GOP Convention Ousts Obama Impersonator for Racial Jokes (The Atlantic Wire)

The talk of Saturday's Republican Leadership conference was comedian and professional Obama impersonator Reggie Brown, who was hired to perform his occasionally spot-on caricature of the President. After a slew of questionably appropriate, race-related jokes about Obama, not to mention heavy jabs at GOP candidates, Brown was asked to leave the stage before he could get to Michele Bachmann, the New York Times reports. Video of his act (including the loud music that cuts him off and his escort off stage) is below.

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The term being widely used to describe Brown's jokes about Obama is "racially-tinged," so the general consensus is not that they were racist, per se, but they made the "nearly entirely white" audience more than a little uncomfortable. These are some examples of his "racially-tinged" jokes:

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"I took a vacation in my birth state, Hawaii, or as the Tea Partiers like to call it, Kenya.”"My favorite month is February, Back History Month. See Michele, she celebrates the whole month. I only celebrate half.""My mother loved a black man, and no, she was not a Kardashian."Brown flashed a picture on the screen of Fred Sanford from “Sanford and Son,” saying that's what Obama would look like when he got older.According to the Times, the audience watched "with befuddlement." But up through the off-color Obama jokes, laughter was often uproarious, based on the video below. And of course, no one seemed to mind any Rep. Weiner jokes, though laughter was a little subdued when he flashed the gray boxer picture that the audience had likely seen already in countless comedy acts. The laughter only really died down when Brown turned his attention to members of the GOP. No one laughed at his crying Boehner impression. He was met with boos when he called Newt Gingrich's campaign "frail, and barely clinging to life."

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The crowd seemed downright angry when he referenced Mitt Romney's Mormon faith by showing a picture of him standing next to multiple wives. He went on to mock Tim Pawlenty's performance during the recent GOP debate by saying that Pawlenty missed the event because he was “having his foot surgically removed from his mouth” and added, “Don’t worry. It’s covered under Obamneycare. Along with spinal transplants.” But he really seemed to cross the line when he said “[CNN’s] John King served him up a ball softer than Barney Frank’s backside.” (Frank is a gay member of Congress from Massachusetts.)

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"Now we got Michele Bachmann," he began. Music began to play. According to the Washington Post, RLC President and CEO Charlie Davis made the decision to pull him offstage, and a man came onstage to physically escort Brown off. “I just thought he had gone too far," Davis said. "He was funny the first 10 or 15 minutes, but it was inappropriate, it was getting ridiculous.”

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Obama Jokes OK, but GOP Conference Yanks Comedian During Republican Jokes (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Comedian and Obama impersonator Reggie Brown seemed to only be trying to give the political parties equal time while doing his routine at the Republican Leadership Conference (RLC) in New Orleans over the weekend. He had the crowd roaring with laughter at his off-color Obama jokes. However, the roar turned to outraged booing when he started telling jokes about the 2012 Republican presidential contenders.

Hired for his spot-on impersonation of President Barack Obama, Reggie Brown was sure to be a hit at the RLC. And he was -- at first. According to the New York Daily News, Brown strode onto the stage with "Born in the USA" playing in the background, a slap at the birther movement controversy that had given the President such a difficult time until he petitioned the state of Hawaii to release the long form of his certificate of live birth, thus discrediting the conspiracy theorists that have claimed that he was born in Kenya or somewhere else outside the United States.

Brown told the crowd that his favorite month was February because of Black History Month. He admitted that he only celebrated half the month (a dig at Obama's mixed heritage -- Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was, of course, white).

The comedian also talked about the rapid aging process presidents seemed to go through while in the White House. He then produced a "time-lapse" photo of what Obama and his wife, Michele, would look like in the future. The picture was a still shot of comedian Redd Foxx and actress Lawanda Page, the famous feuding in-laws from TV's "Sanford and Son."

The crowd of Republicans erupted with laughter.

But then Brown switched to poking fun at the Republicans running for office. He went after former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his recent staff resignation incident, saying that his advisors were "dropping faster than Anthony Weiner's pants in an AOL chatroom."

He then nailed Mitt Romney in a polygamy joke and said the reason former Minnesota governor wasn't at the Conference was because he was "getting his foot surgically removed from his mouth," a direct jab at Pawlenty's hedging over his own coined term "Obamneycare" at last week's New Hampshire Republican Presidential Debate. Brown said placatingly, "Don't worry: it's covered under Obamneycare. Along with spinal transplants."

The booing had begun well before Brown took aim at Rep. Michele Bachmann. He didn't get through his first line before his microphone went dead and music began to play to drown him out.

It appears that the humor found at the expense of the President was preferable to that found in conjunction with the gathering's fellow Republicans. Brown quickly learned that he wasn't performing at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

The incident strangely reflected the mood of the Republican conference, where the speakers repeatedly went after the President and his policies with angry and inflammatory remarks. Newt Gingrich even called the President a "national secular European socialist" and the "opposite of freedom." Sticking to red meat political topics, the speakers ignored the entreaties of two of their number from earlier in the conference. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and Mississippi governor Haley Barbour both told the gathering that they should not focus everything on Obama, but use a broader strategy to win in 2012.

It is as yet uncertain what Reggie Brown's plans hold for the future (except that he won't be doing any more Republican functions), but it is very likely that he will soon appear on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report," not to mention possibly being tapped to do a few Democratic conferences. Because somebody has to assuage the public's curiosity about how that Michele Bachmann joke ends.

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