Although it seemed as I was alone in the chat room this morning, I thought both President Obama and Jimmy Kimmel were funny at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner Saturday night. Of course, I watched from my living room, having gotten no invitation to the soiree (unlike Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan)…
I’ve said this many times before; if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry. When things are this fucked up, we need an escape, or three. And laughter is, indeed, the best medicine.
I appreciate that President Obama can laugh at himself, and take the barbs that Kimmel slung with a gigantic smile.
Some of my favorite lines from Kimmel:
“I want to thank the Washington Hilton for hosting us tonight. You know, President Obama wanted to move the dinner to the Kennedy Center, and the Republicans wanted to keep it here at the Hilton. So they compromised, and here we are at the Hilton.: and
“Mr. President, remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow? That was hilarious!” and
“Mr. President, I hope you don’t think I’m out of line here but marijuana is something that real people care about and the fact that you believe Speaker Boehner when he tells you he still has control of his party leads me to believe that you’re smoking some crazy great weed yourself.”
Oh there was more, including the line about how when Obama called Kanye West a jackass, he was really talking about Allen… Watch it here:
But the president was pretty funny himself! I especially liked this line: “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? A pit bull is delicious!
It was funny, and it’s ok to laugh!
Today on the show, I spoke with Howie Klein of DownWithTyranny and the Blue America PAC…
And, as we do every Monday, I spent most of the second hour with Crooks and Liars’ Nicole Belle, recapping the most heinous moments of the Sunday talking head shows in a segment aptly named “Fools on the Hill.” Today, she brought us these gems:
It’s inevitable that with the anniversary of the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, the Republicans are scrambling to downplay President Obama’s successes. In fact, the whole Sunday show circuit was nothing but Bizarro World projections on reality.
So it shouldn’t surprise you that former RNC chair and current Romney adviser Ed Gillespie accused Barack Obama of being ‘one of the most divisive presidents in American history’ by turning the killing of Obama into a ‘partisan political attack.’ Because no Republican has ever politicized bin Laden for their personal gain.
Nor should it be unexpected that Ed Gillespie counted on the pea-sized brains and complete short term memory loss of the average Republican voter when he bald-faced lied about the economic recovery and distort Bush’s record on job creation. Of course, host David Gregory let him.
And John Boehner—the Speaker for the least productive House of Representatives in modern history—reassures Candy Crowley that while he and Obama have a ‘very good relationship’, he’s concerned that the president is ‘diminishing the presidency’ by advocating causes like the Buffett Rule. He’s just being helpful, doncha know?
I think Robert Gibbs had it right when he told David Gregory that the sum total of the Republican message this election season is “You didn’t clean up our mess fast enough.”
Finally, the one segment that had me more angry than any other was the Meet the Press panel discussing women’s rights and the assault by Republican-led legislatures both at the state and federal level. It’s a rare treat to get Rachel Maddow on the Sunday shows: smart as a whip, able to access facts quickly and accurately and an unapologetic liberal. There’s a decent chance that some points that you don’t normally hear from the corporate media. But not if Republican strategist Alex Castellanos is simultaneously booked. He drips with patronizing misogyny as he derails any hope of an intelligent discussion by arguing with Rachel the completely inarguable fact that women make less than men.