Losing Letterman

British PM Cameron, Danish PM Thorning-Schmidt,
with President and Mrs. Obama (Getty Images)

Five years after George Bush left office, David Letterman finally took a break from bashing the ex-President and commented on Barack Obama at the Nelson Mandela memorial:

Did you see that picture where the President was using an iPhone to take a selfie? And it was him and a guy from Great Britain and the woman in charge of Norway, or whatever Denmark? And I thought it was interesting---he knows how to operate the camera to take a picture but they can't figure out to operate the Obamacare website

1) As humor goes, it wasn't much funny, but David Letterman has to start somewhere.

2) If he's lost Letterman, he's in deep....trouble.

O, the Humanity (Reprise)

I cut a lot of slack to politicians when they make predictions. I may think that they're dead wrong when they claim, for example, that lower government spending or higher taxes are the way to solve the debt problem. But they probably aren't "lying", i.e. knowingly spouting something untrue; they may be indulging in wishful thinking---heck, they may even believe with all their heart in what they're saying.

But when politicians say something utterly false--and they know it--concerning past events, the normal reaction is to get angry (perhaps because people don't like the answer to "what kind of fool do you take me for?"). However, the explanations can be so laughable that their ridiculousness disarms us.

Every six months or so the Obama Administration is good for such a howler that I can't be angry at them.

September, 2012 - the attack on the American consulate in Libya, as well as uprisings across the Middle East, was due to an obscure YouTube video. President Obama, on 9/12/12:

"What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests."

May, 2013 - the IRS targeting of tea party organizations was the work of low-level agents in Cincinnati:

the IRS has identified two "rogue" employees in the agency's Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for the "overly aggressive" handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status

October, 2013 - the first reason (the President did list others later in his 10/21/13 press conference) that the Obamacare website doesn't work:

"the number of people who have visited the site has been overwhelming, which has aggravated some of these underlying problems."

An amateur video, Cincinnati IRS agents going rogue, and healthcare.gov being so popular the website froze. Laughter being the best medicine, the President is correct about one thing: because of Obamacare many of us are feeling better already. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Lisa Benson cartoon

The Weight of the World

The conversation was very "Syria-s."

It doesn't prevent others from making fun.

David Letterman: "Look at those guys. Like Thanksgiving with your relatives...except for the flags! The problem is that they have nothing to say to one another because they've been bugging each other's phones."

Jay Leno: "[Putin] looks like every divorced guy at the Oakwood Apartments. 'Yeah, yeah, what do you want?'"

The Sensibility of House Republicans

No, really, House Republicans may be acting sensibly:

House Republicans say they will not overreach on probing the Obama administration, having learned lessons from investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal during the Clinton administration. [snip]

Impeachment is not something that has been bandied about around the House GOP leadership table, according to GOP leadership aides and a House Republican member who spoke on background.

Unless there is solid proof of high crimes and misdemeanors (using the people's definition, not lawyers' understanding) by the President, House Republicans should quash all mention of the I-word. Mr. Obama is still popular and could become an object of sympathy if there were a rush to start impeachment proceedings.

It's difficult to imagine that he would ever be as unpopular as his predecessor, but Mr. Obama may well descend to that level after three and a half more years of scandal and ineffectiveness, not to mention being the butt of late-night humor.

Thursday's Jay Leno:

This week will mark the 37th time House Republicans have tried to repeal Obamacare. If Republicans really want to do away with Obamacare they should endorse it as a "conservative non-profit" and let the IRS take it down!

A lot of critics are now comparing President Obama to President Nixon. The good news for Obama: at least he's no longer being compared to President Carter!

If I Weren't Laughing I'd Be Crying Dept.

The IRS' softball team is named the "Cheetahs." James Taranto:

We have to admit, "Cheetahs" is almost as funny a name as Ted Kennedy's dog "Splash."

Not an Idiot......Really

Probably the only Big Gulp she's had in years (WSJ video)

Politicians, like parents, always seem a lot smarter after they're out of power. No longer must they state their positions in 15-second sound bites or be afraid to acknowledge that some of the opposing arguments are valid.  No longer will they have to defend party members whose personal behavior is indefensible. They can reveal nuance, flexibility, and self-deprecation.

One politician whose public persona was a media caricature is Sarah Palin. (To be even-handed, another is Joe Biden, the current butt of late night humor.)

Your humble observer is of the opinion that comedy requires at least some intelligence, which Sarah Palin displayed at the recently concluded Conservative Political Action Conference.

At one point, Ms. Palin paused in her rabble-rousing speech to take a big sip from a Big Gulp she pulled out from behind the podium. “Bloomberg’s not around, our Big Gulp’s safe,” she said, a dig at the New York mayor’s attempted ban on large soft drinks. [snip]

She joked that young Republicans ought to be “thinking Sam Adams, not drinking Sam Adams.”

