frequent target of cartoonists. Among the best pieces lampooning the 37th president is a 1972 sketch by Paul Conrad. In it, a Nixon as King Canute raises his hands in vain as the waves of Watergate wash over him.

 

It is at least arguable that America reached the summit of presidential ridicule in the years between 1988 and 2008. While the diminutive Michael Dukakis received his fair share of insults (William Safire: “Beware of Greeks wearing lifts”), few digs can top Bob Hope’s line that George Bush the Elder had his manicurist “insert dirt under his fingernails.” That Bill Clinton was a walking sex joke is a source of many happy memories, but so are the spot-on SNL impersonations of George W. Bush (“strategery!”) and Al Gore (“lockbox”).

 

As with much that is wrong with contemporary politics, the blame for our descent from this Olympus lies with one Barack Hussein Obama. Never mind that every joke concerning our first black president was necessarily “racist.” The problem with Obama was that his most significant flaws were invisible to his cultural allies. Yes, one could have a laugh at the man’s self-regard or disdain for the nation he wished to lead, but to do so marked one instantly as a hayseed or fascist. On the rare occasion that an Obama quip was delivered, the punchline was about as sharp as a deflated balloon animal. Obama’s ears are big. He has an annoying mannerism or two. He occasionally says “um” while delivering unscripted remarks. Ha?

 

If President Obama was the chief beneficiary of a willfully unobservant comedy culture, Joe Biden is the kind of character who, by rights, ought to test the rule. A quarry of such defenselessness that he practically begs to be devoured, Biden is so preposterous that a number of jokes at his expense require no more than the setup. Did you hear the one about Biden and the mannequin factory? About Biden and the extemporaneous speaking competition? Biden and Queen Victoria walk into a bar. To neglect the opportunity that the 46th president provides would be more than a partisan blunder. It would be a crime against laughter itself.

 

Though the possibilities for Biden-related humor are endless, fully developed jokes about the incoming head of state can be divided into several distinct categories:

 

Biden is old. The biographical video at his convention doubled as a Life Alert advertisement. So connected is he to a bygone America that his Secret Service codename is “Demographic Decline.” Biden doesn’t need Air Force One; he needs Fiber One. The eagle on his presidential seal is eating a prune. When Biden (78) and John Kerry (77) huddle over climate policy, their working group is the Coalition of the Senescent. Biden supports the Green New Deal, but only if horses and buggies escape government regulation.

 

Biden is confused. Arriving at a security briefing, Biden asked for a few minutes alone with the president-elect. He has to be reminded that COVID is not a file-sharing app. Biden recently congratulated Israel on launching a new intifada. His top pick for a Supreme Court vacancy is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

 

Biden is inappropriate. Upon taking residence at the Naval Observatory, Biden trained all of the telescopes on ladies’ bedrooms. Tweets that mention him are automatically affixed with a “MeToo” hashtag. His White House tour will include complimentary massages. Within seconds of meeting her, Biden knew that Kamala Harris just smells like a vice president.

 

Combinations thereof. Biden has a plan to win the War of 1812. He has put his hand up many a poodle skirt.

 

That Biden is eminently mockable is not, of course, the only reason to mock him. And while giving Democrats a jibe or two would do much to correct recent imbalances, even that prize is insufficient in the end. No, the reason laughs must be had at presidential expense is that such jokes keep the nation in mind of certain important truths. The chief executive is our servant, not our king. America is governed, not ruled. If a man wishes to exalt himself, let him occasionally be humbled.

 

On a winter evening not long from now, Joe Biden will stand before a joint session of Congress and receive the applause that he has spent most of his adult life pursuing. Let’s make sure he hears some chuckling first.