"Dogs are fair game"

I understand that a child in another culture may, under his parents' tutelage, eat creatures we wouldn't eat here. And I am quite liberal in what I think is acceptable in comedy.

But I was literally sickened by the dog jokes President Obama delivered at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Obama began a series of riffs on his and Romney's dog-mistreatment backstories by announcing that, in contrast with attacking a political opponent's family members, "dogs are fair game."

He showed a video capped with the already-tired gag of Romney placing his old dog Seamus, in his carrier, atop an airplane.

As the video ended, Obama joked about criticism he's received in recent days over eating dog meat when he was a little boy in Indonesia, an incident he wrote about in his book, Dreams From My Father.

"That is pretty rough, but I cannot take it, because my step-father always told me it is a boy-eat-dog world out there."

An earlier witticism he delivered on this theme:

"What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?" Obama asked. "A pit bull is delicious."

After a pause, he added, "A little soy sauce...."

This any-shtick-to-eat-a-dog comedy is a matter of taste.

An honest person acknowledges that our selective carnivorism is an ambiguous position.

And again, I don't (of course) hold against Obama that he ate—as a child living abroad—a foodstuff we find appalling here.

To my sense of taste, though, shrugging off childhood dog-eating to a cultural divide is one thing. But making light of having done so in this manner was vulgar. Your mileage may vary.