He also closed with some serious comments about the need for provocative, serious journalism. Good stuff. Loved the dig on Boehner skin color!

"This is a tough day for Rahm Emanuel. He's not used to saying "Day" after "Mother"."

Now, that one was funny!

They should have ditched Wanda Sykes and just let Obama do it, he was friggin' hilarious.

And I thought Boehner's unnatural skin tone was just my teevee machine.

Ah, two other slight differences between our President (Great to be able to write that and not just Shrub) and Boner.

The President has a brain and real hair atop his head.

You know what Obama performance I would have approved of? If he publicly repudiated these correspondents dinners and not shown up.

Boehner looks like a walking ad for Earl Scheib: I'll paint any has-been GOPer obstructionist, any color, for only $29.95!

Lots of really funny stuff, well delivered -- especially the Boehner gag -- but the Dale Carnegie/Dick Cheney gag fell flat for me. Just can't laugh about torture. Really can't laugh about unpunished torturers.

I haven't watched the prior addresses for the past eight years, but I can't imagine that W could have even remotely put in that kind of performance. Yes, he didn't write the jokes, but he knows people who can and his delivery was perfect.

But did anyone else notice how some people couldn't even crack a smile (Wolf Blitzer, I'm looking at you)? WTF is wrong with those people? I guess the humor part of the brain is disabled (a GOP malady).

It was smart, because he got all the stupid things the right has been going with since he's been in office. he did a teleprompter joke, a "full of himself" joke, a messiah joke....the only thing he didn't do was a mustard joke - I was waiting for that.

I'm disappointed President Obama didn't pull the plug on the event. No self-respecting journalist would attend this thing, and on self-respecting human being would laugh at Wanda Sykes (at least Colbert was funny).

I'm just sorry he didn't thank Sam Seaborn and Toby Zeigler for bringing the funny to his remarks. Of course, now I'm worried we're about to learn that Pres. Obama has MS...

My favorite was the David Axelrod joke about going to iowa to make it official.

Nanuq, actually, a lot of us in the queer blogosphere found that one really offensive. It smacked of condescension and "hurr hurr, I'm hip and edgy and can make a gay marriage joke even though I'm a professional christian and oppose it." It's pretty tasteless to make jokes at the expense of your (former) supporters when they have tire marks on their bodies.

After the Iowa decision, the WH issued a flubbed statement about "having protections", which was then changed to "equal rights" after LGBT organizations and blogs told the WH they might want to rethink their wording. The legislative moves since then have been met with deafening silence. President Separate-But-Equal is not a supporter of marriage equality, has done nothing of substance to assist pro-LGBT legislation, and we all know he won't.

There's a difference between laughing with us and laughing at us. We all know BO isn't laughing with us. You do the math.

Speaking as a member of the glbt community, I found the Iowa joke pretty darn funny and not the least bit offensive. My wife and I totally cracked up watching it. Why? Because we both happen to believe that Obama and a lot of other top dems (Hillary, etc.) do personally think there is absolutely nothing wrong with same-sex marriage but that it would be (and would have been) political suicide to say otherwise. It's sort of an unspoken understanding that they have with most of us. I think they'll be there publicly soon, when it won't make them unelectable.

Does the situtation suck? Yeah, it does. But I'd rather have them in office than Bush or McCain and all of their buddies who openly hate and loathe us. It's one of the few areas that whenever I encounter someone saying that they parties are the same I can say, definitively, that they are NOT the same when it comes to how they deal with glbt rights.

I'm going with the Boner joke as the hit of the evening, because his fake orange tan makes me LAUGH every single time I see it, AND because he is soooo clueless as to be from Ohio and flaunt a tan in the winter. How out of touch can you be?

Answer, Orange you glad you don't have to spend winter in Ohio?

I'm disappointed President Obama didn't pull the plug on the event. No self-respecting journalist would attend this thing.

The event isn't attended by self-respecting journalists, it is attended by members of the White House Correspondents Association.

I thought the funniest line was about Hillary getting back from Mexico and giving Obama a big hug and a kiss. If ya can't make fun of a pandemic you're just too serious.

And the last part, where Obama got all serious telling the press corpse that the country needs a real press more than it needs a government, that wasn't funny. That was deadly serious, and I hope to hell they took it to heart, because without a decent press media this country is f-ed.

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