I am watching the Alfred E. Smith Catholic charity event, and McCain is actual pretty damned funny. Actually, despite his delivery, his lines are awesome and he is killing.
And no, this is not sarcasm. The ACORN shots were cheap, but the rest was funny.
*** Update ***
Obama was pretty damned funny, a little more self-deprecating, but I still think McCain was funnier.
BTW- My favorite line was after Obama made fun of the lipstick on Giuliani and said ‘tough primary you had there, John.’ Didn’t get many laughs, but I laughed here. The other line was McCain’s riffs about the Clinton’s not really campaigning for Barack (which is BS), but it was funny.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
Wow, McCain is actually making a gracious speech about Obama and his campaign.
I’m ….. impressed.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
Holy shit, who knew that McCain could be this funny?
Again, impressed.
Apsaras
It was genuinely sweet and gentlemanly.
Ok, that’s done with! Time to get back to insinuating he’s a terrorist and a muslim.
Comrade Incertus
Funny enough to pull me away from the Rays-Red Sox? No chance. I presume this will be on the Youtubes at some point.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
OMG, that Russian Tea Room joke is the line of the evening.
Barack also has the comedy touch.
SamFromUtah
What… me worry?
Wait, different Alfred E.
Redhand
He may be great as a comedian, but as President? ……… Nah!
Brian J
What channel is it on?
raff
Edit: SamFromUtah beat me to it…
Sorry, I couldn’t get past "Alfred E." without going to "Neuman".
"My friends, I say to you: ‘What – Me worry?’"
Ed Marshall
MSNBC is about to replay the full McCain speech.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
Well, it was tough to follow McCain’s performance, but Barack pulled it off. Funny, and poignant.
Good stuff.
b-psycho
The next time someone gripes about political "polarization", I’m directing them to YouTube clips of this. This is how "our" rulers actually are with each other, the other crap is smokescreen.
Gotta admit it was funny though. Their writers deserve every penny they get.
HumboldtBlue
Give McCain for showing some class …. Obama was pretty damned funny as well.
Also, if you all haven’t seen the Frontline espisode about the two candidates, watch it. It allows us to once again see both as human beings not the political caricatures we view through the prism of the blogosphere.
Bobzim
That was the funniest thing I’ve seen since the first Fey/Palin skit!
They’re showing it again on MSNBC.
"Barak is Swahili for ‘The One’" was pretty good, too.
McCain didn’t like the Russian Tea Room line, though.
Conservatively Liberal
Both were very funny (listening to Maddow replay of McCain now) but the winners are the people. It is about time the candidates are in a venue where the gloves come off a bit and there is a bit of poking fun at each other.
Nice break from the usual bullshit, that’s for sure. Enjoy the interlude because it is abruptly back to reality afterward.
Brian J
I didn’t catch all of that, but what I did watch was very interesting.
Ed Marshall
McCain didn’t like the Russian Tea Room line, though.
I could have guessed that.
If you really want to get into his mind about women you have to look at how he responded to the flap after he told the joke about Chelsea being ugly because Reno was her father. At first he refused to admit he did anything wrong at all, but when Bill Clinton said he was bullshit on that, McCain apologized to Bill. It was an honor thing, he had insulted Clinton’s women and decided that was out of line. He refused to apologize to Reno.
He’s got the same thing going with Palin. That’s his woman and if you insult her, you are challenging his honor.
Dusty
Maybe I’m just too off McCain now, but, while I thought he was funnier, I also thought he was meaner and didn’t much care for the political talking points he inserted, like the bit about ACORN. I also thought the few shots we got of McCain during Obama’s bit once again betrayed his craptastic poker face. Obama was probably less in the roast spirit, but that’s just not what you’re gonna get from Obama.
bwaage
Any links to video of this up yet?
Laura W
What an embarrassment of riches. Flipping between Maher on King showing McCain at the event; Rachel then showing Obama at event; SNL (Loved the crazy lady from McCain rally!! Major out loud laughs.) The debate skit was funny, and kept thinking that the writers must hang out here since the funniest comment (IMO) here last night was the one about Obama talking to McCain’s "imaginary friend, Joe the Plumber". They rode that one to death. Pretty good.
Oh yeah…also at 9est…the Project Runway finale repeat, which I missed last night, of course.
