Peter Beinart praises Obama’s decision to appear on Between Two Ferns:
By refusing to defer to the office of the presidency, [Zach] Galifianakis allowed Obama to remind his supporters of what they like about him. To Obama’s admirers, he represents American meritocracy at work. Unlike many leading politicians, he was raised with no special advantages. To the contrary, he succeeded—despite an absent father, an exotic name, and black skin—because of his intelligence, eloquence, and ability to adapt to environments as diverse as Chicago housing projects, Harvard Law School, and the presidential-campaign trail. By putting Obama in an unfamiliar and unpredictable environment, where he was forced to rely on his wits alone, Galifianakis helped Obama display his signature talents. It’s no coincidence that Galifianakis ended the interview with a dig at George W. Bush, whose advisers would never have risked such an unscripted exchange. (Here’s Jon Stewart begging Bush, unsuccessfully, to come on his show during W.’s post-presidential book tour).
O’Reilly, shockingly, criticized the interview, arguing that “Abe Lincoln would not have done it.” Pareene pushes back:
The problem with the “Lincoln wouldn’t have done this” argument, though, is that Lincoln is just about the worst possible choice of historic presidents to use when you’re trying to attack a president for unseriousness. Abraham Lincoln was a notorious jokester. Books were published, during his presidency, purporting to be made up of his comical anecdotes and stories. (Many of the supposed Lincoln jokes were apocryphal, but, equally important, many of them weren’t.) Here’s one representative Lincoln joke. Here are eight more, including this honest-to-god fart joke:
1. The Farting Carver. (via William Herndon): “Well there was a party once, not far from here, which was composed of ladies and gentlemen. A fine table was set and the people were greatly enjoying themselves. Among the crowd was one of those men who had audacity — was quick-witted, cheeky and self-possessed — never off his guard on any occasion. After the men and women had enjoyed themselves by dancing, promenading, flirting, etc., they were told that the table was set. The man of audacity — quick-witted, self-possessed and equal to all occasions — was put at the head of the table to carve the turkeys, chickens and pigs. The men and women surrounded the table, and the audacious man being chosen carver whetted his great carving knife with the steel and got down to business & commenced carving the turkey, but he expended too much force & let a fart — a loud fart so that all the people heard it distinctly. As a matter of course it shocked all terribly. A deep silence reigned. However the audacious man was cool and entirely self-possessed; he was curiously and keenly watched by those who knew him well, they suspecting that he would recover in the end and acquit himself with glory. The man, with a kind of sublime audacity, pulled off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, put his coat deliberately on a chair, spat on his hands, took his position at the head of the table, picked up the carving knife and whetted it again, never cracking a smile nor moving a muscle of his face. It now became a wonder in the minds of all the men and women how the fellow was to get out of his dilemma. He squared himself and said loudly & distinctly: “Now, by God, I’ll see if I can’t cut up this turkey without farting.”
Weigel interviewed the Two Ferns director, Scott Aukerman:
Slate: How scripted was the president’s part of this? In some of the other videos with big stars—the Justin Bieber episode, the Oscar preview—they seem more flustered and less in on the joke. The president was ready with zingers. How much of that was really him?
Aukerman: The president knew what to expect, but at the same time he came up with a lot of improv stuff. He surprised us. The back and forth between Zach and the president, where they’re kind of verbally assaulting each other—that went very well. Everyone had a general idea of where the conversation was going to go. We knew what Zach wanted to do. We were pleasantly surprised by where the president took it. Honestly, it felt like a real episode of the show. There’s something about the nonscripted sense of surprise. We were ready to pull the plug if it wasn’t going to be a normal Between Two Ferns video.
Update from a reader:
I wonder if Bill O’Reilly remembers that time Ronald Reagan used humor to “defeat the Soviet Union?”
You think the GOP would lambast Reagan for making jokes on such a sober, serious, and existentially threatening issue? I mean, Yakov Smirnoff was basically an in-house joke writer feeding one-liners to Reagan.
The Dish 