Comedians slow to take jabs at Obama, but gloves are off now

The "SNL" skit was a turning point, says Josh Spector, Comedy.com's senior vice president of marketing and content, adding that he expects more comedy aimed at Obama the man.

"We've seen comedy get more personal towards Obama. At first it was issue-oriented – bank bailout, GM bankruptcy, and TARP funds – but now it's more about him as the issues get bigger and harder to solve."

If the gloves are coming off now, comedians say, it's partly because Obama's ratings have stumbled enough to open up chinks in his armor.

"Enough time has passed for Obama to accrue a record of what he has and hasn't done," says D. Lemon, a black comedian based in New York. He adds, "Black comics have always considered him fair game, but it was from a place of love and pride. We never had to deal with the ‘is this racist?' question because [the president] was finally one of our own."

The ability to mock the president isn't always just about entertainment. Comedy captures the zeitgeist of a culture, but it can also help shape it, says Matthew Kerbel, a political scientist at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Some say Tina Fey's lampooning of Sarah Palin as inarticulate and feckless on "SNL" contributed to the Republican ticket's slide in last year's elections.

Comic sketches such as those on "SNL" have more power today because they live in cyberspace forever, adds Sherry Jeffe, a political scientist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

"Back when Chevy Chase made Gerald Ford into a bumbling idiot, you either saw it on TV or you read about it. But it didn't play forever. Now people send these links to all their friends and it has a whole new, secondary life that people talk about more."

The Internet afterlife of political comedy has another effect: helping form the opinions of those who pay little attention to traditional news sources, especially the under-35 generation. "Comedy is now leading mainstream news sources," says Comedy.com's Mr. Spector, "and people who don't know what they think about the president are having their opinions driven by the comedy bits."

The danger, says Ms. Jeffe, is that people lose sight of what comedians actually do – namely, work for a laugh. "Shows like ‘SNL' are perceived to be part of the liberal media establishment, so when they use the president to get a laugh, it's perceived as some sort of betrayal," she notes.

Comedians are just looking for a comic hook, agrees Anthony Jeselnik, a writer on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon."

But, he adds, it's a balancing act with a leader many hope will be an agent for change. "People really do want Obama to be the real deal, and they're holding out hope for his success over politics as usual," says Mr. Jeselnik. "If the audience laughed at comedians calling Obama a child molester, we would call Obama a child molester. We're not holding back, but we can only give what the audience will accept."

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