I missed a lot of Obama’s speech for the SNL stuff, so hoping to find it somewhere.
Michelle
I would disagree. I can find ways to be completely civil to people who would like to rip my throat out. (Happens often at work.) It’s not smokescreen; it’s manners.
Brian J
Interesting note: Candy Crowley just said Obama is returning staff to Georgia and will be making a play (again?) for North Dakota, West Virginia, and Kentucky. I assume I was hallucinating, so if it’s true, he must be very confident and the internals must be very, very good.
Pastafarian
"I got my first name from my father…and my middle name from someone who never expected me to run for office."
Those were the best Obama lines, but I have to agree that McCain was funnier overall.
Brian J
That’s actually why, as much as I like politics, I often don’t discuss it that much with people. I can be very civil, but a lot of people aren’t. That, and they think about stuff in very stupid ways.
Joshua Norton
As president he’d make a great comedian, too. Except the jokes would all be on us.
rob!
i dunno…before the campaign, i thought McCain was pretty funny–hosting SNL, on The Daily Show, etc. (i was even in the studio audience when he was the guest on TDS one time, which was great)
but now…i can’t laugh with him anymore. at his rallies, he and Sarahcious Crumb are, in my estimation, trying nothing less than to get Obama shot, and i’m simply so disgusted with him that i can’t laugh when i see him, even when he’s delivering admittedly funny lines.
tammanycall
Agreed, McCain’s was funnier, but that’s because it was meaner, which is in the spirit of a roast. Some of Obama’s jokes were written better than they sounded, but he pulled back in the delivery. Still, there were moments of McCain’s speech where I recoiled from the screen, and that didn’t happen with Obama. And the memorial audience seemed eager to laugh with Obama, which illustrates how quickly and how well he connects with people.
HRA
Personally, I do feel like Rob about McCain now and there was a time when I did enjoy his humor.
You ever find yourself outside of a courtroom where 2 opposing attorneys are engaged in a conversation after they fought like wild beasts in the courtroom. It’s what they consider normal. Note our Congress is chiefly made up of lawyers.
Fern
@Brian J:
Well, fivethirtyeight has McCain only about half a point ahead in North Dakota and three up in West Virginia.
Georgia does strike me as a stretch, though.
LiberalTarian
I was really happy to see both men being gracious.
McCain told the jokes with relish, made them funnier. Obama told the jokes, but it didn’t seem like he’d seen them before. People laughed with him when he laughed at the jokes.
Good though. I was glad the candidates both did this thing. I had Maddow on kind of on a fluke … it was something I could have on TV while I practiced piano. The ol’ fingers aren’t what they used to be.
Dusty
@ Fern
Nate Silver ran the numbers a week or so ago. If Obama can hold on to the Kerry non-black vote and get a big but non unreasonable bump in African-American turnout, Georgia becomes a possibility.
Bob In Pacifica
So let me get this straight. McCain was associating with someone associating with a terrorist?
Kali's Little Sister
I’m with you. There is nothing I enjoy more than a great laugh; however, Obama’s sincere service oriented closer is what got me tonight. Damn he’s good.
Comedically, McCain brought out the yuck-yucks…but if we are looking for leadership quotient, even in that setting, it is obvious who won.
gwangung
He has someone who supported one as an endorser….
gbear
@Laura W:
There really must be something in the water today. The Washington Post endorses Obama for President.
This is just amazing. The news staff must have taken the editorial staff out to the woodshed.
Martin
It’s true. Obama will get record turnout in GA. But if Obama wins Kentucky, the GOP should just give up and start over from scratch.
Fern
@Dusty:
Okay – I’ll buy that. And I must say I have come to trust Obama’s decisions about this campaign.
Mark
OMG… the stupid, it burns. My sister in law (a republican) actually believes Obama isn’t a natural born citizen because her grandparents forwarded her an email with a link to a youtube video.
Really.
When will the election be over?
Martin
Oh, should also point out that GA and KY both have key senate races. Obama’s ground game will hopefully push both those races into the win column. I’m sure that was a big part of the decision to go there.
SGEW
Sometimes I question the wisdom of this whole "internet" thing. It may wind up causing more harm than good.
Stupid, it seems, is transferrable through YouTube.
Steve The Other Plumber
McCain was delivering a speech to his base.
Washington elites.
