Wanda Sykes, the comedian featured at last week’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, has gotten a lot of flack for “going to far” with her jokes, something I’d like to refer to as merely being funny in her case. Sykes made many journalists uncomfortable by taking some pretty easy shots at Rush Limbaugh, Sean Sanity, and former VP candidate Sarah Palin. She farcically went after trio for promoting homegrown terrorism and otherwise wishing the new administration falls flat on its face, Sykes boldly speculated that Limbaugh was actually the 20th hijacker on 9/11, then derided Hannity for not living up to his pledge to be waterboarded for the troops. She then toped off her side-splitting commentary with a deliciously decadent and poignant joke about Sarah Palin pulling out at the last minute.
But as the first African-American woman and the first openly gay person to ever provide comedic relief at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, Sykes had her work cut out for her. Perhaps she wondered, as many other comedians have, whether she should shy away from making jokes about the President and the First Lady for fear of not being funny, or worse, racist? Good thing she didn’t back down.
Sykes skillfully tossed off the kid gloves and declared it open season with sportive suggestions to the First Family such as giving the Queen of England Texas rather than an Ipod as a symbol of America, and not hugging the Queen of England like you just won a sporting tournament. Did she “go to far”? No way.