During her defense of the Second Amendment, she spoke admiringly of the gun rack her husband, Todd, bought her for Christmas and the gun she bought him to stock it. “He’s got the rifle. I got the rack,” she quipped.

Mrs. Palin won't be on a national ticket again, and it's anyone's guess where she'll settle in. But just as her VP nomination startled in 2008, she'll surprise us before she's done. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Less Pomp, More Circumspection

The more I read about Pope Francis the more I like him [bold added]:

Traveling to his first dinner after his elevation, the new pope eschewed the traditional papal car and rode in a bus with fellow cardinals.....On Wednesday night, he sped up the postelection rituals so the tens of thousands of people waiting in St. Peter's Square for the new Holy Father to emerge onto the balcony didn't have to stand too long in the cold rain. [snip]

They all had dinner, and, in the prelude of a toast, the new pontiff joked with his brethren, saying: "May God forgive you for what you've done," according [to] the U.S. cardinal.

When reporters trolled for negatives on Pope Francis, they focused on his "conservative" politics. Although your humble observer disagrees with several of the Catholic Church's doctrines, he respects its principled, reasoned positions.

(Liberal Catholics, if you find Catholicism's positions unbearable just come on over to the Episcopal Church! Per the NYT's Ross Douthat:

Today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians. It still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.)

The elevation of Pope Francis took commentators by surprise (too old, Latin American, unflashy). I think that the world is more than ready for such a leader who eschews pomp and circumstance.

By the way, here are things that I doubt we'll ever hear Pope Francis say:

"We have based forward-looking statements on information currently available and disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise these statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances."

"That was off the record....right?"

"I wish to thank my wife, my parents, and especially my agent for all their support."

"Great shot, Tiger!"

"How will this play in Peoria?" © 2013 Stephen Yuen

When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It

A tale appropriate for Sunday, courtesy of Barron's Alan Abelson:

Have you heard the one about the old country preacher who had a teenage son he felt should begin to think seriously about choosing a profession? Well, if you haven't heard it, you're about to, thanks to Edward McDermott, a reader whose humorous snippets we've shared with you from time to time.

The preacher decided that while his son was at school he'd try to get an inkling of which way the boy was leaning by slipping into his room and placing on a table four objects: a Bible, a silver dollar, a bottle of whiskey, and a copy of Playboy. The idea being that he'd hide behind the door of the boy's bedroom when his son came home from school and furtively watch to see which object the lad would pick up.

If it's the Bible, he reasoned, the kid was going to be a preacher like me and what a blessing that would be! If he picked up the silver dollar, the preacher thought, he's going to be a businessman and that'd be fine, too. If he picks up the bottle, the preacher flushed, he's going to be a no-good drunken bum. And -- just to think about it made the preacher shiver with foreboding -- if the boy picks up that magazine, he's going to be a skirt-chasing womanizer.

When his son got home, he casually walked into his room and dropped his books on the bed. Then, he spotted the four objects on his bedside table and studied them a moment or two. He picked up the Bible and placed it under this arm. He picked up the silver dollar and dropped it into his pocket. He uncorked the bottle and took a large swallow, while he gazed admiringly at the magazine's centerfold.

"Lord have mercy," the old preacher fumed, "he's gonna run for Congress."

Every Which Way But Scripted

Well, at least one important question has been answered. Clint Eastwood didn't know what he was going to say at the Republican National Convention until just before he went on.

“They vett most of the people, but I told them, ‘You can’t do that with me, because I don’t know what I’m going to say,’” Eastwood recalled. [ snip]

It was only after a quick nap in his hotel room a few blocks from the convention site, Eastwood said, that he mapped out his remarks — starting with his observation about politics in Hollywood, then challenging the president about the failure of his economic policies, and wrapping up by telling the public “they don’t have to worship politicians, like they were royalty or something.”

But even then, with just an hour before he appeared on stage, it still hadn’t occurred to Eastwood to use an empty chair as a stand-in for the president.

It's a tribute to the esteem with which we hold Hollywood actors and stars like Clint Eastwood in particular that we're never sure that their improv hemming-and-hawing is "real" or part of the act. (Example: one of the most well-received movies of the past 30 years, My Dinner with Andre--two men having what appears to be a casual, wide-ranging conversation over dinner--was very carefully plotted out.)

Despite the mixed initial reactions, I suspect that Clint Eastwood's "empty chair" bit is the moment that we'll remember from both conventions decades from now. (H/T Glenn Reynolds) © 2012 Stephen Yuen