CT
McCain’s got a natural delivery for these types of celebrity roast jokes-though I agree with others that his ACORN riff was off-putting. But his bit at the end raising expectations for Obama’s routine was very funny.
I think Obama’s natural humor style has got a little edge to it that could get him in trouble if he gave it free reign-witness the kerfuffle over "you’re likable enough" during primary season. That Giuliani dig killed me though-that’s right there in "noun, verb, and 9-11" territory right there.
Michelle
Thanks for the reply Brian, but you didn’t respond to the point about how "our rulers" as you said really act. Do you think that outside of the campaign Obama and McCain are great friends, have drinks and snicker about how both of them have gotten it over on us little guys?
Phoenix Woman
This is how McCain won over the press: With one-liners and BBQ.
The only reason we got to see the real McCain underneath the carefully-nurtured facade of bonhomie is because of the killing pace of the campaign season. That’s when the general public got to see the side of McCain that only the Senators and certain media people (especially in Arizona) know.
Soylent Green
This gathering was quite revealing, a room full of senators behaving the way co-workers behave after hours. They work together and they like each other. When Obama and the Clintons and McCain routinely say that in public, it’s because they mean it.
If at the debates and on the stump, McCain had shown Obama this much genuine respect, he wouldn’t have turned so many people off. Had he had allowed himself to be his real self, an affable fellow with a good sense of humor, he might be doing much better. People would like him more and not see him so much as a cranky old fart. He might be drawing a much larger share of the middle and not have earned those sobriquets of angry, erratic, and confused.
I saw his turn at the mic as an advance concession speech. He knows he isn’t going to win, seems to be enjoying the release of all that tension, and both envies and admires his challenger’s gifts and timing. His Letterman appearance today, same thing.
Last night, all of McCain’s facial gyrations and attempts to woo moderates show what a Faustian bargain he has made with the haters, the party’s Palin wing. To me this campaign shows how he has twisted himself in knots trying to be himself, basically a moderate on most issues (except use of the military) as well as a deficit hawk (not that I like his spending priorities), and at the same time — to get the vote out — a champion of hard-right causes. His advisors sat him down a while back and made it clear he couldn’t win without the base, then forced Palin on him to cement the deal. On the stump he is awkward and inauthentic when he tries to carry water for the base, which has never liked him, and vice versa. He obviously yearns to take the moderate positions he prefers but knows he has to keep up the act until the election, has to smear and lie and obfuscate according to the script. McCain is not a crazy right winger, he just plays one on TV.
That said, he has sacrificed a big part of his honor and integrity accepting this bargain, and may not live long enough to get it back.
Jon H
"OMG, that Russian Tea Room joke is the line of the evening."
Huh, I thought that closed after 9/11, but it seems to have been sold and reopened in 06.
I was all ready to make a crack about how Obama is such an elitist he’s out of touch with Manhattan’s elitists.
John Casey
Since no one else has recorded one of Obama’s best lines, I will
Obama: Last week, someone in the McCain camp said, "If we talk about the economy, McCain will lose."
(beat)
So, lets talk about the economy."
Martin
I don’t think they like each other that much. Certainly not McCain of Obama. The animosity seen in the debates is not an act. But these events are a big deal and you go into them knowing that even though the jokes are personal, they aren’t meant to hurt, and so you can laugh at them. Honestly, I think if the candidates could have events like this periodically throughout the campaign, it would probably help the tenor of things overall.
Vincent
One problem with this theory is that one has to accept that Obama thinks it’s funny that some of McCain’s supporters want to kill him. The chance that one of those loonies will actually try is not zero. I don’t know about you, but that would spark a little bit of resentment in me.
handy
@Soylent Green:
Too late, damage is done. He’s got the crazies convinced Obama’s a terrorist. Hillary did the same garbage in the primaries, and it’s taken a lot of work on her part to get most of her "gals" in line–and these were Democrats!
So, yeah, thanks a lot, John McCain, and all that.
arnott
video diary at dailykos : Diary link
Michelle
McCain is over-doing the insane facial expressions and gestures on Letterman.
Ed Marshall
I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive. I think they are co-workers, they can respect things about the other guy, etc..
I also think that when you hit this level of the game, both of them think they are the person to save the nation. The only thing standing in their way is the SOB trying to screw it all up. To hit this level in politics, you have to think well of yourself.
