Politics with Marc Ambinder

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Jun 22 2009, 3:59 pm by Marc Ambinder

Just Asking....

courtesy of a reader:


Why does the president keep making jokes about being in gay relationships with other straight men?  (cf. Brian Williams joke, David Axelrod joke).  It would be funnier if he had, you know, not been stonewalling on gay rights.  Plus the jokes are weirdly aggressive... "I'm the alpha dog so I can make jokes about being gay, therefore you, the counterparty to the joke, are really the butt of it."  Strange/gross.

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Comments (9)

JosephinBrooklyn

To be fair, I think the Brian Williams joke was about how Brian Williams spent an entire day following PresO's moves...a similar joke would have been about how Brian Williams handed him toilet paper in the bathroom.

But I don't disagree with the larger point.

freaktown

its funny because they're not gay.

if they were, it wouldn't be and he wouldn't have made the joke. but because they're not, and everyone knows they're not, its funny...

i think your reader needs to spend their time doing better things than analyzing the president's jokes for perceived slights.

geesh...get a sense of humor.

Darius

I'm a strong supporter of gay rights, but I think your reader's just looking for something to get offended by here. First off, two jokes does not constitute a trend. Second, in neither case were gays actually the butt of the joke (the Axelrod joke was a play on words, juxtaposing the Iowa caucus with Iowa recently legalizing gay marriage, while the Williams joke was poking fun at Williams' "Inside the White House" special, as well as the perception of the media being "in bed" with Obama).

lebecka

Man, that chip on your shoulder must be heavy.....

cat

The Williams joke had nothing to do with being gay. It would never, in the rest of my life, have occurred to me to think of it that way. This looks like a case of someone desperately looking for something to be insulted about. Sounds like a republican comparing themselves to the protesters in Iran. The LGBT is going to find their consistently militant, negative arguments unacceptable by the general population if they proceed in this manner. I am rethinking my liberal position. They need to get a grip.

jm3 (Replying to: cat)

You're absolutely right, cat, the noise of the LGBTs defending this comment is simply deafening.

Seriously, if you're willing to condemn an entire group based on a single comment by someone who may not even be gay (that is really not clear from the post), maybe your position isn't so "liberal" after all. By the way, may I suggest that you find a way to get used to "gay militancy"? It's not like it's going away any time soon.

ytorlando (Replying to: cat)

yeah, why don't you rethink your liberal position and give me a call when you figure out what it is.

am4 (Replying to: cat)

What "liberal position" would that be? Are you going to turn blatantly homophobic and deny a class of people their rights because you're annoyed by someone complaining? That makes a lot of sense.

There's a case to be made that Obama's joke is part of the new homophobic lite comedy. If you're a homophobe you can laugh because it's 2 men in bed, and the only appropriate response is to laugh or puke. And if you're a liberal or a fake liberal like Cat you can laugh too and claim it's not homophobic because A. You're not homophobic and B. you think it's funny so C. it is not homophobic. Of course that logic falls apart if you really are homophobic and just hold "liberal positions" when you feel like it.

smirking

Consider how racy it would sound if Obama had made the same joke about Brian Williams, except with a woman reporter's name. The humor would be totally lost in innuendos of infidelity.

Certain kind of jokes are only funny if they're implausible. It's the same reason why as a straight guy, I'd feel safe making jokes about sleeping with one of my male friends, but would never ever ever ever make the same joke with one of my female friends.

By the same regard, I wouldn't find it funny if one of my gay friends made a joke about being in bed with some other guy, but would find it funny if he made the same joke using a woman's name.

It's not meant to be an insult. It's meant to be absurd and that's what makes it funny.