During last Saturday’s White House Correspondents dinner Barack Obama delivered one of those standard-issue, boilerplate jokes that presidents typically deliver on such occasions: “The Jonas Brothers are here; they’re out there somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: ‘predator drones.’ You will never see it coming.”
It’s just an innocuous joke with a bit of faux-edginess built in; kinda corny, kinda funny. To some on the left side of the aisle, though, it’s an outrage:
It evinces a callous disregard for human life that is really inappropriate for a world leader, especially a president who is waging war against an enemy that deliberately targets civilians. It also helps undermine that outreach by making it look insincere.
Salon.com further ups the ante, making it a two-fer outrage:
…predator drone strikes in Pakistan have killed literally hundreds of completely innocent civilians, and now the president is evincing a casual disregard for those lives he is responsible for ending by making a lighthearted joke about killing famous young celebrities for the crime of attempting to sleep with his young daughters.”
I love that line, “a lighthearted joke about killing famous young celebrities.”
Lefty crashpad Daily Kos:
As controversial as their purported effectiveness, and the human cost of its killings, is its supposed legality. DefenseNews recently reported that assassinations by drones may bring legal trouble for the Obama administration…
Maybe so. But it was still just a joke.
and further to that EBD…
Joe Jonas: “Seriously, we’re not pedophiles”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/blogs/yeas-and-nays/Joe-Jonas_-_We_re-not-pedophiles_-on-Obama_s-quip-92634629.html
These idiots are as ignorant as they are unprincipled.
First of all, NO ONE in the Obama or Bush administrations deliberately targeted innocent civilians. Second, the Law of War specifically permits belligerents to attack the enemy REGARDLESS of whether innocent civilians are likely to get killed. Military necessity almost always trumps the other principles of the Law of War. This is especially true when the enemy deliberately mingles with or shields themselves with noncombatants.
A missile strike, even against an enemy leader, is NOT an assassination, murder, or anything of the sort. It is just as lawful to target one soldier as it is a hundred soldiers. Dropping a bomb on a terrorist leader isn’t assassination because we’re in a state of war. Dropping a bomb on Hugo Chavez or Achmadinejad, as joyful as that sounds, would be an assassination.
We have to give the leftists credit for consistency after they attacked Reagan for his “we begin bombing in 5 minutes” joke and McCain’s ” bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran” parody.
Callous disregard for human life? I wonder how many times they protested murders by our enemies.
Kind of like Stalin saying ‘joking’ of course!, to young Svetlana’s suiters – ‘just one word for you – Gulags’! Oh wait, that was no joke – Stalin killed his second wife’s parents and probably knocked off some ‘suiters’ too.
I did not find that ‘joke’ funny – if he would have said something like ‘Don’t think you can steal my thunder boys, I am the President, therefore I have a higher hero worship grade than you two..I hope’ – that would have been a cutesy ‘Dad’ joke, IMO.
I have to disagree with Jema 54; it was an innocent, innocuous joke, and I don’t CARE!!!
Live by the moonbat, die by the moonbat.
(No conversation containing the phrase: “Seriously, we’re not pedophiles” can possibly go well, I think.)
Well, Jema, once every three or four years I disagree with you, and this is one of those occasions. /:>)>
Just as I didn’t find it at all offensive when Reagan said, in a sound-check before a radio interview, something like “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve passed a law outlawing Russia. We begin bombing in five minutes,” I don’t find Obama’s (writer’s) joke offensive; I thought it was just a “dad” joke to some (pretend) prospective suitors about how he’s keeping an eye on his daughters, and that he means it.
I don’t think there’s anything funny about Obama. God knows Americans have a lot more problems with Obama than some (writer’s) joke he reads out at the Correspondent’s Dinner, which is something like a Roast.
It wouldn’t have been appropriate for Stalin to make a Gulag joke to his fellow Russians because he DID send his fellow Russians to Gulags; American Presidents don’t use hi-tech war machines against teen-idols. It was just a joke.
Mouth:
Jay’s post was titled “LOL.”
He added a laugh – “snort” – after the quoted joke.
He said in the comments that Obama “has great writers.”
Kathy Shaidle said “Damn that spilled coffee…”
Then, you chimed in with “Slim pickin’s (sic), huh dudes?”
I don’t really know what anyone could say to you at this point…
What if GW Bush had said the same thing?
Jema, the same people who are angry at this joke would have been far angrier if Bush had made the same joke – if he’d warned, I don’t know, David Hasselhof off of his daughters in the same way.
My take on Obama’s joke – which, again, he didn’t write, which is probably why it’s funny – is that I’d rather see him delivering a joke some comedy writer wrote for him than using his own words in his official role and screwing up the country.
