Washington Post humor columnist Gene Weingarten claimed he was going to break the comedic embargo on Barack Obama, but basically made fun of himself for being too inspired by Obama to be able to pull it off. This made it easy to stick mocking John McCain for his alleged "senior moments" like "you know, like saying Serbia is a sandwich ingredient -- or because of his uncanny physical resemblance to the Michelin Man." In the midst of his supposedly witty failure to restrain his enthusiasm over Obama’s comparability to Lincoln and Nelson Mandela, Weingarten compared the invasion of Iraq to Hitler annexing the Sudetenland.

This was Weingarten’s jokey thesis:

So why does Obama get a pass? One theory is that he is almost untouchable because much of the media, and all humor venues, are controlled by liberals, and liberals are in the tank for the guy. My editor, Tom the Butcher, and I think this is a shameful reflection on our profession. And so, today, I am going to be the first in the liberal mainstream media to viciously take on Obama as an object of ridicule.

The worst paragraph was the one on Iraq:

Obama's Plan for Iraq: Everyone knows that if virtually all American troops leave Iraq in the 16 months Obama has promised, the country will explode like a McDonald's ketchup packet under a hobnailed boot. Although it is true that the Iraqis themselves seem to favor this timetable, sometimes a superpower just knows best what's right for the country it is occupying, the way Hitler did when he annexed the Sudetenland and...

This was intended to be funny, because his editor "Tom the Butcher" has to keep interrupting Weingarten because he keeps getting carried away by his love for Obama. But you clearly get the sense that Weingarten is having fun with conservatives, basically suggesting that they need to get over the fact that the media are in the tank for Obama.

[Image from comicsreporter.com on the cartoonist, Richard Thompson.]

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.