> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why so serious? - URL: https://www.smdp.com/why-so-serious/ - Published: 2008-07-23T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-25T00:23:42.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import *By Steve “the Mailman” Breen Going Postal* I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY, on behalf of Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Inc. \[a subsidiary of Halliburton\], to thank the operatives of our sleeper cell in our Character Assassination Division imbedded at the cartoon department of New Yorker magazine for their great work and zeal in furthering the mission of the New World Order. We. Are. Everywhere. Observing the prissy reactions of The Obamaessiah over a mere magazine cover impugning his thin-skinned “cool factor” was so reminiscent of his Islamic brethrens’ vinegary response to a handful of Danish cartoons. Media created sensations like Mr. Obama often prefer image management to substantive accomplishment. It’s called the “Riefenstahl Corollary.” It doesn’t get any better than watching a grown man, hunkered down in his paranoid-chic, unicorn and rainbow curtained bunker mentality, behaving like the nerdy kid coming home after school and squealing, “Mom! The big kids are pickin’ on me again! Will you send my little sister out to beat them up for me?” Please recall that this “Man Who Would Be King” has been photographed eating fried chicken with a napkin wrapped around it because there were no utensils. Who in the name of Colonel Sanders eats fried chicken with a fork? Hasn’t the Obamalicious One ever heard of the term, “finger lickin’ good?” Obama is going to have to seriously “cowboy up” and eat his chicken like a man. Meanwhile, there has been no similarly self-inflicted righteous indignation from the McCain campaign over the cartoon that appeared in a recent edition of Rolling Stone magazine which depicted him attired in Vietnam era POW pajamas, trussed up like a Christmas goose and locked in a bamboo tiger cage while Asian-esque caricatures of Obama and Hillary, festooned in conical rice hats, jabbed gleefully at an anguished McCain with sharp, pointy sticks. McCain never blinked. After being stabbed with a bayonet a couple times, for real mind you, a cartoon doesn’t seem to amount to much, I guess. It’s the mark of a more mature character to know what’s important and what’s ephemeron. While race doesn’t seem to matter at Rolling Stone, it is evident that one man’s years of near starvation, broken bones and teeth in the Hanoi Hilton is another man’s morally equivalent megalomaniacal prudery among the liberal media strumpets of politically correct “taste.” Obama should put on his big boy panties and grow a sense of humor to fill them. If, during a recent interview on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart can ask if Obama plans a “… bait and switch … and enslave the white race …” then what’s the twist in Obama’s knickers with a liberal flagship like the New Yorker doing a cartoon of Obama bin Laden “terrorist fist bumping” with his Angela Davis-styled gun moll near an Oval Office fireplace fueled by Old Glory? Smart people got the joke. Why didn’t Obama? Let me get this straight, the last time I checked we’re Americans. Our humor quotient runs the gamut from low-brow to uni-brow. One man’s “South Park” is another man’s David Mamet. Any stand-up comic will tell you that in humor there is truth, and in truth there is humor especially if there is a fart joke involved. Obama’s routine stinks. If Mr. Fussy-britches is so offended by a cartoon then how would he go head to head with Vladimir Putin in a discussion over Russian aid vis-à-vis Iranian nuclear proliferation? Putin was in the KGB for 16 years in the First and Fifth Directorates that handled foreign intelligence, internal security \[killing people\], controlling political and religious dissent \[torture\] and censoring the media while Obama was smoking pot, chasing skirt and playing basketball in Hawaii. Obama is to Putin as Bambi is to Godzilla. My Dad always emphasized that taking oneself too seriously leads inevitably to an “ irony deficiency.” Even as Julius Caesar’s sandaled foot found an errant banana peel named Cleopatra, he belatedly discovered that a disaffected enclave of his electorate could deliver a more pointed punch line to his poorly timed joke. Any decent stand-up comic/politician knows that you should be able to handle hecklers/voters because it’s a tough crowd out there. And I can understand the consternation of the Party of Tolerance’s inability to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous comedy; after all, the chuckleheads at the DNC have only been able to win three out of the last 10 Presidential elections in the past 40 years. And that’s the funniest joke of all. *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 23, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/072308.pdf?ref=smdp.com)