The reaction at some of the sites, particular Salon’s, brings this to mind:
Q: How many lesbians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That’s not funny.
Lefties seem to lack a sense of humour. Life is a gamble. One of the ways to deal with the unexpected or unpleasant is to joke about it. The left can’t do that so they have an insatiable desire to regulate everything. It’s their vain attempt at eliminating all the risks of being alive.
The Looney Left are as stupid as they are crazy.
You need a new list, Kate, entitled “The Dark Side of Technology”
In this case, “The internet empowers assholes.”
As a father of 3 girls I “got” the joke.
Thought it was funny.
Agree with those above that it was a “dad” joke.
Also agree that the left has no real sense of humour. Just veiled, or obvious, attacks on those they disagree with.
DaWG
A resident of America’s Hat.©
I saw Obama’s speech. It was a ‘dad’ joke and it actually paid respect to the Jonas Brothers simply because he singled them out.
Some of his jokes were pretty edgy based on the audience feedback but I did not really get them because I did not know all the players.
His funniest joke was when he was talking about his disappointments from last year and how he had been hoping to win the Nobel Prize for Physics.
he is a funny president.
so far the whole administration has been a comedy of errors.
“His funniest joke was when he was talking about…”
Just to be clear, cconn, it’s his writers’ funniest joke. It’s a non-trivial distinction in this case, inasmuch as crypto-communist Obama is, on his own, about as funny as the plague.
The spectre of the harm he’s causing doesn’t mean, of course, that a specific one-liner written for “a president” by one of his writers is a violation of common grace and all that’s good in this world, as some would have it. A good joke is a good joke.
Hey, where does a guy sign up for this Shocked, Outraged, Disgusted and Appalled Club?
Does it have NGO status? Is there gov’t funding?
What is not amusing is that there seems to be no objection to using state resources for personal reasons.
As a father of 3 girls I “got” the joke.
Thought it was funny.
Agree with those above that it was a “dad” joke.
Also agree that the left has no real sense of humour. Just veiled, or obvious, attacks on those they disagree with.
DaWG
A resident of America’s Hat.©
With the NYC would-be bomber of Pakistani ties, the joke suddenly seems quasi-prescient, yes?
Hey EB, I heard it this way:
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That’s not funny.
See what I did there?
There were also histrionics when Bush showed a slideshow at one of these dinners with pictures of him looking for and failing to find WMD.
These people call themselves “concerned” about everything. They ought to pull the stick out of their asses.
I agree that Obama isn’t at all funny. He has some writers, but so did every other president. I did hear, though, from his guard detail, that Bush was quite funny and personable.
Posted by: Cal at May 5, 2010 4:08 AM
An excellent observation, specially the last sentence.
Would only insert, …vain… neverending, contrary to all available evidence and experience of ages….
Yeah, I see what you did there, Mal. And it’s not funny.
It’s part of the leftie syndrome; a wagging finger is their moral compass.
Yeah I’m torn several ways….
On one hand I can sympathize with the guy. All too often I have had bizarre censure for statements or posts…..which seem based more on the POSSIBILITY that some one might be offended.
Despite my having witnessed/participated in too many sad things along the way….and thoroughly understand the black humour associated……jokes about death and destruction is in bad taste.
As noted the left seems to be in lock-step with the humourless Islamists.
Ayatolla Koumeini stated there is no humour in Islam.
There is NO HUMOUR IN POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.
I maintain that laughter and tears usually go together. Black humour is a survival/coping mechanism, a needed release of emotion in traumatic situations.
David letterman’s faux pas about Sarah Palin’s daughter crossed everybody’s line.
I am neither amused, outraged nor offended.
This is a “never-ya-mind”.
I thought it was funny … ha ha funny. A joke.
It has flushed out the progressives (marxists) as humourless, though, and that’s a good thing.
Lefties never did have a sense of humor.
Sasquatch.Would you call it cognitive dissonance if an entire nation chose to ignore that Goldman Sachs was allowed to implode the economies of several western European countries and its population chose to worry about other issues that wont matter one bit when the same scheme hits its own economy.
What makes salon.com presume he was warning them against attempting to “sleep” with his daughters?
That’s just so typical of the left. Their minds head to the gutter faster than rainwater.
LIke I’ve been saying the past 4 months – if you liked Bush, you’ll love Obama – same lamo jokes about ultra violence and the same crony army of beneficiaries on Wall Street and in the MIC.
As a father of three daughters, I’d have predator drones on the ready if I could.
