If Miley Cyrus is an unredeemed hick racist for pulling her eyes back to imitate the Chinese , what to make of Amy Sedaris scrawling "Ching Chong" and drawing buck teeth on someone's book?

Wall Street big shots have their own exclusive fratty Friar-like club called "Kappa Beta Phi" that met last week for its annual—and allegedly humorous—to-do. Let us list some of the unfunny jokes that occurred:

It's been a while since we checked in on Jimmy Fallons's Late Night rehearsal webisodes, so let's see what he's up to. He's... uh. He's... not doing much.

Far be it from us to tell somebody not to sell a useless item on eBay for an absurdly high price, but how much is a single joke from an Onion staff writer really worth?

Liberal abuse-target Alan Colmes stopped by the Comic Strip holiday party last night and apparently just stood, grinning, directly below his '80s standup headshot(?!), in the lobby, for hours. Merry Christmas. [The Comic's Comic]

MTV has confirmed its wacky plans to give a TV show to the young men behind CollegHumor.com. What a good time to review all we know about CollegeHumor boss Ricky Van Veen!

Execs at the National Lampoon are charged with illegally inflating the company's stock price, which leads to a blogger making a predictable joke. Comedy sucks these days. [TheStreet.com]

Conan O'Brien is considered one of the big losers of Jay Leno's decision to stay on at NBC, because Jay will eat up his audience, steal his guests, and keep him out of the spotlight. How did Conan handle the issue last night? With a simple bit involving newspapers that is way funnier than anything Jay Leno's slackjawed writing staff has ever come up with. Click to watch Conan's moral victory.

Big news on the Saturday Night Live Obama comedy crisis front: the show is auditioning several comedians who may take the Obama impersonation role from the workmanlike but not-so-funny Fred Armisen. And these new comedians are black, like Obama himself, coincidentally! And even more importantly, one of the contenders is reportedly our close personal friend Jordan Carlos, who already made his case for the role directly to Gawker readers! Three others are also in the running. But we really hope Jordan Carlos gets it, because then we are totally going to demand some free tickets for ourselves! And, of course, for you as well. We totally called it. Maybe. [Daily Beast]

Surprisingly, everyone appears to have missed the subtle nuance in a chapter of comedian Denis Leary's book entitled "Autism, Schmautism." Go figure. Controversy arose after the Post excerpted a paragraph from Leary's Why We All Suck reading, in part, "I don't give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you - yer kid is NOT autistic." Last night Leary appeared on the Daily Show to explain that he was quoted out of context, and in reality was taking a sophisticated stand on the scientific mystery of surging autism cases:

This is Michaela Watkins, and she's apparently the newest addition to the cast of Saturday Night Live, the ancient sketch comedy show that is relevant again because a) you can watch just the funny bits online and b) there was apparently a presidential election this year. (Ok fine and c) they have a good cast and it seems less terrible in its current incarnation than it did the last time everyone talked about how they were watching it again.) In the attached clip, Watkins is doing her audition bit: a pretty great impression of noted blog-runner and grudge-holder and Internet Doyenne Arianna Huffington! Hooray, making fun of Arianna Huffington will soon hit the mainstream! Click to watch.

Election night might have been a hopeful triumph for most Americans, but it was an evening of screaming and insults for Canadian Sharilyn Johnson, according to the epic rant she just uploaded to Huffington Post. Johnson had to be in the live Daily Show audience on election night, because she's been watching everything Jon Stewart has ever done since 1994, is also super-into Stephen Colbert, has friends on staff, knows line-runners by name, etc. etc. Johnson (on left in photo) lined up a ticket seven months in advance, confirmed and reconfirmed, traveled to New York from Toronto, waited in line and then watched as her world ENDED.

