Zach Galifianakis Jokes With President Obama About Hilarious Stuff Like Drones, NSA Spying
This morning, FunnyorDie.com aired a very special episode of Between Two Ferns, the absurdist web series hosted by actor Zach Galifianakis. On today's episode, Galifianakis sat down with none other than President Barack Obama. The whole thing starts innocuously enough, with Obama poking fun at The Hangover films and Galifianakis dissing Obama's basketball skills. But then, almost inconspicuously, things take a turn for the infuriating.
About half way through, Obama begins his plug for the Affordable Care Act, which is ostensibly the reason for this particular POTUS appearance. Funny or Die is a hotbed of Millennials, whom Obama urges to visit the Healthcare.gov and get insured.
"Healthcare.gov works great now, and millions of Americans have already gotten health insurance plans," says Obama (in one of the video's more humorous bits). Then Galifianakis, feigning boredom, asks, "Is this what they mean by drones?"
Zing! Get it? Because the Obama administration kills innocent people with drones? And now Obama is droning on? AHAHAHA—wait. That is not really very funny at all. In fact, it seems kind of sociopathic to joke about.
Obama ignores the comment and continues talking about how young people should purchase insurance. He gives folks an 800 number they can call if they don't have computers. "Uh, I don't have a phone. I'm off the grid. I don't want you people looking at my text, if you know what I mean," responds Galifianakis.
"First of all, Zach, nobody's interested in your texts," Obama quips.
It was a lighthearted little rebuttal, which Obama played for humor with his tone and timing. But, of course, the National Security Agency is not only interested in Zach's texts but the text messages of millions of others, too.
Predictably, the Twitter response to President Obama's sit down with Galifianakis has been largely positive. This is the kind of appearance that will definitely earn him cool points with a lot of the digerati. I was, begrudgingly, almost taken in too—until the drone and NSA spying comments, that is. When you remember what kind of civil liberty abuses the Obama administration is perpetrating, it's kind of hard to be amused, even between two ferns.
