Just the other night, I remarked to my wife that Jay Leno didn’t have any jokes about Obama in his monologue … he had one about one of Obama’s advisors, but none about the man himself. But plenty about McCain (all focusing on McCain’s age in some way).

Now comes the good Sister Toldjah with her analysis of a NYT story:

There are so many things wrong with this story it isn’t even, well, funny. First, the fact that comedians are reluctant to joke about Barry Oh! because they’re worried they’ll be viewed as racists smacks of the same type of worry many critics of Obama have, namely that by opening your mouth and saying something even remotely unflattering about this year’s Democrat American Idol winner that you’ll be lumped in with the fringes on both the left and right whose criticism of Obama is based solely on the fact that he’s black.

Obama has pre-empted any criticism with his “its all about race but not about race” speech given earlier in the campaign that set Chris Matthews’ legs a-trembling. It effectively blunted criticism of his voluntary association with Rev. Wright over a period of 20-something years, and keeps middle America from asking out loud “What the heck was he thinking?”.

The late night hosts, a category that now has to include the daytime cable stars of The Daily Show and Colbert Report, fancy themselves hip, in-your-face comedians willing to push the limits. But in reality they are chained to their network/liberal comedy orthodoxy, unwilling to rock the boat making the kind of joke that Chris Rock or Louis Black could use to kill an audience. They are not edgy, or in-your-face. In fact, they are not funny anymore.

I’m reminded of the uncle who told the same joke every time we saw him, year after year. Every political joke they tell about McCain focuses on his age … a tactic straight from the Democratic playbook for this election. Meanwhile, the many slips and pratfalls of the Chosen One Obama are ignored (and hey, not ALL of them are because he’s black! In fact NONE of them happened because he’s black, but the comedians are too full of white liberal guilt to realize it.)

Sister Toldjah links to examples of “funny stuff” cited by Jaime Sneider of the Weekly Standard:

The notion that Obama hasn’t provided sufficient fodder—have they forgotten the campaign seal, his love of Honest Tea, his passed out Body Man—for comedy writers is laughable. More laughable than their programming, in fact. If they need some help, they should call up Rob Long at National Review. But to say there is no joke in Obama talking about the price of arugula at Whole Foods in a speech in Iowa—a state that doesn’t even have a single Whole Foods—is a ridiculous lie. They may think it’s good politics, but it’s certainly not good comedy.

Yeah, it’s not funny.