Now that our nation has gone and elected a popular black man with no clear signs of dementia as president, it's obvious that our Crisis Of Comedy is a most vital public issue. Nerdy white comedians have no idea how to make fun of Obama! Never fear. We reached out to Jordan Carlos—professional comedian, Stephen Colbert's black friend, and a guy we once tried to assert (unsuccessfully) would be a better Saturday Night Live Obama impersonator than Fred Armisen—for his take on the future of Obama comedy. Exclusive Jordan Carlos Analytical Comedic Essay Below! Barack: This Dude Even Changed Comedy Tuesday By Jordan Carlos The political balance of power may not have been the only thing that shifted Tuesday. The world of comedy got a bit of a shake up too. Though it's difficult to predict the misty future with any certainty, Obama's win does beg a couple of obvious questions; namely, "Do Black comedians have much to complain about anymore?" Now before you tear my nuts off for asking this, let me say I'm just raising this extreme question for the sake of argument. I don't actually think Black people don't have anything to complain about anymore, though cabs were remarkably easier to come by yesterday in the city. But things have changed—and who are many comedians of color, if not people who point to the old saw of differences between white and Black and all the hi-larious inequalities surrounding those differences? Remove that brand of humor from the mix, and what's left for Black comedians to fall back on? Plenty, of course. The world is full of comedic opportunity. But it will be intriguing to see how audiences will respond when a Black comic moans about the everyday racial politics he or she faces when a Black person holds the highest office in the land. For anyone who can do an impression of Obama, congrats! Your stock just went through the friggin roof! Bush impersonators, report to your local soup kitchen or shanty town. Obama impersonators are guaranteed at least 4 years of career opportunity. For me, a fairer-skinned black dude with newly close-cropped hair and larger-than-average ears, things are looking up. I've already been able to do my impression for TV (once on Headline News and once on a Japanese morning TV show – Yeah, I know. What the F?) and I look forward to at least four more years of it. Though I was asked by the folks at Gawker to give my take on Fred Armisen's impression of Obama, I'm gonna have to pass. Other art forms encourage a lover's quarrel among artists – boisterous roundtables and bustling salons, etc. — comedy, not so much. Take it from me, comics are a sensitive bunch – me more than most (we're not talking Kanye West levels here, but you get where I'm going with this). We want to be liked (obveeez!!!). Did I dance around that enough? You can watch my Obama impression here, OK? [Ed.: And also here] I think the existential question of what comedians can complain about now is shared by not only Black comedians, but also the good folks at The Daily Show and Real Time with Bill Maher. They got what they wanted, right? So now what? Feast on Obama like they did Bush? That would be kinda weird. Recently on his show Bill Maher declared a new rule: that President-elect "Obama must give comedians something to work with." When questioned about this statement by America's favorite old man, Larry King, Maher said, "But look, [Obama]'s going to be the president and we're going to have to get over our nervousness about making fun of a Black person. He's not a black person. He's the president." OK, Maher lost me at the whole, "he's not a black person" bit, but you get what he's trying to say. Eventually ALL comedians are going to have to take off the kid gloves and skewer the newly anointed commander in chief. How they do it will be something that I, for one, am interested to see. To me there's plenty you can make fun of when it comes to Obama: — Because of him the high concept movie about a jazzy black dude being president is dead and over. —People maybe just maybe expect too much from him. —He's got huge, honking ears. —You can make fun of the fact that it's hard to make fun of him. —You kind of have to do a lot of self-deceiving to back the guy (doesn't believe in gay marriage, tough on immigration, tosses friends when they become political liabilities – Rev. Wright, Ayers). —He may kinda owe Oprah a place in his cabinet. —Does Jesse Jackson still want to cut his nuts off like he said? And why the hell was he front-row Chicago victory rally after saying something like that? Obama must have known he said that. Where's my front row seat? I didn't call for castration. You could make sketches out of all that stuff and more if you've got the salt. You should always be able to laugh at your leaders – even if they're awesome people who happen to be Black. Click to view

