Delightful Musical Satirizes Obama Presidency

Ever since I was a child, I’ve gotten a kick out of political comedy. The second movie I ever saw was the 1959 Cold War arms race satire The Mouse that Roared and I can still recall watching the series That Was the Week that Was on TV in 1964. Around the same time, the record albums by TWTWTW’s Tom Lehrer turned me into a laughing hyena and of course, over the years up until now, I’ve loved SNL’s Weekend Update segments, The Daily Show, Bill Maher’s programs, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, Stephen Colbert’s Late Show opening segments and monologues, Seth Meyers’ A Closer Look rants, and so on.

So, I’m very happy to report that the hysterically funny musical satire 44 is a worthy successor, merrily carrying on this madcap tradition with a two-act play that spoofs not only Barack Obama (T.J. Wilkins), but also key players during his presidency. The saucy book, music and lyrics by Eli Bauman, who worked for the Obama campaign, made this reviewer laugh his head off. The witty spoken and sung words are often barbed with great comic insight that sends up the pols being pilloried.

The plot essentially revolves around Obama’s struggles in the White House against the Republican obstacles to his administration and policies. This GOP cabal is cannily monikered W.H.A.M., which stands for “White Hetero Affluent Men,” which is especially witty when you consider that it includes the word “HAM,” a reference to pigs. However, several members of this reactionary crew are actually not Caucasian, straight and/or male, although they are led by then-Senate Minority Leader and Filibuster-er-In-Chief, Mitch McConnell (the agile, giggle-inducing Larry Cedar who has, appropriately, performed and written a solo show based on the writings of one of literature’s greatest satirists of all time, George Orwell). He is joined by the supercilious, fawning, presumably in-the-closet cracker Sen. Lindsay Graham (Jeff Sumner, who tellingly has a double role as the phony liberal “Co-exist Lady,” who he performs in drag).

Mitch is joined by the oily, despised Sen. Ted Cruz (Michael Uribes), who is serenaded by his opponents with the song “F.U.T.C.,” which stands for: “Fuck You Ted Cruz” (members of the sold-out audience in the 317-seat Kirk Douglas Theatre actually flipped the hated senator the bird during this uproarious number). When Cruz is reminded that he’s Hispanic, the Texan of Cuban background by way of the Canary Islands, lets loose with a stream of obscenities in Spanish.

The depiction of Herman Cain (Dino Shorte) is likewise sidesplitting, although I didn’t quite understand how this GOP collaborator was portrayed. Nevertheless, the eponymous song “Herman Cain” set to Prince’s “Purple Rain” is a masterpiece of rhyme – if not reason. (It’s so good I wish that I had been clever enough to have thought of this rhyming riposte.)

But the revelry’s real revelation is Jane Papageorge as the Alaska governor who joins the 2008 John McCain ticket running against Obama in the 2008 presidential election. The outrageous Papageorge lampoons Palin brilliantly, channeling Sarah’s smarmy sexuality, saucily singing “Drill Me Baby” and doing a pole dance with a flagpole, writhing about the stage in a scanty red, white and blue outfit (leave the tykes at home, ticket buyers). Papageorge steals the show. (BTW, I bet that the main reason Palin didn’t win her latest election in 2024 is because she has lost her looks – although none of her sheer idiocy, thus becoming a bimbo minus attractiveness.)

On the Democratic side of the Kirk Douglas Theatre’s aisle, T.J. Wilkins has the voice and moves (he’s a good moonwalker; (the rollicking choreography is by Miss James Alsop), as well as the height of the 44^th president, although he’s not svelte like Barack was. Shanice has powerful lungs, although she’s shorter than Michelle and older than the former FLOTUS was when she graced the White House with her presence. The pair are depicted as having a political partnership as well as a genuine romance, as they get their freak on in the sExecutive Mansion. The duo do exude chemistry, even if (as is often the case in opera) they don’t have the physical characteristics per se of their real life counterparts.

The too-on-the-nose shrewish Jenna Pastuszek’s Hillary Clinton is predictably depicted as a harridan embittered by being displaced by “lesser” male candidates because she doesn’t have a you-know-what. Scene stealing Chad Doreck is droll as an enfeebled Joe Biden, even though Doreck is actually quite dexterous, athletic and chiseled. Unlike Biden, the real life Doreck is no dork, and the story is told from the memory-challenged Joe’s POV.