Perry Como
Hah! Letterman asked McCain about G. Gordon Liddy.
Michelle
McCain is lying on Letterman now, saying that Ayers wanted to bomb more. That’s simply not true.
David hit back with Liddy.
I have to disagree, Ed. There is reason enough to believe that McCain doesn’t respect Obama, some of it in writing.
jerry 101
My favorite Obama line was the one about mccain’s advisor saying if we talk about the economy, we lose….so let’s talk about the economy.
But McCain had a killer line….ummm…what was it….I forget. But it did make me laugh out loud, and I was trying not to laugh, mostly because I just don’t like the guy, and laughing at his jokes seems like something that may make me like him a lil bit.
Obama had better lines in his speech than the economy line, but he really needs to work on his timing. He had some great lines that pretty much fell flat because he lacks a sense for timing. McCain has a knack for timing.
Comrade Stuck
I think maybe Mccain and his campaign are suffering from the Clinton Obama Syndrome. I’m not smart enough to really understand it, but it seems to me Obama drives his opponents bonkers with his campaign style. It’s kind of like a subliminal slow con, or Jedi Mind Trick if you will. He’s three steps ahead about all the time and he never falls for the anger baiting traps they set for him. And he sets his own, that are mostly invisible, and are really designed for his opponent to trap themselves, and they usually do. You can see this creativity in other areas also, mostly in organization. He is setting a new bar for smart campaigning and it’s something dems can tap into for some time to come. Now he has one more trick to pull off, and that is his GOTV apparatus. If it’s like everything else, it will be lights out for Magoo.
Ed Marshall
I have to disagree, Ed. There is reason enough to believe that McCain doesn’t respect Obama, some of it in writing.
Zuzu's Petals
Listening to Obama on the HuffPo … wow, there are a few real digs in there. But he ends on a really gracious note.
McCain up next.
Zuzu's Petals
McCain’s was funny, but the sound was really skewed on the HuffPo clip.
CT
The Obama campaign is like a sports team that can dictate the pace and style of the game so well that the other team either a)plays his game ("change") which is a loser for them, or b) flail around so much trying to knock Obama off his game that they end up digging themselves into a hole and making themselves look desperate. We saw it with Clinton, we’re seeing it with McCain. I was feeling good about this even during the McCain bounce, because Obama had spent the entire summer patiently tying Bush like an anvil around McCain’s neck, forcing McCain to try and co-opt the change message and drop his elder statesman in tough times approach.
Dating myself here, but the old Ralph Miller coached Oregon State Beaver basketball teams of the early 80’s were like this-they’d methodically run their offense, get out to a 6-8 point lead, then pull the ball out to half-court and make you come out and guard them (this was pre-shot clock). Then they’d backdoor you to death and win by 25. Once you fell behind, you were playing by their rules and were doomed (unless it was the NCAA tournament, where the Beavs routinely choked like dogs, but thats another story).
Zuzu's Petals
@Perry Como:
Like I posted on another thread, they should take McCain’s comment that he’s not embarrassed to be friends with Liddy and put it together with Liddy’s famous advice to listeners to "aim for the head" if federal agents come for them.
eyeball
1) I strongly agree that this is the right time for the Obama camp to bring up Liddy. Grab a news cycle and force Fox et al. to scramble to justify ignoring the McLiddy link. Small matter but every little bit counts — especially hearing the words Nixon and McCain together.
2) Mac was funnier tonight, but Obama took control of the event at the end by reminding those rich porkers that there’s a real world just outside that’s suffering. That was nice stuff and it could be an ad in itself. While Mac was funny, it was another example of Mac playing roulette with the election while Obama buys up the casino.
3) Joe the Plumber’s beef is not with "the media"
(eye roll). It’s with the McCain-ites, who have pretty much raped him for a cheap high and now will leave him swinging in the breeze once all this vetting is done. (Just wait – the guy owes child support. Count on it.) Joe is now McCain’s crack whore. It’s sad — but they should not have dragged him into this. They should have cared enough not to make the guy into a liar, tax cheat and national joke.
mannemalon
I’ll bet that this is the one part of Obama’s speech that McCain genuinely enjoyed. I was disappointed that they didn’t zoom in on McCain when he said that part. You see it from a distance that he drops his head. That one had to tickle him.
srv
Brit’s new Army leader provides cover for Obama’s surge.
