WaPo, USA Today Play Dumb as Comics Avoid Biden Jokes

Remember the excuses peddled by comedians during the Obama years?

This bright, handsome president is so smart, and thoughtful, there’s just nothing to poke fun at. We’ve tried oh, so hard, but it’s impossible.

They clung to that nonsense, hard, for eight solid years. Jay Pharoah, tasked with portraying the president on the hard-left “Saturday Night Live,” later admitted the NBC show “gave up” even trying. Except when they used “comedy” to praise him.

Meanwhile, conservatives pummeled President Obama with jokes throughout his presidency.

It was all a lie, an attempt by satirists to explain away their dereliction of comic duty. And it’s happening again.

The far-left Washington Post knows we see right through the charade. So it deploys a guest writer, author Richard Zoglin, to tell us we’re in big trouble if we don’t start lampooning President Joe Biden, and fast.

The paper has its tongue in its cheek, of course, chuckling to its fellow progressives.

“Opinion: Comedians are struggling to parody Biden. Let’s hope this doesn’t last,” reads the headline in full fake outrage mode.

The first crisis of the Biden administration could be looming: America may have a president, the first in generations, who is impervious to impressionists.

That might be the funniest line ever written by a WaPo scribe. Scratch the “might” part.

The column describes how “SNL” hasn’t so much as put a faux President Biden in a sketch as of yet. Late night comedians are no better, the article correctly shares.

This cannot be good for the country.

Snicker-snicker. Do we even need to do a Google search on the author’s name and “Obama” to see if he wrote a similar column during Obama’s two terms?

A good impression can be withering satire. Parodies of Nixon, especially David Frye’s in the 1960s and ’70s, seemed to grow darker and more baroque as the president’s Watergate troubles mounted, solidifying the public’s view of Nixon’s slipperiness and paranoia. And the nonstop lampooning of Trump surely helped to reinforce (for all but his MAGA base) the true weirdness of the man in the White House.

He says the quiet part out loud here. He adores political satire when it damages the GOP.

Hold on. Here comes more comedy.

But Biden, so far, has been impregnable. The voice is too bland and devoid of obvious quirks, and beyond the occasional “C’mon, man,” his conversational manner too muted and self-effacing, to give the parodists much to work with.

Maybe it’s because the White House is hiding Biden, and when he does pop his head out this happens.

Whoops: Biden forgets the name of the Pentagon, as well as the name of his secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin pic.twitter.com/ZtcgHLBIAO

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 8, 2021

Or this:

BIDEN: “I’m happy to take questions if that’s what I’m supposed to do…”

*White House feed cut* pic.twitter.com/y5BHhgXWOB

— The First (@TheFirstonTV) March 3, 2021

You can’t blame media bias, though, the columnist assures us.

Biden’s pleasantly boring presidency has been a welcome return to normality — but hardly great material for parody.

There’s a crisis at the border. Biden’s COVID-19 rhetoric changes on a daily basis. He promised swift action to reduce the pandemic during his campaign but came up empty when finally put in charge. His lies are routinely called out by fair-minded conservative outlets … and dismissed in the august halls of WaPo.

And then there’s the fact that he can barely speak in public without a gaffe, a Senior Moment, or worse.

If only WaPo’s comical gaslighting existed in a vacuum. The liberal USA Today trotted out its own version of the story, penned by none other than Peter Funt.

If that name doesn’t ring a bell, his father created “Candid Camera” and he later hosted a newer version himself. That show famously tricked innocent people, so clearly the son inherited his father’s comical skill set.

Funt spends much of his column attacking Trump. News alert! The current U.S. President is named Joe Biden, not Donald J. Trump. Trump Derangement can be hard to shake once it takes hold, to be fair.

Funt then engages in some revisionist history.

“SNL” producers and writers have always been liberal leaning yet generally willing to dole out insults to presidents from both parties.

The modern “SNL” is hopelessly, cartoonishly biased. You can’t bring up classic “SNL” sketches to bolster your argument. It’s like pointing to a last-place baseball team and arguing they used to be good a decade ago … so what happened?

Worst of all? Funt then plays the Dumb Card from the top of the deck.

So, is “SNL” going soft on Democrats in its 46th season? I hope not, because as the show’s creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels once noted, “If a culture doesn’t allow you to laugh at the leaders or at things that your eyes and ears tell you are actually happening, that’s not good.”

Going soft on Democrats? Where has he been living … Mars?

The show made Kate McKinnon sing an ode to Hillary Clinton’s dead presidential campaign after she lost in 2016.

“SNL” cast members crooned “To Sir, With Love” when President Obama left office.

Reminder: This is a comedy program.

“SNL” recently pounced on Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, just days after his recent travel gaffe. The same show stayed mum on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s deadly decisions for nearly a year. 

Neither WaPo nor USA Today cares a whit about mainstream comedy becoming a Democratic SuperPAC. That’s the biggest con of all. These articles allow them to say they called out the disparity … and then ignore it for the next four years.