Last year, the White House Correspondents had Stephen Colbert as their main event at their annual roast. With the Prez sitting within arm’s length, Mr. Colbert said a few things that, well, might be seen as a tad disrespectful of the Decider-in-Chief:
This year, the Correspondents are, uh, going in a different direction, shall we say? They’ve invited noted comic, Rich Little, to give them such cutting edge political humour as
I don’t quite see how you can mimic silent film actors, but I guess that’s a measure of Rich Little’s art…
Colbert didn’t really see himself as speaking truth to power, he just wanted to be funny - and luckily he did both. I wouldn’t expect either one from Rich Little.
I’m pretty sure that when they announced this, I heard the collective voice of everyone in the nation under 30 saying, “Who?”. I honestly, deep in my heart thought Rich Little was dead.
To beat it all, the promoters reportedly told him to take it easy on Bush. (They later denied this.)
Rich Little is one of the most overrated impersonators of all time. His rise to fame was based on his ability to do Richard Nixon, whom he somewhat resembles physically and vocally anyway, so what’s the big trick? I have never once been tempted to go see the man. His material is weak, and his impressions are lame and obvious. He’s gonna stink up the room at the shindig.
I won’t link to the copyrighted material on YouTube, but presumably Rich has permission. Click on the Letterman YouTube link for a cite that will show you how lame he is. He starts of the act with the statement “One of the secrets of staying on top in this business is to always be doing new people.” He then proceeds to do Andy Rooney, Ronald Reagan and Johnny Carson. Real fresh stuff, friend. :rolleyes:
Oddly enough, at this very moment I’m watching Rich Little doing Johnny Carson on an old Flip Wilson Show on TVLand. Both Kevin Spacey and Kevin Pollak do Johnny better.
Bush doesn’t choose the speaker, the WH correspondents (or someone working for them) do.
I don’t think the complaint is that the WH correspondents should pick someone every year who they know will rip into the president, but that this year they went to rudiculous lengths to pick someone who was “safe”, and as a result ended up with a comedian who hasn’t been relavant in decades, and even then wasn’t that funny, just to make sure that the Leader of the Free World didn’t have to put up with any jokes at his expense.
If Iraq is out of bounds, Rich could probably recycle some Vietnam gags instead.
Hurricane Katrina would also be good material for Little-- nothing sounds funnier than a drowning Cajun.
And of course everyone will be eagerly anticipating Little’s hilariously authentic-sounding impression of a semi-orgasmic W. frantically dry-humping German chancellor Angela Merkel.
“rich little? you mean the crazy squealing black singer on the geico commercials?”
maybe it’s because lots of those impressions are before my time (I wasn’t born yet when Reagan was in office or Johnny Carson was on TV. I haven’t the foggiest idea who Andy Rooney was… or is, but apparently he’s not the cop from that ancient black-and-white show…) but I laughed more at this thread than I did at the youtube clip.
oh well. I don’t expect they have many high school students at the white house thing, so I don’t think it matters if the comedian is old.
