Abu Wabu

Peter Kirsanow doesn't buy all the criticism of Wanda Sykes' crude performance at the recent Obama show in Washington:

For my money, the objections to Wanda Sykes are overblown.

She's a pro. Like Leno and Letterman, she has the ability to take contemporary events everybody knows about and turn them into plausible fodder for jokes.

No surprise, then, that the line about Rush being a traitor had the audience slapping their knees Saturday night. After all, in just the last few weeks Rush has embraced a foreign leader who calls America "the Great Satan," accepted an anti-American book from someone who calls the U.S. "the most savage, murderous empire in the history of the world," apologized on foreign soil for America's innumerable transgressions, moved to scrap missile defense at the same time America's enemies are developing deliverable nukes, ordered the release of documents that will inflame our enemies, sat through an hour-long anti-American tirade without uttering a single objection, moved toward the release of suspected terrorists in American neighborhoods, and suggested individuals who tried to find lawful ways to protect Americans be prosecuted.

Sharp eye for detail there, Wanda. You even had the president laughing.

I wonder how funny the same sentiments that had the president and all his children roaring with laughter at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner would have been had they been spoken about leftist personalities by right wing revelers. K-Lo has the same thought and goes on to express what every decent person must think of that whole lowly affair:

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.