Op-Ed  – Are You Kidding?  Not Hardly Enough 

Op-Ed  – Are You Kidding?  Not Hardly Enough 

By: Marion DS Dreyfus

In late January of this year, the Wall Street journal featured an article titled “Is the joke on Joe Biden?” by Peter Funt, a sometime actor, host and one-time producer of the hidden camera show, Candid Camera, popular in the ‘60s.

Funt, in his article, took pains to limn the comedy gold, so he says, of past presidents Reagan, Clinton and Trump. They offered such entertainment fodder as could be repeatedly mined for sneers and condescension on programs like Saturday Night Live.

As a sad-to-say regular watcher of SNL, I’ve long despaired of the optimistic hope, re-kindled weekly, that one or a few writers in the green room will sip of the large and brimming cup of intentional and (more often) unintentional gaffes and foibles of our own commander-in-chief, 46. Joseph Robinette Biden.

Apparently, Funt feels the Democrat presidents don’t offer much in the way of funny, apparently including the present avatar of the scepter of power,

But in the presidents with which most of us are cognizant, not to say conversant, starting from Eisenhower,  not funny at all—but he didn’t need to be, as he was a general, commanding in  the execution of the Korean and WWII aggressions, and SNL wasn’t even a wee pixel in the cold-cathode diode tubes of the early TVs.

Wending down to the start of satirical mockery or occasional good-natured sardonicism pitched at the American public. There were a handful of bi-partisan barbs and skits, of course. Ford and his misstep fumbles, immortalized care of Chevy Chase. George Herbert Walker Bush, mimicked amusingly by a young Dana Carvey (“Wouldn’t be prudent”–). Clinton and his bimbo explosions imprinted on memory  with the cigar applications of WH intern, the unfortunate Monica Lewinsky.

But these men were effective and active  presidents involved elsewhere for significant achievements. Ike for his military prowess and masterly bearing. Bush 41 for his exalted and no-puffery curriculum vitae. Clinton for his smart pivoting, thanks to Dick Morris’ steering, on the budget and GDP management. Even Ford had a respectable if short tenure, and his academic sports excellence was certainly not mockable, despite nasty Chase cold-open sequences.

Obama, 44, was deemed untouchable: He was black. He was sleek. He had many new boxes checked off,  and made credible speeches in front of pillars that analogistically likened him to a Grecian orator. So. Not much humor there, though there were opportunities his detractors saw and shook their heads at.

Bringing us to the mystery of why, over the past two fraught and to millions of us, unbelievable years, the most risible president in anyone’s long memory has been velvet-gloved since Day One in 2020, when Biden reversed a dozen sane initiatives whose abrogation has caused chaos and evident disintegration of much progress achieved by Trump 45.

During weeks where failure after failure took place, in the appalling spectacle of the abrupt fiasco of the Kabul pullout, or the never-successes of Biden’s foreign dealings—not to mention the rich lodes of grift evident in the “laptop from hell,” his son Hunter’s scalding pornography of drugs and mayhem plus foreign entanglements and emoluments unearned – “the big guy” is manufactured comedy gold on a regular basis more than any prior president.

Falling up Air Force One stairs. Three, four, five times. Eructational oopsies in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II. And royal kin. Various falls and breakages explained oddly as the result of chasing his dog or bicycle malfeasance. Feeble jokes badly told. And retold.  Chastisings in a most unpresidential manner if an intrepid public dared ask an uncomfortable question. Walking the wrong way out after a brief, unsatisfactory address. Never stopping for questions we all need to understand. Shaking hands with ghosts. Calling out to audience members long dead.   Etcetera.

Yet we watch in vain for comics to lambaste or lampoon the veins of potential comic relief presented daily. Even his wife, the self-aggrandizing ESL teacher who insists on being called “doctor” though her PhD was barnacled with errors and typos and js inconsequential stuff not worthy of the title doctor. And multiple verbal malapropisms that one cannot believe her staff failed to prevent, in Spanish and regular English we are all expected to know. Boh-de-gahs, pronounced as no one ever pronounces it.

Back to her husband of the advanced years and more advanced corny homilies. After he has been told of plagiarisms or inaccurate facts retold like Christmas raisin puddings no one tastes, Biden repeats these same stories. Unbelievably. One staunch Democrat friend of aged decades assured me that Biden’s glossolaliac errors are a result of his childhood stuttering. Er, no.

Alas, only the mildest, most sanitized references to his endless fails and misjudgments, opinions and theories are dropped. Sometimes even these softballs of marshmallow consistency are regarded with fury, and the comic making the chance miscue is forced to apologize or retract.

Instead, three years on, prior President Trump is the bad guy and the lynchpin of weekly mockery on the legacy dinosaur media. Even there, jokes are catapulted and leveraged on false premises as often as not.

The mystery continues: Why are these vast storehouses of potential laughter squelched, such that we are left sputtering…What about his muddy retell of a clear veteran bon mot? What about his getting lost in the WH garden? What about his outbursts of irascibility when reporters ask a question he stalks away from?

Mystifying Democrat fealty, stripping our expectations of any hope. We can only await the books being written by the comedians run off the stage by protective unwritten dicta: Thou shalt not point thy barbs at The Biden.

Maybe mordancy and good-natured highlighting of human variance await the 2024 victor, hopefully someone of a more vigorous constitution. And a sense of self-deprecating humor.