So Mr. President if I’m going to keep it 100: “Yo Barry, you did it my n–” Wilmore said, pounding his chest.
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In his closing remarks at the dinner Saturday, Wilmore offered seemingly genuine gratitude to the president before calling Obama “my n–“.
The president himself made headlines for using the N-word in a podcast interview with Marc Maron in 2015.
Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, who is black, wrote that he recognized that Wilmore was coming from a place of pride. At least, not in public and most definitely not to his face.
While many people were outraged, Obama had no issue with it.
For his part, the president did not seem offended by Wilmore’s use of the word.
But Press Secretary Josh Earnest defended Wilmore’s right to use the word and said that Obama, who delivered his own roast at the last such dinner of his tenure, told him Monday that “he appreciated the spirit of the sentiments that Mr. Wilmore expressed”. Wilmore, who is black and, at 54, the same age as Obama, said words didn’t do justice to the idea that he could live at the same time a black man could be leader of the free world.
Earnest did not address this directly but noted that following Obama’s act at the annual dinner is “one of the most hard tasks in comedy”, since the president has shown himself “adept” at delivering one-liners and so expects comedians to go “right up to the line”. “Just by the nature of the engagement, that’s a tough job, following the president of the United States”, Earnest said.
Earnest said in response, “It’s not the first time in the Monday after the correspondents’ dinner, that some people have observed that the comedian at the dinner crossed the line”.
I really didn’t think Larry Wilmore was that amusing and to end using the “N” word with the President was not cool in my opinion. Earnest said that Barack Obama appreciated “the spirit” of Wilmore’s remark.
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Earnest said the White House had no advance notice of Wilmore’s monologue. He was seeking to be provocative.