As the “Voice of the People,” Summer Nicole Greer gets her boogie on and has the cast’s greatest set of pipes. Other characters are referenced, such as, amazingly the Schindler’s List actor in the witty ditty “What Would Liam Neeson Do?”, although the song actually references his roles in vengeful action movies. Abraham Lincoln makes a guest appearance, played Hamilton-like by African American thesp Marqell Edward Clayton.

It’s all the creation of the feverish imagination of writer/composer/director Eli Bauman, who was an Obama campaign organizer and the son of Jon Bauman, who was “Bowzer” in the retro ’50s band Sha Na Na. One could say that Eli combined his birthright as a Spoofer-in-Chief with his political work. Bauman’s onstage Obama is portrayed as a compassionate man stymied by W.H.A.M.’s filibustering to block his policies. Although what Biden stupidly called “a big fucking deal,” “Obama-care,” is barely mentioned in the musical, much is made over Barack’s ineffectual grappling with the spree of mass shootings bedeviling American schools and other sites, with Obama wringing his hands as his GOP foes block efforts to combat gun violence.

Although I immensely enjoyed 44, I part company with its anointing of Obama as some sort of great leader. Of course, being the first Black president was hugely historically significant, but the fact is that Obama ruled as a run of the mill centrist Democrat. Instead of the “audacity of hope,” what African Americans and the rest of us got was the “paucity of pragmatism.”

Since 44 focuses so much attention on it, lets look at the issue of mass murders of children by weapons of war, which Obama anguished over. During the Obama presidency, more than 200 American children were butchered by automatic weapons in mass shootings.

However, as CodePink observed in 2010: “We will never know the true number of civilians killed by our drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Our military ‘doesn’t do body counts,’ as General Tommy Franks famously said when questioned about Iraqi casualties. But each bomb that misses its target leaves a trail of unacceptable human suffering—young lives snuffed out, lifetime disabilities, grieving widows, orphaned children.”

The Obama regime authorized and carried out drone warfare in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia which caused hundreds if not thousands of children to be collateral damage. According to a 2017 Council on Foreign Relations report: “The 542 drone strikes that Obama authorized killed an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians. As he reportedly told senior aides in 2011: ‘Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.’”

In 2011, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found: “President Obama, too, has been as Commander-in-Chief responsible for many child deaths in Pakistan. The Bureau has identified 56 children reported killed in drone strikes during his presidency…” The Bureau went on to claim that from 2004 to 2020 between 283 and 454 children died U.S. due to drone strikes . In 2017 the Bureau reported that Obama carried out 10 times the number of drone attacks than Pres. George W. Bush had.

As CodePink noted in 2021: “No one in the U.S. government, including the military and the CIA, has ever been held accountable for the horrific crimes of killing civilians in drone strikes.” Of course, this includes Obama. In 2017, as Obama was about to leave office, CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin, who disrupted Pres. Obama, wrote: “Most Americans would probably be astounded to realize that the president who has been painted by Washington pundits as a reluctant warrior has actually been a hawk… While candidate Obama came to office pledging to end George W. Bush’s wars, he leaves office having been at war longer than any president in US history. He is also the only president to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.”

Critics of Obama’s immigration policies dubbed him “the Deporter-In-Chief.” Given Obama’s predator drone strike record, perhaps he could also be called “President Predator.” When Medea Benjamin was being dragged away from disrupting Obama’s speech at the National Defense University for asking him to apologize for the deaths of innocent civilians, including children, in drone bombings he had authorized, Obama said: “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.”

Alas, unlike the hilarious 44, this is no laughing matter. Did more children die in U.S. mass shootings (which Obama didn’t stop) or abroad in drone attacks (which Pres. Obama authorized) as “collateral damage”? Inquiring minds want to know. But what I do know is that the life of a child in Waziristan is as precious as that of a child in Sandy Hook, et al. Before lionizing Obama and his presidency, Americans must pay attention to alternatives to centrist Democrats like Obama in their resistance to the MAGAvellian madness of Trumperialism.

Having said that, I enthusiastically cast my ballot for 44, the presidential musical – even if I didn’t vote for 44 the president. All lovers of political satires should vote with their feet and go see this very funny play with winning music and dance.

44 is being performed on Wednesdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 1:00 p.m. through March 23, at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232. Tickets and info; (213)628-2772.

Aloha oe (farewell to thee), Gene Hackman, truly one of the greats.