No Joke

Wonder what Herman Cain thinks about this...

A President Obama impersonator was pulled off the stage Saturday at the Republican Leadership Conference, after telling a string of racially themed jokes about the president.

The impersonator, Reggie Brown, took the stage at the annual presidential cattle call to the Bruce Springsteen song “Born in the USA” — an apparent allusion to the birther controversy. He proceeded to tell a series of off-color jokes poking fun at Obama’s biracial heritage and a gay member of Congress.


Eventually, RLC President and CEO Charlie Davis made the decision to pull him offstage, and a man came onstage to physcially escort Brown off.

“I pulled him off the stage,” Davis acknowledged afterward. “I just thought he had gone too far. He was funny the first 10 or 15 minutes, but it was inappropriate, it was getting ridiculous.”

Davis added: “We’ve had a great event. Probably the only problem we’ve had was the impersonator.”

A sampling of the racial jokes:

• On Black History Month: “Michelle celebrates the full month. I celebrate half.”

• “My mother loved a black man,” but “she was not a Kardashian.”

That sound you hear is all of Jack Kemp's work going right down the drain...

An uneasy mixture of laughter and groans gave way to boos when Brown began insulting Republican candidates. When he began taking aim at Rep. Michele Bachmann, event organizers cut his microphone and brought up music; a Louisiana Republican Party official came on stage to escort him off, apparently well before Brown's set was complete.

The Louisiana Republican Party had hired Brown for a video in which he sits in a fake Oval Office pledging to serve as chairman of the GOP's voter registration drive. But hiring an Obama impersonator is dangerous, not least because of the racial element it brings.

"Wonder why many minorities have problems with GOP? Hiring Obama impersonator to tell 'black jokes' at SRLC, for starters," tweeted Doug Heye, a GOP strategist who served as the RNC's communications director during 2010. "Our own fault."

UPDATE: From Media Bistro.