It's Hard to Mock Obama -- So a Humorist Pines for the Hilarity of the Bush Years

Met George Carlin once. Okay, more than once -- twice, maybe three times. But for the sake of this little article, let me cut to the first time we crossed paths, 10 or 12 years ago in the greenroom of Catch a Rising Star at the MGM Grand in Vegas, where I was performing in my little 250-seat lounge while he was upstairs in his 2,400-seat showroom at 18 times my ticket price. (Just so you know I know my place. Oh, I know.)

Anyhow, I asked my scruffy mentor why he had quit doing political material, and he said, “I don’t know man, I just got tired of kicking my babies out of the nest.” A fact reinforced (with assistance from the able and eminently vertical Tony Hendra) in his righteously excellent posthumous autobiography, Last Words.

Turns out he was right. Damn. I’m tired of having to discard bits. Genius stuff. For instance, my William Howard Taft material just doesn’t have the same bite anymore. Reagan. Quayle. Clinton. Bush. Ahhh, George W. Bush. Those were the golden years. Bush was the equivalent of the political comedy Full Employment Act. For eight wonderful years, the man was like a father to me. I was but one little cog in his “No Comic Left Behind” program. It was as if Reagan and Quayle had a kid.

There’s only about 12 of us political comics in the whole country. And six are the same as when I started in the early '80s. Mainly because it's not the greased chute to the Bigtime. I’m not counting the TV talk show host guys, because they all have staffs of 15 writers. They’re the Wal-Marts of political comedy. Me, I’m like a small boutique in Soho. Hand-stitching every joke. And no outsourcing. Yet.

Keeping your comedic boat afloat on the political scene is a full-time occupation, but when administrations change, it’s similar to turning the Titanic. Probably takes six months to complete the shift. That’s what it took in '93 when Clinton was inaugurated, but he was a corpulent womanizer, so I had that going for me. For a bunch of reasons, President Barack Obama has been tougher. One of those reasons is Hope. It’s hard to mock Hope. Too much like kicking a small furry whimpering thing with big eyes.

Another problem is, these days, with your 24-hour news channels and Web site alerts, I’m constantly writing material that ends up having a shorter shelf life than the offerings at a homemade mayonnaise stand at a Sonoran Art Fair over a late August weekend. For instance: After health care reform, my joke about Democrats passing the stem cell bill because they're depending on that research to generate a spine is not getting the same laughs it once was. Sometimes it's good to lose a bit.

Here are some more examples of jokes that work today, but tomorrow, probably not so much.

Rush Limbaugh threatened to leave the country if health care reform passed. For many of us, that’s a big win-win. He even talked about moving to Costa Rica. Where they have universal heath care. Although your access to Oxycontin may vary.

Republicans keep talking about bipartisanship. But they don’t mean it. “We want to work with the president.” Yeah, the same way a 5-year-old with a magnifying glass wants to work with ants. Like a coyote wants to work with a nest of baby ducks. “We’re the ones reaching across the aisle.” Pay no attention to the chainsaw.

I saw a guy with a sign that said: “Stop Socializing America and Hands off My Medicare.” Dude. At least use two different signs. No wonder these people are suspicious of public health care. They’ve obviously been grievously failed by our public education system.

The way the bill is written; if you don't buy health care insurance, you can be fined and if you don't pay the fine, you can go to prison, where you get free health care. There’s your public option right there.