The Daily Show weighed in on whether it will face a CRISIS OF COMEDY in a new, much more competent Obama Administration. As host Jon Stewart made clear Wednesday night, the show thinks it'll be fine, and as we predicted, the show will hedge its bets with other targets — namely, Fox News and Democrats not named Barack Obama. Here's what Daily Show writer J. R. Havlan said at the New York Comedy Festival, via the Times:

After calling Fox News Channel to task for its Barack Obama coverage, the Daily Show's Jon Stewart asked Fox host Chris Wallace if the network might need to change its stripes under the incoming Democratic administration. Actually no, Wallace said, because Obama, like all presidents, will inevitably screw up, and skeptical coverage will be rewarded. "Let me just say," Wallace added, "I worry about you. That William Ayers joke bombed. This crowd is not ready." He had a point.

On this election day, the cold-blooded monsters like us whose business is our nation's flow of public information are thinking not about political hope, but about hope for continued high ratings; not about political change, but about people changing the channels. (Speechwriter-ly!). What it comes down to is this: once this election's over, will the public still care about all these media outlets who've been living it up thanks to public interest in politics? Let's round up the media's nervous take on the media's future!

Greg Gutfeld, host of Red Eye, the 3 a.m. Fox News show you have never seen, wore out his faux-meathead wingnut schtick around the same time he stopped regularly doing crunches. He purposely poses as a wiseass ignorant bastard (which is fine!), so we're not upset that his latest column explores how Obama is like "a really hot chick." We just chalk it up to homoeroticism. But we have to object to his opening line, "So yesterday, during an ideas meeting..."; Greg, you know don't have "ideas" meetings.

Yeah, so, this happened. The real Sarah Palin and Mark Wahlberg opened last night's Saturday Night Live, with help from Lorne Michaels and Alec Baldwin. Stiff discomfort reigned. But at least Tina Fey was still her usual hysterical self, and was only exposed to the actual Palin in passing. That, plus Palin on Weekend Update, after the jump. Click to view

It's been painted as a reconciliation, but McCain's appearance on Letterman last night was a sorry spectacle. Letterman spent half the interview talking to McCain like he talks to Paris Hilton—an object of obvious scorn—and half of it trying quite hard to get McCain to admit that the Ayers line is useless bullshit and that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment. McCain squirmed. He hasn't done The Daily Show in a while, either, presumably for fear of a similar line of questioning. Which is sad! Because McCain loved doing those shows! He loved being the funny, charming, lovable, funny old man of the Senate! Watching him at the Al Smith dinner, you see the obvious joy he took in just getting laughs in a friendly room again. Which is exactly why McCan needs to lose this race. We're not going to argue about the security of this country, about McCain's sense of "honor," about the toxic atmosphere of the campaign, no—we're just talking about McCain's simple enjoyment of his own privileged life. McCain's humor has always been caustic, mean, sarcastic, and cruel—"thanks for the question, you little jerk" is hardly an example of wit, funny though it is—and it is sometimes a window into a dark, deep embitterment. It doesn't work politically, in the way the Reagan's genial old wisecracks worked. A president needs, to a certain extent, to be somewhat humorless. McCain's sense of humor is dark enough to make that need doubly true in his case. And it's clear McCain hates the grab-and-grin aspect of the race. He's never cared for the idiot rabble of "the base," and they've never cared for him. He's energized by the Sunday Morning Shows, not by a rally crying for blood. He took the mic away from that crazy lady because she was embarrassing him. Those aren't his people. He's not enjoying himself. And McCain palling around with Jon Stewart and Dave Letterman was certainly more fun to watch before this miserable race. It's easy to say that all McCain wants in this world is to be president, but honestly it sometimes seems like all he wants is to already have been president. Who wouldn't want to be Bill Clinton before he embarrassed himself during this campaign? Or Bush Senior after everyone forgot his miserable single term in office? Should McCain lose, he can hopefully look forward to a happy post-election media good will tour, and all his sins will be again forgotten. Maybe he can crack wise on Palin and Ayers. We'll happily let him go back to the way things were, with only a minimum of chastising those who take him back—as long as he promises never to run for president again.