So the press is finally laughing with the president

Instead of at him, which they did during the George W. Bush years.

But none of them dignified themselves with the kind of humor on display at the annual White House Press dinner.

Jokes about our former president and vice president. Jokes about interrogation. Jokes about gay marriage. Jokes about abstinence. Jokes about terrorism. Jokes about addiction. Jokes about abortion and embryo destruction. And the president of the United States was the headliner, responsible for some but not all of the shamefulness of the night…

The new president, insulting the administration before him, told us in his inaugural that he was going to put away childish things.

But even the children were not left out of the jokes. President Obama used his daughters to make light of Air Force One’s Lower Manhattan flyover. Before Saturday night, there was no better visual symbol of this administration’s September 10 policy blindness. Air Force One might as well have been flying a banner that read “We Don’t Get It.” Obama’s joke about the incident could be considered the banner.

‘Oh, lighten up’ some people will say. People who seem to believe they’re the ‘tolerant’ crowd. Why is humor so selective for the ‘tolerant’ crowd? Why were Wanda Sykes’ ‘jokes’ funny to that crowd?

Mr. President . . . you’ve had your fair share of critics. . . . Rush Limbaugh, one of your big critics, boy — Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. So you’re saying, “I hope America fails.” You’re like, “I don’t care about people losing their homes, their jobs, or our soldiers in Iraq.” He just wants our country to fail.

To me, that’s treason. He’s not saying anything differently than Osama bin Laden is saying. You know you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight.

Too much?

You’re laughing inside, I know you’re laughing.

Rush Limbaugh: “I hope the country fails.” I hope his kidneys fail, how about that?

He needs a waterboarding, that’s what he needs.

I read this yesterday. Didn’t comment on it right away. Saw some film clips of this dinner last night on television, including Sykes. And when she said that line about hoping Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys fail…..I saw Obama behind her, laughing.

Not funny, Mr. President. Not only beneath your office, but beneath your dignity.

But Sykes wasn’t the core problem, as tasteless and awful as her jokes were…The president used his daughters [in his jokes], two days after he let one of his staff take the fall for his administration’s use of everyone in Lower Manhattan and along the Hudson River on a clear morning as a prop in the Obama show. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered on a day not unlike that one, and his administration needlessly freaked out those who witnessed it. And he’s laughing.

Of course, that was his job Saturday night. To go to the Reagan Hilton and entertain the media and Hollywood audience. Presumably the crowd likes him….

(they cheered boisterously when he said he knew they all voted for him)

He knew what the crowd wanted and ran with it. It was unpresidential when Bush did that…and it’s unpresidential when Obama does it. And it’s downright shameful when done with the meanspiritedness that was on display Saturday night.

Conservative radio talk show host and CNN contributor Bill Bennett said afterward (on CNN’s State of the Union) “What the hell was that?”, and said he and his wife have had to walk out of these events, as others have, when they descended to such offensive humor.

So with all this material Jon Stewart could have used on The Daily Show Monday night, he picks on….Bill Bennett.

Lopez echoed Bennett’s sentiments that what happened Saturday night wasn’t right.

The same liberal elite that has brought us hate-crimes laws and speech codes spewed real venom. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is below the president, whoever he is (I thought this when Bush was president and I think it even more today). But that dinner Saturday night —in the jokes the president of the United States of America was willing to make and to laugh at — was beneath America.