In other news, Osama calls White House and asks for that "Mission Accomplished" banner.
Pooh
McCain was damn funny, and his close was a nice valedictory. (I hope…)
Zuzu's Petals
@Pooh:
Yeah, just after he’d gotten through lying through his teeth over on Letterman.
JubJub
Guys, they’re going after the Senate seat in GA, not the electoral votes. GOTV efforts there will help win it back.
Rick Taylor
Interesting. After years of slamming Democrats for fomenting class warfare, the McCain comes out with a bald appeal to class warfare. Can stories about welfare queens be far behind?
Chinn Romney, polygamist
The Angry Albino Runt was also pretty good on Letterman. The dumbass, if he was like this everyday he’d probably be measuring those Oval Office drapes himself right about now. Instead he’s just another in a long line of roadkill on George W. Bush’s road to hell.
Edit: hmmm, I only caught the Letterman highlights. After reading all the way through the comments it sounds like the AAR reverted back to form before he was through.
Phoebe
I know McCain’s a monster and all of that, but I actually really do want to like him. I want to like everyone. I do not get what I want, is all. This was nice, like a happy dream. I don’t want to wake up from it. I might just avoid the internet right up until the election. Because from tomorrow on there will be no trace of this Nice McCain. Not until the concession speech [knock on formica].
Phoebe
I saw the clips on a link from Ben Smith, btw. Here’s the Ben Smith post:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/Laughs_at_the_Waldorf.html?showall
Fulcanelli
@srv:
Line of the day!
Obama’s lines about Palin (pallin’ around, the Russian Tea Room) were the real stingers, those and the Guiliani stuff.
Guiliani’s loathsome ‘performance’ at the GOP convention was a freak show. He should be dipped in molasses and tied to a hill of hungry fire ants.
Good stuff. It was good (both were funny) to see them both toss the zingers back and forth, and ratchet down the bile.
joe shit, the ragman
Actually, I thought Obama’s funniest line was the one where he said John McCain told him several stories about when he and Alfred E. Smith used to hang out together……..before Prohibition …..great times !
Brachiator
@HumboldtBlue:
It’s not just the blogosphere. It is the candidates, particularly McCain this time out, and their campaign strategists who deliberately play up the idea that their political opponents are un-patriotic, un-American, and untrustworthy. Clips of McCain acting with civility toward Obama and other Democrats should be played at McCain campaign gatherings.
Maybe I’m just feeling particularly curmudgeonly on a Friday, but I get tired of the hypocrisy of politicians treating voters like saps. And I frankly don’t care whether McCain can deliver a joke written for him by someone. It doesn’t make up for his deficits as a presidential candidate or his abysmal lack of judgment in picking Palin to be his running mate.
A very good analogy. It reminds me of the worst attorneys who fight in the courtroom, whip the jury into a frenzy, and then joke about their performance afterward over drinks at their favorite watering hole. Meanwhile, they have forgotten about the accused, the families involved and even the legal issues, because the game and the ego strokes are all that’s real to them.
Screamin' Demon
McCain’s hatred of Obama is visceral. Obvious to anyone who watched the debates. He can’t even look the man in the eye.
You know who else couldn’t look people in the eye? Richard Nixon.
There’s nothing remotely funny about John McCain. He’d fuck his own mother to be president.
Comrade Ed Drone
I noticed that each wrapped up their talks with more serious matters, and McCain’s seemed to me to be aimed at kissing up to the people in the room, while Obama’s, as the poster says, dealt with the "real world" out there. And it also had more of a hopeful aspect than McCain’s did. In short, it was "more noble" than McCain’s, echoing the outlooks and personalities of the two foes.
Ed
Lesley
Why am I unable to find McCain funny?
Comrade Ed Drone
Perhaps because you have a sense of humor.
This has been another in the series, "Simple Answers to Simple Questions."
Ed
HyperIon
these events are the ultimate DC insider gatherings.
they make me want to puke…like the correspondents’ dinners, etc. OK, at least this is for charity. but still, it’s all about self-congratulation. and there is zero carry over to how they work together in their day jobs.
why should i care one whit about the joke telling abilities of McCain or Obama? and why would I want to see a video clip of the rich and powerful at play?