When George W. Bush was in the White House, moving from one policy disaster to another, one joke popular in Washington was this: Q: Is America ready for a black president? A: Why not, we already have a retarded president. I remembered this as I was following last week's White House Correspondents Association Annual Dinner, where President Obama poked fun at himself, the potential Republican candidate Mitt Romney, Congress, as well as the Secret Service agents assigned to protect him and his Secretary of State. I have kept tidbits about the annual dinners of the last three years. If there is any difference between them and this year's ball, it would be the celebrity attendance, and Barack Obama's self-confidence and confidence in his chances for reelection, compared to his rival Mitt Romney. He made fun of Romney's luxury lifestyle, and claimed that his rival always takes his dog in a kennel on top of his luxury car. The President then showed a parody of Air Force One, with Romney at the door and a dog kennel on top of the plane. Obama had once been also accused of eating dog meat, when he was living with his mother and her second husband in Indonesia, and so he poked fun at Sarah Palin and the famous statement she made when she said that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick; Obama said instead: “What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? A pit bull is delicious” (as though he is admitting eating dog meat, despite this being impossible in a Muslim country like Indonesia). Obama also made fun of Hillary Clinton, after pictures surfaced showing her drinking beer and dancing in Colombia, and claimed that she called him when she was drunk. He then thanked all the Congress members who took a break from their schedule of not passing any laws to attend the dinner - as Obama said. Then with the backdrop of the Secret Service scandal in Colombia, Obama pretended that he had to leave the dinner early, because he had to take the Secret Service home before their new curfews started – a reference to those Security Service members facing U.S. Courts and awaiting their trial, and thus being barred from going out at night. Perhaps the best example of the good fortune that has accompanied Obama throughout his political career is that he had succeeded the incompetent fool George W. Bush, making it one of the easiest things for the Americans to say about the new President, no matter what he did, “at least he is better than Bush”. George W. Bush had said that he left the White House with his ‘head held high', but we quickly heard the sarcastic retort that “Yes, because it is the best way to spot shoes that are coming at you” – a reference to the shoes thrown by Muntazer al-Zaidi during the famous press conference in Baghdad, near the end of 2008. Muntazer shouted at Bush: You dog. However, this was one dog Obama did not eat. In English, they say ‘I Love You'. But after Bush left the White House, there was a joke that the best three words for Americans to hear have now become ‘former President Bush'. We heard later that George W. Bush went to the library and asked for a book on the Iraq war. But the librarian said that she won't give him one, because he wouldn't be able to finish it. Barack Obama finished the war, and the U.S. occupation soldiers left Iraq. He won the presidency despite the insistence of his rivals that he is a ‘closeted Muslim', or that he was not born in America. I also heard that he won the presidency because the voters thought that he was Tiger Woods, the famous African American golfer. I also heard that he is definitely not American, because he is not fat. Will the star of the next Correspondents Association Annual Dinner be Obama or Romney? We will know the answer come November. [email protected]
