Imagine: He thought this joke was so good, he actually prepared it before the presser. MKH is calling him the Dane Cook of politics for ripping off a goof that’s already been done three times by national figures, including Palin herself, but it’s worse than that. The Daily Show did a double hit on it last night, first with Stewart reading off his hand and then Wyatt Cenac reading off his belly, so that’s five times at least. Which makes Gibbs — what? The Carlos Mencia of politics, maybe?
People will complain that this is petty and beneath the dignity of the office, but (a) Gibbs partly redeems himself by winking at the ubiquity of their moronic “hope” and “change” buzzwords, (b) Palin is an Al Qaeda accomplice, so she sort of had it coming, and (c) as we’ve discussed before, the White House press briefing is one of the lamest, most useless spectacles in American politics. How can this be beneath the dignity of an office that has no dignity to begin with? The only time the briefing’s worth watching is when Gibbs is forced to defend something especially stupid that Biden said, or when something bad’s happened in the Middle East that sets Helen Thomas up for a “question” about whether we maybe had it coming. Lacking either of those contingencies, if the guy wants to resort to some hackish partisan Mencia-esque schtick to liven things up, I say go crazy.
Update: Reader Derek kicks things off.
