At Least, Make It Funny

The late-night and early-morning talk show hosts have had a good time with the President’s West Point speech – not about the speech itself, but about two other things: one, that he seems compelled to use two hands to drink water while speaking (and he can drink a lot of water) and two, that he seemed to shamble when walking down the ramp after the speech. I am no Trump fan, but I just couldn’t find the humor angle. OK, so he’s 74 years old and is careful about how he drinks water and where he puts his feet. One could make the argument that it’s just karma because he himself has mocked disabled people. But don’t we have better material to find the funny in? I’m almost his age and have to be careful where I put my feet.

President Gerald Ford was known to lose his footing, which Chevy Chase turned into comedic pratfalls. The first President Bush threw up on the Japanese prime minister at a state banquet. Maybe those things lent themselves to comedy,  but making fun of Mr. Trump’s performance at West Point seemed like nit-picking, compared to many other things worthy of the good-natured, and not-so-good-natured, mocking they  have received, like the hair color, the face-bronzing, the toilet paper stuck to the shoe, and the tweet misspellings, to name just a few.

A President’s health can be dangerous ground for jokes. Franklin Roosevelt could barely stand after being stricken with polio, and he did everything to hide his condition, but managed to fight off excruciating pain to speak to a convention audience. His cousin Teddy gave a speech after being shot. President Kennedy had to wear a back brace. And President William Howard Taft’s weighed well north of 300 pounds. I don’t remember jokes being made of many of those things, though I have a history book with a picture of Mr. Taft from the rear with the caption, “Taft aft was an imposing sight.”

Someday we will have a female President. I wonder how that’s going to go with comedians. Will there be jokes about hair style or color or modes of dress? My rule has always been, as long as the humor significantly outweighs the meanness, it’s probably OK. And for those who don’t worry about OK, there’s always the White House Correspondents’ dinner, the next time we have one of those. Just make sure it’s funny, that’s all.