"We're carrion birds," said Jon Stewart, host of "The Daily Show" on the Comedy Central channel. "We're sitting up there saying 'Does he seem weak? Is he dehydrated yet? Let's attack.' "

But so far, no true punch lines have landed.

Why? The reason cited by most of those involved in the shows is that a fundamental factor is so far missing in Obama: There is no comedic "take" on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh, like allegations of Bill Clinton's womanizing, or President George W. Bush's goofy bumbling or Al Gore's robotic persona.

"The thing is, he's not buffoonish in any way," said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson's monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Letterman. "He's not a comical figure," Barry said.

Jokes have been made about what Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton really thought about Obama during the primaries, and about the vulgar comments the Rev. Jesse Jackson made about him last week. But anything approaching a joke about Obama himself has fallen flat.

When Stewart on "The Daily Show" recently tried to joke about Obama changing his position on campaign financing, for instance, he met with such obvious resistance from the audience, he said, "You know, you're allowed to laugh at him." Stewart said in a telephone interview on Monday, "People have a tendency to react as far as their ideology allows them."

I'll make two observations, the first one being general--presidential jokes have never been funny. Its not just the ideology either--the lovely bunny stopped watching late night shows like Leno entirely after being alternately offended and bored by the relentless mockery of Bill Clinton and his intern problem. I know how she felt--I was glad when the 2000 election came around just to hear some new material. Of course Bush-is-a-moron jokes were just as lame. In the end, one just has to conclude that the presidency just isn't funny. It can be heroic or tragic and not much in between.

Of course the real reason there are no jokes about barack-o-bama is encapsulated in a Michael Scott comment from "The Office".

You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they are acting retarded

Perhaps I should just leave it there--in the interests of good taste.