NP: John Cage, 4'33"

So, apparently CNN's Jeff Greenfield was trying to be funny when he said that Senator Barack Obama could face a potential obstacle because he dresses like the president of Iran.

This, to a large extent, is the unintended consequence of the success of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. People who have absolutely no business trying to be funny are doing so, and making a hash of it. In recent memory, this includes John Kerry, some principal in the Chicago suburbs a few months ago and now Greenfield. I tried finding a rather insightful article on Slate about this phenomenon, but came up empty.

Back on the Obama watch, Josh Marshall's crew point out that Greenfield's admission of not being able to tell a joke, still doesn't account for other dubious imagery over at CNN. And Howard Kurtz at the Post skips the CNN angle completely in his rundown of the early pushback, instead going to traditional Washington types who refuse to think of anything other than the left-right dichotomy, which I think misses the point almost entirely with Obama.

On a related note, the Senator himself is coming across as pretty funny after the Monday Night Football bit the other night.