Obama's Wit As Commander-in-Chief

I will leave the slicing and dicing to more erudite critics of comedy but as an observer of good satire, I thought President Obama was outstanding at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner Saturday night.

Two jokes in particular struck me as quite telling about the man as president and the man as a father of two daughters reaching the dating age.

I'm paraphrasing, but the lead in to his first joke that tickled my funny bone was observing his falling numbers in job performance "but I'm still extremely popular in the land of my birth."

Perfect timing and perfect jab at the idiotic birthers of whom many believe Obama was born in Kenya where he is in deed popular. It is the native country of Barack's father.

Birther crackpots have forced the state of Hawaii where the president was born in 1961 to enact a law this past week allowing state officials to ignore repeated requests from groups seeking verification of his birth records.

The second joke was at the expense of a young musical group in the audience and one that his two daughters are devout fans. As any good father of teenage girls would warn, Obama reminded them he was commander-in-chief and as such has "predatory drones" at his disposal.

I loved it. It is a crack Bill Cosby would have said. And, I know my two brothers and my son who have daughters would loved to have threatened swarmy teenage boys.

Those of you who have read my columns over the years, might recall I shared some personal characteristics of Obama as a young editor of the Harvard Law Review by my cousin who at the time was Obama's law school classmate.

Not only did we get a head's up on Obama's lofty, passive style of leadership, we also learned about his dry, witty, self-deprecating sense of humor.

He demonstrated the first over the first year of his administration and saw first hand of the latter Saturday night. It only is his critics who perform the slap-stick comedy gigs.

Readers comments are welcome as long as they remain civil. We reserve the right to delete any comments that are vulgar, libelous and totally irrelevant to this posting. -- Jer