Bill O’Reilly Enjoys Some Daily Show Obama Jokes

While Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann were pointing to new Gallup poll numbers to show that President Obama and the Dems totally aren’t in trouble in November, Bill O’Reilly was looking at late night comedy monologues to show that they totally are (we’ll leave it up to you to decide which is more reliable). O’Reilly was proposing the idea that there has been a turn as of late, with liberal comedians finally starting to make jokes about Barack Obama. If you’ve always wanted to hear people on Fox News talk about Jon Stewart and Dave Letterman as if they’re important and should be respected, this is the segment for you.

The main problem with O’Reilly’s theory is that he uses The Daily Show as one of his two main examples and that show has been making light of the president since shortly after he got in office (we wrote a post about how harsh their criticism had been all the way back in June). Fox News political analyst Mary Katherine Ham even pointed this out, admitting that Stewart’s made her laugh with his “consistent” Obama jokes.

That just leaves Letterman. Has the Late Show (and the Tonight Show for that matter) been making less jokes about this president than the last two? Maybe. But that’s just because Obama doesn’t really lend himself to the kinds of jokes those shows make. In a quick late night monologue filled with bits about Snooki or the Octomom, it’s much easier to make “dummy” jokes about Bush and “lecher” jokes about Clinton than it is to make, say, “ineffectual policy” jokes about Obama. Do you think all the liberals over at SNL haven’t created a truly memorable Obama characterization yet because they haven’t been trying?

It shouldn’t be that hard right now to find signs that the public is turning against the Democrats, but O’Reilly’s theory, while interesting, doesn’t really hold water. Still, this segment may finally be successful in silencing the ridiculous notion that The Daily Show doesn’t criticize Democrats. A Fox News analyst even admitted it, people!

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.