used to work with him. the first guest host on this show is rick sanchez. i thought the line, that s why they re the most trusted name in cable news, i was just like ahh! he doesn t cross out much. last year when hillary clinton broke her elbow, there was a joke that said hillary clinton fell again on her way to the white house and president before the speech he crossed that out and did not deliver that joke. so there are certain lines that he won t cross. but if you don t have any edge then you get bad reviews like jay leno. who wants that? you keep trying to get me to say something about that, don t you? i m not going to. okay. it was a fun night, was the meal better this year? because i won t go because there s some people i won t be in the room with anymore. but look. politics is show business for ugly people. that s what they ve always said. this brings politics and hollywood together. it s kind of the oscars on c-span. it s a ridiculous evening on many levels, but i
the modern benchmark for going too far with humor in a presidential address was infamiliarously achieved in march 2004. president bush one year into the war in iraq narrating the slide show in washington, those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere. not everybody laughed. in hindsight it has gotten less funny still. our number one story, president obama s second address to the white house correspondents association was on saturday. jonathan alter will rate his performance. first politico saying it was written by jon favreau and john lovett and other writers. more than i have. with the hope of bipartisanship still somewhat alive, mr. obama largely spared his political adversaries from ridicule with the exception of john boehner and his tan. a year later the president roasted more than a few republicans, a right wing lunatic fringe and john boehner s tan again.
joined now by jonathan alter, his latest book the promise will be out later this month. good evening. hi, keith. last year he poked fun at himself and critics, he said he was going to throw away the speech and here come these two teleprompters. this was edgier. country of my birth jokes, arizona i.d., death panels, this had a sharper point. it went over really well there. wasn t a person in the room, anybody who i saw, that thought obama didn t outclass jay leno, which is saying something. you might just say that the daily show has better writers than the tonight show, and maybe that s explains it. but obama s timing was good, and leno seemed kind of stale, and these jokes had a little bit of edge in part because i think at this point the teabag, tea party
going too far with humor in a presidential address was infamously achieved in march 2004. president bush one year into the war in iraq narrating the slide show at the dinner in washington, those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere. not everybody laughed. in hindsight it has gotten less funny still. our number one story, president obama s second address to the white house correspondents association was on saturday. jonathan alter will rate his performance. first politico reporting that it was written by jon favreau and john lovett with help from david axelrod and other writers. more than i have. with the hope of bipartisanship still somewhat alive, mr. obama largely spared his political adversaries from ridicule with the exception of john boehner and his tan. a year later the president roasted more than a few republicans, a right wing lunatic fringe, the cable news media, and john boehner s tan
olay brand people and proctor & gamble in particular were advancing their former employee, and that s how it got in there. i think he was reading from his script. so somehow that got put in there, and how did it get put in there? well, if you look at the relationship between the story and the show s sponsor, i think it s pretty clear how it got in there. or maybe it was in the cincinnati newspapers, bub. we don t have a sponsor. we re not brought to you by anything. there are commercials during the show, but i don t see the commercials in the studio. we could be running ads for glenn beck and i d never know. there were no oil of olay ads for the show friday night. if you go to msnbc.com and watch countdown online, you might get an oil of olay commercial or toyota or oscar myer. they rotate them somehow. i don t know. i don t know how. in fact, i don t even know anybody who works at msnbc.com. i m sure they re lovely people.