The Candidates Of Comedy Tour
As part of an ongoing series delving into the lighter details of the candidates' personal lives, the Associated Press today reported on the favorite jokes of the top presidential hopefuls. But you're unlikely to see any of them at the Improv anytime soon: Edwards and John McCain were the only ones who responded with actual jokes. Others came forward with self-deprecating anecdotes. And some kept the laughs to themselves.
Edwards offered some home-spun Southern humor: "This guy's driving down a country road and he looks over and there's this farmer holding his hog, holding his hog up to an apple tree. And the guy pulls over — he's a city guy — he pulls over and walks over and he says, 'What are you doing?' And the guy's straining. He's holding the hog. His face is red and he said, 'Feeding my hog.' And he said, 'Feeding your hog?' He said, 'Now dunnit take a lot of time? Holding the hog up to an apple tree to feed him, dunnit take a lot of time?' He says, 'Time don't mean nothing to a damned old hog.'"
McCain goes with a classic joke setting, a bar: "Long story about a guy walking into a bar and noticing another guy at the end. They strike up a conversation and notice many similarities. Another guy walks in later and asks the bartender about the commotion. 'Oh, that's just the O'Reilly brothers getting drunk again.'"
Mike Huckabee says he likes to entertain friends with the harrowing tale of riding a bobsled on an Olympic track a year before the Salt Lake games. Barack Obama gets a kick out of calling very distant cousin Dick Cheney "the black sheep of the family."
Bill Richardson and Mitt Romney both shared put-downs offered by their wives. Romney says that when he asked his Ann Romney if she saw him running for president in her wildest dreams, she tells him he wasn't in her wildest dreams in the first place. Richardson's wife told him that his poll numbers in New Mexico were up – because he's never there now.
Fred Thompson's favorite joke? "Presidential debates," he says.
But keeping quiet are Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. The former first lady flat-out said she wouldn't tell, while the former New York mayor's campaign vaguely answered with "the most recent one that made him laugh."