Did Obama Make a Blow Job Joke? No, Of Course Not.

The crack investigative team at BuzzFeed is living up to its name with a story headlined "Did President Obama Just Make A Blowjob Joke?"

The crack investigative team at BuzzFeed is living up to its name with a story headlined “Did President Obama Just Make A Blowjob Joke?

Here’s the entire basis for this stupid question: Obama attended a “gay and lesbian fundraiser” in Los Angeles last night. (The kind where gays and lesbians give him money, not the kind where he raised money for gays and lesbians.) He did in fact make a joke:

He warmed up with some jokes about the first lady’s appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show. “Michelle outdoes me in pushups as well,” he said, after saying that she’s taken some criticism on her technique “because she doesn’t go all the way down” – a line that he let hang, naughtily, provoking laughter from the crowd.

A different version from the White House transcript:

I want to thank my wonderful friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in pushups — (laughter) — but I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down. (Laughter.) That’s what I heard. I just want to set the record straight — Michelle outdoes me in pushups as well. (Laughter.)

You see, there’s a double entendre here because “go down” also refers to performing oral sex. Ha!

But, um, he’s rather clearly not making a blow job joke at the expense of his wife here. Rather, he’s making joke that she cheats on her push-ups. Which, judging from her arms, she probably doesn’t.

How lame is this BuzzFeed meme? Alex Pareene, who followed Ana Marie Cox at Wonkette, won’t even go there.

Let’s all agree to just not pretend the president made an “oral sex joke” at his gay fundraiser last night, because that’s stupid. It’s stupid, and most of the people with jobs as political reporters are at least literate, and understand that this thing did not happen. So don’t repeat it, or even write that “some say” they thought it maybe happened. This would’ve been fodder for one 200-word Wonkette post back in 2006, maybe. “Funny pool report says crowd tittered at unintentional double entendre” is not actually the sort of thing that the INSIDERS and political junkies who read Politico should concern themselves with. (And let’s also agree to stop just adding question marks to headlines when the headline without a question mark is not supported by the content of the story, maybe?)

The Awl’s Choire Sicha at least makes some actual humor out of this nonsense:

Yeah, have you met Michelle Obama? You think she would be the kind of person who was never clear on how she would take her husband making a blowjob joke in public? Of course not. What Muslim women would allow that? Anyway, this did not happen.

Sigh.

UPDATE: Oliver Burkeman agrees but considers the alternative.

At this point in writing this blog post, though, a horrifying thought occurred to me. What if I’m just incredibly naive and clean-minded? What if the president has been sneakily inserting sexy euphemisms into his public pronouncements for months, even years?

I searched for his last weekly address. There, sure enough, he urged Congress to pass a bill to “put thousands of construction workers back on the job” – “on the job”! A transcript of remarks he made in Chicago a few days back, meanwhile, reveals that he talked about “shenanigans”on Wall Street, which is, of course, a blatant reference to vigorous sexual intercourse. Frequently, in speech after speech since he first achieved prominence, he has used the incredibly saucy word “hard”. Heaven help us if, as the election race heats up, he tells his supporters that it’s time to “get down to business” – because that will constitute nothing more nor less than a direct instruction to them to engage in a no-holds-barred, socialist orgy of unrestrained and shameless fornication.

Wake up, America. You are being governed by a filthy-minded sex obsessive! (Or having your political news reported on by a bunch of them. One of the two.)

Indeed.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. al-Ameda says:

    Best leave this to Rush, Bill O’Reilly, or Sean Hannity.

  2. DRS says:

    Maybe I’m too much of a Danny McBride/Eastbound and Down fan, but the needle on my Outrage Meter didn’t even quiver.

  3. Scott says:

    Beavis and Butthead have grown up and are now at Buzzfeed.

  4. Murray says:

    The best joke I ever heard in similar circumstances was, incredible but true, from a …. Swiss politician (I think he was a member of Federal gov but not sure).

    His speech at a LGTB gathering started with this memorable line:

    “Meine Damen und Damen, meine Herren und Herren”

  5. rodney dill says:

    If you have to wonder what his intent was, he did it right.

  6. Franklin says:

    You see how BuzzFeed switched the order of the sentences so that if you’re sort of speed reading, you think the quotes are in order and one continuous sentence? And yet nowhere do they explicitly lie.

    Anyway, I am so tired of everything being a dick joke. I get it, you were all repressed as children and you’re getting it all out now. Am I supposed to applaud?

  7. rodney dill says:

    Michelle’s retort: “The question isn’t whether I go all the way down, but does Barry get his all the way up…………….. I’m still talking push-ups here…..”

  8. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @rodney dill: Sorry, Rodney, but I’m not swallowing that one…

  9. rodney dill says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13: That’s just nasty….

  10. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @rodney dill: Too cheap a gag?

  11. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13: THAT made me laugh.