America's liberal media are having a field day claiming that an Obama impersonator at a Republican event was pulled off the stage Saturday for telling racial and gay jokes.
Here's how the Washington Post reported it (video of entire presentation also follows with commentary):
The impersonator, Reggie Brown, took the stage at the annual presidential cattle call to the Bruce Springsteen song “Born in the USA” — an apparent allusion to the birther controversy. He proceeded to tell a series of off-color jokes poking fun at Obama’s biracial heritage and a gay member of Congress.
Politico framed it the same way:
A comedian impersonating President Obama made racially tinged jokes Saturday at the Republican Leadership Conference before being pulled off the stage by an event organizer.
I've watched the entire eighteen minutes, and in my view, the jokes Brown made were pretty tame especially if compared to what late night comedians say about Republicans on almost a daily basis.
Brown's jokes weren't nearly as caustic as some of the stuff Wanda Sykes said at last year's White House Correspondents' Dinner.
Here are some of the lines the Post found potentially offensive:
• On Black History Month: “Michelle celebrates the full month. I celebrate half.”
• “My mother loved a black man,” but “she was not a Kardashian.”
• A picture was shown of Obama and the first lady when he took office. The impersonator then showed a picture of what the Obamas will look like when the president leaves office, and it was the characters of Fred Sanford and his sister-in-law, Ethel, Aunt Esther, from the show “Sanford and Son.”
Are those that bad? The Post also took issue with this:
• Of Tim Pawlenty’s decision not to criticize Mitt Romney at Monday’s debate: “[CNN’s] John King served him up a ball softer than Barney Frank’s backside.” (Frank is a gay member of Congress from Massachusetts.)
Now, that might have crossed the line a bit. However, the reaction by the crowd might also have been due to the attack on Pawlenty.
Remember - this was a Republican event.
From my vantage point having watched the entire segment, I think it was the GOP bashing that finally got Brown pulled off stage. Somewhat surprisingly, the Associated Press seemed to agree:
The audience grew more uncomfortable when Brown turned to the candidates who are looking to make Obama a one-term president.
The impersonator took a shot at former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, saying Pawlenty missed the conference because "he's having his foot surgically removed from his mouth."
"Don't worry: it's covered under Obamneycare ... along with spinal transplants," Brown said. [...]
The impersonator joked about Romney's Mormon faith and about polygamy, and Rep. Michele Bachmann's tea party support.
Organizers then cut off Brown's microphone and turned on music. He was shown off the stage.
That's the way I saw it. The crowd seemed to be getting antsy as Brown started going after the various GOP presidential candidates. This was after all a Republican event.
The Post reported:
Eventually, RLC President and CEO Charlie Davis made the decision to pull him offstage, and a man came onstage to physcially escort Brown off.
“I pulled him off the stage,” Davis acknowledged afterward. “I just thought he had gone too far. He was funny the first 10 or 15 minutes, but it was inappropriate, it was getting ridiculous.”
Indeed. For the first ten or fifteen minutes, Brown was funny - until he started attacking Republicans.
Yet prominent media outlets reported his sacking as being caused by his racial and gay jokes. This of course is not at all surprising.
As NewsBusters has been reporting for months, the goal of the Obama-loving media is to paint all Republicans as racists and homophobes in order to gin up support for the president they helped get elected in the first place.
Was that what they were doing with their coverage of this event?
Here's Brown's entire presentation. You decide why he finally got pulled from that stage:
