Barack Obama's comedy debut

last updated 8 January 2015

President Obama’s “debut as the nation’s Stand-Up-in-Chief” was a big hit, said Richard Leiby in The Washington Post. Obama was the “star attraction” at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, and “no one in his administration was safe from his one-liners.” And some of Obama’s best zingers were reserved for the journalists, to whom he said, “Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me. Apologies to the Fox table.” (watch Obama's routine at the White House Correspondents' dinner)

Obama “largely played it safe,” said Sudeep Reddy in The Wall Street Journal. Nobody who works for him is going to complain. And he only directed “a few jabs at Republicans,” including the line about telling GOP chair Michael Steele that his party wouldn’t get a federal bailout because “Rush Limbaugh does not count as a troubled asset.”

“Washington has an officially approved roster of punch lines,” said Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic, “and Obama hit them all.” The president joked about how his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, cusses a lot, how his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, wants to be president, and how Obama himself is a bit pompous. “In private, Obama can be more caustic,” so let’s hope his future routines are a little more hard-hitting.