This isn't making light-hearted fun of Hillary Clinton and Bill de Blasio for their cracks about "colored people time." Obama's delivery is totally stone-faced. I was running on CPT, which stands for jokes that white people should not make. This approach was not limited to Republicans, as illustrated with this line toward the beginning: It's good-hearted ribbing, but it's premised upon very real anger and frustration. Obama is joking that he was going to have his men murder Republican senators who accepted the Correspondents' Association's offer of hospitality at the Washington Hilton.
They are in the house, which reminds me … security, bar the doors. In fact, I think we've got Republican Sens. Obama followed this up with straightforward revenge fantasy: Obama's line has the appearance of a joke - it's funny, because he means the opposite of the literal meaning! - but it's just a sarcastic rendering of a serious point he's been trying to get across for years. That they're treating a duly elected president as an illegitimate lame duck months before his successor even receives his or her party's nomination. Obama has made it very clear, ever since Republicans retook the House in 2010, but especially since the Supreme Court nomination fight this year, that he views Republicans' unwillingness to so much as consider administration initiatives to be unprofessional and corrosive to democratic norms that have kept the federal government functioning for centuries. Unfortunately, this dinner was not one of them.
Of course, in fact, for four months now congressional Republicans have been saying there are things I cannot do in my final year. And this is going to take some getting use to. In just six short months, I will be officially a lame duck, which means Congress now will flat out reject my authority, and Republican leaders won’t take my phone calls. It's only on the evening of the White House Correspondents' Dinner when he can say what he really thinks: I'm pretty damn good at this job, and in a year maybe you'll start to recognize it.
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