Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey: Why is Obama off limits?

When Jon Lovitz opened up his own comedy club in California he had an epiphany of sorts; a lot of the things conservatives say about building a business and entrepreneurs are true. And when he had the gall to crack a few jokes about how Democrats are all about encouraging success — until you become successful — the “tolerance” they’re known for was on full display via tweets-of-rage.

Now, Lovitz is back, and his conversation with famous comedian Dana Carvey highlights another important realization — the same people once known for questioning authority have laid down their arms and bowed down before their masters. Carvey talks about the few times he tried to needle President Obama in his stand up, and how it was met with chilling silence. The exchange between the two SNL alumnus is eye opening:

Jon Lovitz: It’s not that you’re going out of your way to make fun of President Obama. It’s like, it doesn’t matter who the president is, you’re looking for a funny angle because you’re going to end up trying to do an impression of whoever is president to tease them and make fun of him. It’s not because he is president, it’s whoever is president.

Dana Carvey: If you think of us growing up in Vietnam and Watergate, Nixon, one of the biggest anthems of our time was: “Question authority.” Now the authority happens to be president Obama. So it’s a natural thing for a comedian — we’re supposed to tear down the people in power no matter who they are. That’s who we make fun of. We take pot shots at the king or the president. This is in our DNA. This is what we’re supposed to do. So to not do it is not healthy for America.

Jon Lovitz: I remember learning about the comedian, a great comic, Mort Saul, who really changed comedy. Stand up comics used to be in tuxedo and a bow tie and Mort Sahl came out on stage in jeans and a sweater just reading a paper. No one had done that. He influenced Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, everybody. And Mort Sahl was making fun of Nixon when Kennedy was running against Nixon … And then when Kennedy became president he started making fun of the Kennedy administration and they didn’t like that and that really killed his career.

Dana Carvey: Well Mort Saul lives up here in Northern California where I live … and he’s bemoaned the fact that he’ll see dozens and dozens of comedians still doing Sarah Palin jokes or Rick Santorum jokes and not one Obama joke. So this is Mort Sahl from the 50′s kind of going, “What happened?”

Jon Lovitz: Who is a Democrat and a liberal!

When I first got to college after exiting the military I wasn’t a political guy. However, after 9/11 my professors blatantly lied about the military, which gave me a chance to use those “talking back” qualities that gave my parents (and on occasion my superiors in the military) so many headaches.

I pushed back hard on claims that “only red neck Republican hicks who are happy to get a free pair of boots” join the military. I pushed back hard on claims that my friends who were getting deployed to Afghanistan would purposely shoot at civilians. Soon I realized that I was almost always the only one pushing back. 

As I started reading the works of Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, Dinesh D’Souza and many others, I challenged my professors in areas beyond national defense, and time and time again it became apparent that my peers were happy to be spoon fed intellectual gruel without resistance. They took the talking points they were given as scripture, and it bothered me because that’s not what I was always told young people were supposed to do.

Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey point out in this quick exchange the same odd set of circumstances that I experienced when I entered the academic world as a young man. The combination of 9/11 and the realization that I was purposefully being denied a whole other world of intellectual thought shifted my professional track from one completely focused on breaking into the entertainment industry, to one of politics.

And then I became familiar with Andrew Breitbart. I realized that I could have the best of both worlds. Culture matters, and what better way to sell the principles of free markets, limited government and a strong national defense than by teasing them out of the music and movies and books that move us? The fact that even Dana Carvey of all people is openly talking about how modern day liberalism has inserted something that “isn’t healthy” into our culture is a victory for the late great Andrew Breitbart.

And so, while there is still much work to be done, I highly suggest conservatives take a quick breather before getting back to the daily grind. Perhaps they could do so while chopping broccoli.