Dastardly Obama brings back standard English
Who said satire would take a holiday with President Bush's departure?
Well, someone. But there's plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Take Andy Borowitz. The humorist, blogger and movie producer has a go at Barack Obama's stubborn insistence on completing what he starts.
BorowitzReport.com delves into the president-elect's "unorthodox verbal tic" of completing his sentences. He deems the habit a "stunning break with the last eight years."
The onetime Harvard Lampoon president and creator of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" (which helped launch actor Will Smith to stardom) posts his material at his own site and at the Huffington Post. Borowitz has also contributed to the L.A. Times' op-ed pages.
His tart take on politics shows no sign of abating. One recent "news" item revealed the Obama campaign's decision to devote a 30-minute infomercial to "a new breakthrough in excercise technology that will guarantee all Americans 'sexy rock-hard abs.' "
Earlier, Borowitz, 50, broke another blockbuster: "Cindy McCain Robot Gets New Head."
Borowitz said that . . .
... he has never agreed with the assessment that Bush's exit would rob satirists of material.
"I thought the 'Bush-is-an-idiot' joke had already gotten old and hacky," Borowitz wrote in an e-mail. "Generally speaking, bad times in the world mean good times for satire -- and we are defintely in the middle of some bad times (as you've probably noticed)."
--Jim Rainey
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Surely the irony of feeling the need to keep Bush in office for the sole purpose of satire is a little absurd? This gratuitous humour ('humor' for those who disapprove of standard English!) is presented to us on a gold plate. Might I suggest that it is time we moved on to slightly more challenging material, thus allowing for real satire as opposed to slap-stick Bush comedy?
Posted by: Dominique Catherineau | November 24, 2008 at 01:30 PM