Big Tent

One of the many geniuses of the Republican Party, who were gathered in New Orleans over the weekend for the Republican Leadership Conference, thought it would be a great idea to hire comic Reggie Brown, who is an Obama impersonator, to do an appearance at the conference. Brown spent about 15 minutes doing wildly inappropriate material, including racist jokes about the president and his family, gay jokes, and fat jokes, among other garbage.

Eventually, Brown was pulled off the stage—but only when he started doing material about the Republican candidates: "Fake Obama began to make fun of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), but then he was suddenly ushered off stage." After having also made jokes about Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Donald Trump.

Of course. But at no time during the preceding 15 minutes of bigoted humor, directed at the actual president and his family, was there a problem:

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."

Republican math: Racist jokes about the president = Funny / Hacky jokes about Tim Pawlenty getting his foot surgically removed from his mouth = TOO FAR!!!


[Transcript available here. There is also closed-captioning on the video.]