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President Obama’s foreign policy perhaps deserves a closer look than the media is giving it. However, it might not have been the best idea for the Miami Herald‘s TV critic and occasional libertarian columnist Glenn Garvin to open his column today about Obama’s “four wars” with a weird joke about the president’s skin color.
“Back in 1987, the hot novelty item at the Young Republicans’ national convention was a T-shirt bearing the slogan: ‘He’s Tan, Rested and Ready. Nixon in ’88,'” writes Garvin. “The kids were just a little bit ahead of their time; it would take us another 20 years before we elected a tan version of Richard Nixon.”
Oh boy, Garvin, that joke wasn’t funny the first few times Silvio Berlusconi told it, and it sure isn’t funny now.
Embattled and, frankly, supercreepy Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi has cracked an “Obama has a nice tan” joke a couple of times, each one feeling more awkward and inappropriate than the last.
There was also that time right-winger Grover Norquist, a guy who knows a thing or two about Nixon, called Obama “John Kerry with a tan.”
It’s not like the line is flat-out racist; it just uncomfortably and disrespectfully draws attention to the president’s skin color.
Perhaps more important for Garvin, a guy who gets paid to write, is the fact that the “joke” has been done a million times. Come on, Garvin, think up your own zingers.
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