The candidate joke meter

There are a lot of jokes making the rounds this presidential season. From pantsuits on Hillary to Depends on McCain, the comedy writers have been busy as usual yuking it up at the expense of the competitors...except for a notable lack of material on Barack Obama.

Oh sure, there have been jokes about Obama's pastor and the live-chicken-eating craziness surrounding statements made by Jeremiah Wright while Barack was a member of the flock. Those jokes may truly hurt Obama as Wright is or was a friend and represented Barack's strong faith. But compared to the up close and personal attack gags made on the other two including those regarding Hillary's looks, inferring a less (or more) than feminine mystique, and McCain's age, inferring the prospect of oncoming dementia, jokes dissing Obama are about as close to personal as another zip code.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure that somewhere, where the Klan is still the secret society of choice or the Aryans hold car wash fund raisers, there are sick and nasty jokes involving Barack's ethnicity and his Middle East middle name making the rounds. But back here in polite society, it seems totally acceptable to make fun of Hillary's "look" which is hardly out of the mainstream for her age group and McCain's codgerism which not only hasn't been demonstrated but seems to be automatically and generously applied to anyone old enough to collect Social Security. The only thing Barack has been mildly kidded about is his bowling ball's affinity for the gutter. This hardly makes him less of a man, athlete, or anything but a non-entity on the professional bowlers tour.

Recently, when his Barack jab drew silence on the Daily Show, John Stewart remarked to his audience that it really was OK to make fun of Barack Obama. With anyone else, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Whig, Green, or Commie, he hasn't had to pause to make that statement.

It's not that Barack is so good that his persona, personality, and presence are above reproach and pointed humor. Looking at it obtusely, it may simply be another example of the distance we have to go in this country before persons of color are fully accepted by the rest of us, uh, persons of non-color. We may like him, respect him, and vote for him but damned if we'll like him enough or feel comfortable enough with the fact of him to make fun of him. In that way, we continue to hold Barack and other African, Asian, and Hispanic Americans at arms length. As the saying around the old fraternity house went, "if you can't rip on a brother, who can you rip on?" Hopefully, some day we'll be close enough to do so.