South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Will Biden remain immune to satire?
There’s a difference between saying something can’t be done and recognizing that you can’t do it. For instance, I can’t run a marathon — at least not without some profound lifestyle changes. But that doesn’t mean marathons can’t be run. Happens all the time, just not by me.
Likewise, when you hear people say it’s impossible to make fun of Joe Biden, what they’re really saying is that they can’t (or won’t) do it, or that they don’t want anyone else to try.
Until recently, people mocked “ol’ Joe” routinely, including yours truly. In the Senate, an institution famous for its longwinded blowhards, Sen. Biden stood out from the crowd. His mouth was like a car with iffy brakes and a detached steering wheel. He’d start asking a question, and 15 minutes later he’d be in a treetop wondering how he got there. He abused the word “literally” so much, if there was a lexicological equivalent of child services, it would revoke custody.
The satirical website The Onion paid the rent mocking Biden. I liked its 2010 story “Biden Receives Lifetime Ban from Dave & Busters,” but its 2009 expose “Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am In White House Driveway” went so viral that some folks at fark.com tried to raise money to actually buy him a Trans Am. (Ethics rules precluded it.)
When Biden told CBS’s Katie Couric in 2008 that FDR went on TV to reassure the public after the 1929 stock market crash, people had fun at his expense, given that (a) FDR wasn’t president in 1929, and (b) TV wasn’t really a thing in 1929.
Things, including Biden, have changed. He isn’t nearly as loquacious as he once was. His hair plugs — a source of great ridicule back in the day — have settled in. He’s older, mellower, more grandfatherly and, I will be the first to concede, more likable.
Perhaps most importantly, after four years of a Donald Trump presidency, a boring old guy in the Oval Office is very reassuring to a lot of people.
So it’s not surprising that journalists and comedians alike have taken to claiming Biden is unmockable. Author Richard
Zoglin writes in the Washington Post that, so far, Biden has proved “impregnable” to the impressionists and comedy writers at “Saturday Night Live.” New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney recently noted: “It’s hard to parody Biden. He’s not polarizing and people tend to find him likable. His ticks aren’t that interesting.”
There’s some truth here. Moreover, Biden hasn’t been president long enough for his caricaturable vulnerabilities to emerge, and the White House is in no rush to change that, which helps explain why he hasn’t held a press conference yet. His conspicuous senior moments — he recently forgot the name of his own secretary of defense — could be caricatured, and some try, but most efforts seem too desperately partisan and just a little too cruel.
Even the right-wing marketplace proves the point. At CPAC this year, a MAGA
merchandise vendor told the Washington Post, “I can’t give the Biden stuff away.” This also helps explain why Republicans would rather focus on culture-war spats over Dr. Seuss than confront Biden directly.
Still, it’s worth noting we’ve seen this kind of thing before. Jim Downey, a longtime political comedy specialist at “SNL,” famously said in 2014 that President Obama was impregnable too. “It’s like being a rock climber looking up at a thousand-foot-high face of solid obsidian, polished and oiled,” Downey said. “There’s not a single thing to grab onto — certainly not a flaw or hook that you can caricature.”
Maya Rudolph of “SNL,” tasked with playing Vice President Kamala Harris, said in October that it was her “civic duty” to get the Biden-Harris ticket elected: “I gotta get there and do whatever I need to do to make sure that she wins this election, and
also that I do a good job.” More recently, after winning an Emmy for her portrayal, Rudolph said of Harris, “I just wanna do her proud.” Not exactly a Menckenesque sentiment.
Journalism and comedy aren’t the same thing, but they do overlap. Both require skepticism about the way things are, about people in power, about the binding power of conventional wisdom. One reason people voted for Trump in the first place was the perception that our self-appointed cultural superiors had such an obvious double standard when it came to who deserved mockery — and who didn’t. You’d think the people most tormented by Trump’s presidency would have learned some lessons from that.
When Ron DeSantis ran for governor, I supported the other guy. In retrospect, that was a huge mistake.
Almost as soon as he was sworn in, Gov. DeSantis reached out to me to resolve the lawsuit I had filed against the state to allow smokeable medical marijuana.
He came to Orlando and we held a joint press conference to announce the state was dropping its opposition to smoking.
I asked the governor why he had decided to abandon the Legislature’s and former Gov. Rick Scott’s ridiculous position. He was clear: “I read the language and it was unambiguous.”
Wow, I thought, a politician who reads and values the will of the people. How refreshing was that?
Almost every big change in Florida has come from citizen-initiated constitutional amendments. Tallahassee politicians don’t like it. They don’t like the people having a say.
In every case — fair districts, water and land, felons voting rights, medical marijuana and the $15 fair wage we just passed — the Tallahassee-set does their best to overturn the will of the people.
Now, two years after that press conference with Gov. DeSantis, they are at it again. They hope to reduce the amount of THC in medical marijuana so much as to be worthless to the over 500,000 Floridians who currently rely on it.
Go to any dispensary in Florida, and I promise you will see mostly older people — people that look like me — in line for marijuana. Because it works. Because we are sick of all these prescription drugs that make us feel worse. And THC is a key ingredient. It is almost impossible to even grow it with less than 10% — the exact cap being proposed in Tallahassee.
Their reasoning? Because lots of use by children can result in psychosis, they say. They say they have “studies” and “science” but fail to produce it.
It. Doesn’t. Exist.
Every study on medical marijuana patients says basically two things: that patients are satisfied or very satisfied with marijuana as a treatment by margins of 3-to1, and that there are virtually zero adverse reactions, none severe. Think about it like this: If you have a headache, you take two, 200 mg ibuprofen, maybe three. But now there’s a law that says ibuprofen can only be sold in
100 mg doses. Oh, by the way, the bottles have the same number of pills as before, and cost the same. That is what they are proposing with THC caps on medical marijuana.
It is like the Twilight Zone in Tallahassee.
Now what is this really? It isn’t about kids. Or science.
It is an attempt to undo what 71% of Florida wanted and 500,000 Floridians currently benefit from.
THC is key for those suffering with cancer and multiple sclerosis. For the law enforcement and service men and women suffering from PTSD. For the seniors that need more relief and less meds. For the sufferers of chronic pain who desperately want to get off opiates. The pharmaceutical industry must be pumping these politicians full of cash to try and pull this end round on the people of Florida.
Gov. DeSantis is in good shape politically, in large part because his early and crystal clear stance in settling aside the previous administration’s ridiculous opposition to smoke. He is even now mentioned as a presidential front runner.
The old politics of bashing cannabis is over. The war on drugs failed. DeSantis is a young, smart guy with a big future.
My advice to him: Stop this madness now and tell these folks that you will not undo the will of the people. Be with the people on this issue, just as you were on smoke.
Power is mostly a bad thing when put in the hands of bad people. Gov. DeSantis, you have great power. Use it for great things.
Go to any dispensary in Florida, and I promise you will see mostly older people — people that look like me — in line for marijuana. Because it works. Because we are sick of all these prescription drugs that make us feel worse.