Dem White Men Keep Impersonating Obama. It’s Uncomfortable

After hearing the name “James Talarico” for several weeks, I finally got my first visual and audio impression of him, and it’s the same one I had when I first saw Democrat Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speak: Does he know that we know he’s doing an Obama impersonation?

It’s truly awe-inspiring to watch a presumably heterosexual white male adopt the vocal intonation and hand mannerisms of a half-black man, mimicking his persona to the point where Shapiro even raises his chin and bites his lower lip the way the former president often did to flirt with his mostly-women audience.

In his appearance last week on Stephen Colbert’s doomed CBS show, Talarico, the Texas Democrat running for U.S. Senate, sat there looking every bit like that Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll but with a speaking style and movements that gave the appearance his skin had been placed by A.I. over a separate Obama interview. Talarico did that thing Obama does where he gazes thoughtfully downward and slightly frowns while speaking, as if what he’s saying is almost physically painful. He also did that performative earnest stutter Obama and his nag of a wife sport when attempting to sound relatable and self-conscious.

There are many unattractive qualities in Talarico, most importantly his shameless capacity for invoking some alien understanding of Christianity to make perverse claims, like that God is indifferent to ending human life. (Yes, Talarico said that.) But what’s most appalling is his unflinching, obvious imitation of the Democrat Party’s most recent, cognizant leader without any acknowledgement that he’s replicating someone else. The same is true for Shapiro.

The only greater insult than fraudulence is fraudulence that comes with the bonus of being obvious. Recall the recent outrage when the nation found out about a bunch of Somali-run fake child care and health care facilities in Minneapolis that offered no discernible services and bore names like “Quality Learing Center” (sic). What made the scandal so infuriating, aside from the billions of taxpayer dollars in theft, was how brazenly and openly the scams were conducted.

That’s Talarico and Shapiro. They’re engaged in fraud, right in everyone’s face, and they believe you don’t see it.

It reminds me of that scene from HBO’s Veep, when Selina Meyer is privately chatting ahead of a presidential primary debate with one of her opponents, whose whole campaign pitch to voters is that he’s a folksy baseball coach who can lead Team America. “How are you gonna manage all this craziness?” Meyer says. “Well, I don’t just manage, ma’am,” he replies using what is obviously a canned campaign line. “I coach. And I’m gonna coach America.” Meyers gives him an incredulous look and says, “You’re talking to me now,” letting him know he can drop the act. “I was just practicing,” he says.

When Talarico and Shapiro do their Obama schtick, I want to ask them, “You do know that I can see what you’re doing, right?”

Imagine someone told you he really wanted to be a superstar singer and entertainer and then he proceeded to do what was an unmistakable impersonation of Michael Jackson, but without acknowledging that’s what he was doing. It’s embarrassing for him, but it’s just as insulting that you were expected to accept it as original.

It’s not a crime for a Democrat white man to impersonate Obama. It’s just really hard to watch them do it.