Does Obama need a sense of humor?

This is a repost of an attempted diary from last night* (see end of the diary). In that Diary I attempted to urge Daily Kos readers to call Race for the White House (212-790-2299) to ask David Gregory to explain why he thinks Obama needs to "lighten up" and MSNBC (212-664-7799)to lodge a protest over David Gregory's handling of this issue. What provoked the Rat? It might be the shallowness and artificiality of David Gregory's Race for the White House in general. Or it might be his sheer hypocrisy.  

For those of you who missed it, David Gregory suggested that Barack Obama needed to lighten up and laugh about The New Yorker Cartoon . On the same day, Maureen Dowd made a similar argument in the New York Times trying to resurrect (one can only presume) her stale jokes about Al Gore.  I still think it may be worth the while to call MSNBC just to make the point though the opportunity appears to be lost. Below the fold I explain what I tried to say last night

By now everyone has heard of the famous (or infamous) New Yorker cartoon: In this cartoon Barack Obama is dressed as Muslim and Michelle Obama as a 1960’s black militant. Michelle and Barack fist bump in the Oval Office as the American flag burns in the fireplace and the visage of Osama bin Laden gazes approvingly at Barack and Michelle.  David Gregory apparently finds this cartoon funny. While criticizing Barack for not sharing the joke about this cartoon he makes reference to McCain being a regular guy because he can make jokes. His jokes may fall flat Gregory intoned, but at least the guy tries while Barack is just too serious.

Is The New Yorker cartoon funny? Is it satire? Speaking for myself I have gone back and forth on this particular issue. Many, perhaps most New Yorker readers will see the cartoon for what it was meant to be-a satire of the absurd caricature the right has painted of Obama. But taken in context and outside the normal New Yorker readership the cartoon is in fact offensive on many levels. It is offensive, as Barack Obama pointed out to Muslims. It is also as others have pointed out, offensive to Black women. And while the cartoon is meant to satirize the right wing caricatures of Obama its effect will simply be to feed those caricatures.
According to David Gregory (and Maurenn Dowd) Barack Obama needs a sense of humor and is too serious (so Barack is Al Gore?).  

But what did Barack Obama do? He didn't denounce the New Yorker. He didn't call for censorship. He didn't organize a protest march to demand the New Yorker fire the cartoonist. No-he defended the New Yorker's First Amendment rights and said he thought it was offensive to American Muslims. But he didn’t laugh at it. I’ll also point out that he didn’t laugh at McCain’s joke about a woman enjoying being raped by a gorilla. Some guys I guess, just don’t know humor when it hits them. He didn’t laugh either about bombing Iran.

But to better appreciate the irony that is David Gregory (not David Gregory’s sense of irony) we should note that under most circumstances The New Yorker is considered to be prime example A of the kind of evil liberal elitist satire that is just so offensive to the average American. I’d suggest we think of a counterfactual. Picture if you will (the example is not entirely original to me) John McCain laying on the floor in depends, clapping his hands together and crying out "help-I’ve fallen and I can’t get up." Cindy McCain offers John some of her new prescription meds while a map on the wall sports a mushroom cloud blooming over Iran. Personally, I find this thought to be fucking hiliarious and deliciously irreverent. But what would happen if it were published in The New Yorker and Barack Obama pointed out how funny it was? The media –including David  Gregory-would jump on Obama for making fun of a war hero and old people. The McCain campaign I am sure would find nothing humorous in such a cartoon.

Reasonable people may disagree about how they interpret The New Yorker cartoon. But finding it "not funny" does not mean a person lacks a sense of humor. Insisting that people laugh at cartoons that in a specific context are bound to offend people betrays a tone deafness and sense of proportion that exhibits David Gregory’s fundamental incompetence and hypocrisy.

*Last night’s diary on this topic, which I later deleted, originally contained a glaring error, which admittedly was a doozy. For reasons I cannot fathom, I typed Tony Snow instead of David Gregory and went to eat a hamburger. Upon my return I found 183 comments full of pure snark. Admittedly, I gave people the occasion for snark and my error was not only dumb, it was really, really dumb. Perhaps I deserved the snark. On the other hand, I still think that had anyone read the diary they would have quickly realized that what I made was a mistake and could have easily gotten the point of the diary. I still think the point is worth making and for that reason I deleted the diary and decided to rewrite and repost it tonight.