This is not a joke.
mikeg:
When the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed by a Congressional vote of 362-57 (15 abstentions) in 1999, that set the stage for the economic disaster.
Like all good intentions, the repeal was designed because the political class had articulated that home ownership is an entitlement under the American Dream.
It mattered not whether anybody had an income or any assets, it was the will of elected officials, who in fact did sue lenders for allegedly discriminatory practises.
Subprime mortgages were designed to provide a return on the increased risk on loans that lenders were being told they had to make in the name of social justice.
Today, we have a subprime government in Greece, but that’s a topic for another thread.
My dad punched a guy in the face, and knocked him right off the doorstep, just for asking if my sister was at home. I suppose that would be considered improper, these days.
Mal at May 5, 2010 9:30 AM
I nearly forgot it was national offend a feminist week. I’m running out of time.
Nice work!
The left has a sense of humor but it’s more of a sneering, “sophisticated” type – Bill Maher, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar.
This is why I’ve coined the term “By-Proxy Victim Hood”. The empathy of the self-appointed representatives of victims that have been victimized by people they disagree with knows no bounds; and is far beyond the reach of a Knuckle Dragger.
Apparently, Obama’s jokes were written by Jon Stewart’s crew.
Nothing wrong with that because there were some good ones.
mikeg
[….Sasquatch.Would you call it cognitive dissonance if an entire nation chose to ignore that Goldman Sachs was allowed to implode the economies of several western European countries and its population chose to worry about other issues that wont matter one bit when the same scheme hits its own economy.]
I would consider it was cognitive dissonance to ignore the point that “set you free” enumerated so well…
In fact currently, as we speak, Greece is more or less in open revolt (General Strike and riots) about necessary government cut backs. Cognitive dissonance on a national scale.
This is the expected result when a critical mass of the public becomes unrealistically dependant on taxpayer resources. Expect similar reaction when the same necessary corrective measures are imposed here.
POWinCA
To further expand on you post.
During WW2, in the Pacific….US aircraft were dispatched, based on intercepted IJN communications to attack Yamamotos aircraft. A deliberate targeting of the japanese Grand Admiral was legitamite. Earlier Yamamoto had similarly dispatched aircraft to nail Halsey…but Halsey, on a hunch, ordered a change of course.
Targeting the enemy’s Command and Control structure is SOP.
Lefties without a sense of humour. And the one didn’t seem entirely comfortable telling the jokes. Oh excuse me “reading” the jokes. The idea of him actually coming up with them is ludicrous.
Sasquatch.Question for you.Have you taken the time to read Creature From Jekyll Island or watched a video on wwwgigisup.net Gary Fielder explains fractional reserve banking and describes how derivatives and credit default swaps have been employed to the advantage of the banksters.
Actually, it’s an outrage to some on the right of the isle too. Count me as +1 w/o sense of humour. If I joked about blowing up his kids, there’d be international scandal by now.
ET.Dont you think the globalist take over is too much.I feel that they are wealthy beyond any further need,and that they should be stopped in their tracks.A woman by the name of Catherine Austin Fitts has several very good interviews posted on You Tube.Her most recent on Infowars is easily accessed and may enlighten even the most ardent of all establishment banker boosters.
mikeg – I don’t know specifically what you mean by ‘global takeover’.
The facts are that we, as a species, are now globally networked. We are networked informationally, economically, socially. The fact that we have the technology to enable this networking can’t be overlooked: the computer, the internet, all our electronic gadgets that enable us to instantly interact with anyone anywhere. Space has no reality; time has no reality. This networked infrastructure is a factual material reality.
A glitch in the network is that some nations haven’t entered the network; that is, they want some of the benefits of the network but refuse to function in a ‘networking manner’. The Islamic nations want the benefits of modern technology: computers, electronics, cars, planes, oil extraction. They want to economically interact; they want to sell their oil.
BUT, they refuse to function in a societal network. To function is such a manner, a nation must free its citizens to be individual agents. Independent actors in the economy. The Islamic nations are trapped within an ideology that is functional only in a 7th c economy and lifestyle where individuals did not exist. But a global network requires individual agents. This asymmetry, this imbalance, is causing unrest in the network.
As for class asymmetry, we will and must always have this, for an entire population cannot be homogeneous in work activity and resultant benefits. I’m not fully informed about Goldman Sachs to comment; the newspapers are hardly factual.
ET.News Flash.I thought you would know this,there is alternative news sources on the internet if you wanted to,you could go looking,Im sure its only your reluctance to be honest that would prevent you from finding the truth yourself.If you are sincere and ever want to explore that which you never believed yesterday just ask.
IT WAS A JOKE!!!!
end of discussion