The NSA scandal has put the eyes of the world on America, and late night comedy writers are finding it hard to appease Europeans without indicting the President.
Although David Letterman’s return from vacation let him mail in a few Obamacare website jokes (“This isn’t a glitch “this is a Carnival Cruise for God Sake” … So bad Obama called Hillary and asked: ‘could you start early?'”) The newest star of the late night monologues is the NSA scandal.
Craig Ferguson of The Late, Late Show had a really funny impression of German Chancellor AngelaMerkel, who got suspicious when she heard heavy breathing on the otherend:
“Is that you Bill Clinton? “
“No, I’m not Bill Clinton, I’m uh… Baron Von Weinerschnitzle. What are you wearing?”
Although it cracked me up, I did find it interesting that Ferguson used a President from the last century to grab a handle on the premise. It seems like the comics want to mock the scandal without indicting the President. (Even though the NSA is part of his administration.)
Jimmy Kimmel, who boasts the youngest Demographic of his slot, took the most shots at the NSA. But before running a really funny video of NSA agents infiltrating a homemaker’s kitchen, he stopped and said with a straight face (and no joke), “The President didn’t know about the program until this past summer and told them to stop it.”
I don’t know how I feel about late night hosts acting as presidentialapologists right in the middle of their monologues.
Jay Leno’s line on thesame topic was far more appropriate: The Tonight Show host said President Obama claims he didn’t know it washappening, “he was too busy not knowing about the problems with theObamacare website.””
Even the star of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon had to mention that the scandal dates back to 2002 and found a way deliver a bit of praise along the way: “Turns out, the only world leader that our government doesn’t listen to is President Obama.”
So it seems the window is closing. While scandals swirl around the Executive Office, the comics are going to pretend that the guy in charge really isn’t in charge.
Nixon should have been so lucky.