Republicans Are Being Woke Snowflakes About Obama’s Cheesecake Factory Line

Legalize comedy!

Photo by Greenville Daily Photo.

Netflix creator Barack Obama is in hot water over a joke he told 30 minutes into his set at Wacky Al’s Cackle Castle in Dayton. It’s the Saddam Hussein/Cheesecake Factory line here:

Conservative media figures rushed to get sand up their urethra at this egregious swipe at Middle America. Clay Travis claimed that Obama was “mocking people who eat at the Cheesecake Factory.” Martha MacCallum said that is showed “why Democrats lost the middle class.” Greg Gutfeld went on a rant about how liberals hate the Cheesecake Factory because they hate America. Even the Secretary of the Treasury clapped back, which was unusual, because catty roast jokes are usually the purview of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Here’s the sick burn from man of the people Scott Bessent (Yale University class of ‘84, former Chief Investment Officer at Soros Fund Management, estimated net worth: $521 million):

Aaaawwww shit!!! I declare this man to be Secretary of Zingers! I assume that when it’s Obama’s turn at the dias, he’ll inform Bessent that a lesbian comic from the ‘90s called and wants her suit back, and add that Bessent’s momma is like the Cheesecake Factory, because she’s got low prices and expects parties of ten or more to phone ahead.

Of course, Republicans are (probably wilfully) misinterpreting the joke. Because the joke is clearly not that the Cheesecake Factory is bad — the joke is that it’s opulently decorated. Which it is; check out these interiors, culled from an interview with the mastermind behind the Cheesecake Factory’s “extravagant design”:

You add Saddam Hussein to that, you’ve got something pretty garish. The joke is that Trump has a “more is more” design aesthetic, which is inarguably true. The broader point is that Trump is more interested in vanity projects than improving the lives of the American people, which is the most true thing that anyone could possibly say.

Not for nothin’, though: This is, IMHO, not a very good version of that joke. I once wrote a joke in exactly that format for exactly this context:¹ I called Trump’s design style “like Louis XIV and Elvis co-designed a brothel.” A key difference is that I feel that Louis the XIV and Elvis were both notorious for garish design choices. I guess Saddam Hussein was, too, though if I was to list criticisms of Saddam Hussein, I’d get pretty far down the list before I got to “gauche”. Cheesecake Factories are certainly decorated to the hilt, but that’s not really what they’re known for — a joke about their huge menu would have read better. Though, notably: The joke reveals that the author is actually familiar with the Cheesecake Factory. Perhaps too familiar, because they went with a Cheesecake Factory observational deep cut that flew over some people’s heads.

Of course, the right-wing media figures trying to make hay of the joke aren’t just being obnoxious: They’re being woke. They’re pretending that a joke says something that it doesn’t so that they can troll for clout. That’s a signature woke move — think of all the social justice warriors who treated bits where the joke is “blackface is bad” the same as actual blackface. It was literally just last week that conservatives were mocking progressives for getting their tight-fitting gym shorts in a twist over a mildly edgy Shane Gillis joke. But now that it’s Obama, conservatives are soiling their bloomers over a comment that wasn’t made, and they’re counting on their audience to be too dumb or partisan to care about the lie.

They’re also trying to re-run the Cracker Barrel narrative. That was a hit for them last year, and as someone who works in political media, I can tell you: When you find a narrative that works, you flog it like Hasan Piker’s dog. The grain of truth is that there is some snobbery in food jokes, and the “gross normie food” joke jumped the shark many years ago. Being the Knights Templar For Chain Restaurants has been lucrative for conservatives, and since Obama mentioned the name of a chain restaurant, they clearly decided: close enough.

And they’ve proved once again that cynical misrepresentation and self-serving umbrage are bipartisan. I’m old enough to have seen the humorless scold role oscillate between right and left a few times; the question “is Helen Lovejoy a right-wing or left-wing character?” has different answers in different eras. Today, conservatives are playing the role of performatively daft, pearl-clutching scolds. And you’ll get no guesses from me about who will play the role tomorrow.

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1. It was in some John Oliver episode lost to the sands of time.