“POTUS loves your show, too. Maybe we can find a way to work together?” I got Keegan’s e-mail and sent a follow-up. Then I promptly forgot the whole thing.
I wasn’t lying, however. POTUS really was a fan. In particular, he enjoyed the recurring character of “Luther, Obama’s Anger Translator.” On Comedy Central, while his costar Jordan Peele impersonated the president with trademark calm, Keegan jumped in after every sentence to rant about the nonsense America put him through. Each year I had taken the lead on the Correspondents’ Dinner, we quietly wondered if we could put POTUS and Luther together in real life. But the timing was never right. In 2012 we weren’t eager to suggest that Barack Obama was secretly an angry black man. In 2013 we were only two weeks removed from the Boston bombings. In 2014 we needed to stay humble after Healthcare.gov.
In 2015, though? Bucket. I fished Keegan’s e-mail from my inbox.
A few days later, I heard back. Luther was a go. I threw together a script. Lovett punched it up from Hollywood. The next day, Cody and I went to the Oval to show the president our draft. There was no need for POTUS to practice his anger translator’s lines, but he read them anyway, relishing the chance to vent.
“Y’all are ridiculous!” he told an imaginary press corps, swiping his finger through the air. He had penciled in that part himself. He added another joke as well, a few paragraphs later, about the media’s coverage of the ebola epidemic.
What was that—one of the fifteen times you declared my presidency over?
Back in school, when my improv comedy troupe warmed up before a show, a sense of bulletproof authority would sometimes fill the air. We could see the future, and the future was awesome. What was true in a college common room was no less true in the Oval. As President Obama reached the end of his script, there was the quiet, bubbly feeling that comes from being on the verge of something special.
“Do you want us back here tomorrow morning?” asked Cody. Ordinarily we did one last run-through around noon on the day of the speech. This time, however, POTUS shook his head.
“Nah,” he said. “The truth is, I’m pretty fucking good at this.”
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, I SMUGGLED KEEGAN INTO THE WEST Wing, hiding him in Cody’s office to avoid journalists’ prying eyes. Finally, when we were sure the reporters had left for pre-parties, the two of us went to the residence to rehearse.
A podium was set up in the Map Room, the same place POTUS had practiced his immigration speech five months before. But this time the president was in a tuxedo and a far more relaxed mood. He and Keegan chatted as though they’d been doing shtick for years.
There was, however, a problem. The commander in chief couldn’t keep a straight face. “Hold on to your lily-white butts,” cried Keegan. The line, one of Lovett’s suggestions from Los Angeles, was Luther’s first of the night. POTUS burst out laughing.
“Okay, okay. I’ve got to keep it together.”
But this was a promise President Obama clearly couldn’t keep. He lost it every time. “I’m only getting a little worked up,” he warned. “For the real thing, I’m going for it.”
It took us a half dozen stops and starts, but finally, we reached the last page of the script. Here, we had written in a twist. POTUS would begin discussing climate change deniers in Congress, and it would make him furious. He’d grow angrier and angrier, eventually getting so worked up that even Luther couldn’t calm him down.
“That part won’t be hard,” he assured Keegan. “I really do get angry, you know.” Then he thought for a moment.
“I’ve just got to keep it together.”
But he still couldn’t manage it. During the second run-through, POTUS was just as hopeless as before. And there was no time for more practice. POTUS and Keegan stood on either side of me while I jotted down their final edits. Then we jumped in the motorcade and sped toward the Hilton for the speech. President Obama took his seat at the head table. Keegan went to his hotel room to put on a gray suit and eight gold rings. I spent the evening in my usual fashion, bouncing around with nervous energy like a gas molecule. It was only by chance that I happened to be standing right behind the curtain when POTUS ducked backstage. He smiled and shook his head.
“I just can’t break,” he said.
I was surprised POTUS knew the comedy jargon for laughing in the middle of a scene. I was unsurprised, however, by what came next.
“So, are we funny?”
It was the question President Obama had been asking for years. For years, I’d stammered a reply. Now, though, I had the perfect answer. I thought about his pep talk in the Roosevelt Room five months earlier. I thought about his determination to write his own history, to speak his own language, no matter the obstacles in his path. I thought about the twenty months left in the fourth quarter, and grinning, I looked America’s first black president in the eye.
“Hold on,” I said, “to your lily-white butts.”
14
THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN
Steve and I sat in the catwalk, as frosty as exes at a parent-teacher conference. Below us, Luther the Anger Translator strode onstage. Keegan hadn’t been kidding when he promised POTUS he would go for it. His veins bulged. His eyes bugged. As he screamed his opening line, the one about butts, my eyes darted to the president.
Please don’t break. Please-don’t-break-please-don’t-break-please-don’t-break.
To my horror, I saw POTUS swallow a laugh. It looked like he was about to lose it. And then, an instant before the point of no return, something clicked. It was like a bicycle changing gears. The president’s solemn expression snapped into place. When he continued, it was in the calm, backyard-trampolines tone he used for the weekly address:
“We count on the press to shed light on the most important issues of the day.”
“And we can count on Fox News to terrify old white people with some nonsense!”
Luther was as loud as ever, but I no longer needed to worry. POTUS wasn’t breaking. For the next five minutes he was flawless, his timing impeccable, his body language perfect. When the subject turned to climate change denial, President Obama’s anger was, as promised, real.
“What about our kids?! What kind of stupid, shortsighted, irresponsible bull—”
“Sir!” Luther cried. “Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Whoa. Hey!”
“What?!” POTUS snapped, and the Hilton ballroom went wild.