Obama’s White House Correspondents Dinner joke could have been mine

Did President Obama steal a political gag from me for his routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner?

I know quite a few conservatives think I’m a fanboy for the president (that’s not true -- I’m a fanboy for his amazing wife), but if he has stooped to ripping off my cartoons, I may have to open my own investigation into Benghazi and demand that he give back his premature Nobel Peace Prize.

The possible cartoon theft happened Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. annual banquet in the nation’s capital. When the reporters first hosted a president -- Calvin Coolidge in 1924 -- the dinner was a private, all-white, all-male soiree. Now, it has become a celebrity roast that draws nearly as many attendees from Hollywood as from inside the Beltway. This year, everyone from Zooey Deschanel and Jessica Simpson to Julianna Marguiles and Sofia Vergara showed up to pose for a phalanx of photographers, just as if it were the Emmys. Actors from the trio of alternative-reality political shows, “House of Cards,” “Veep” and “Scandal” sat down to dine alongside real politicians and reporters.

Joel McHale from the NBC comedy “Community” was the evening’s featured comedian. McHale’s jokes were overly crass and, as has often been the case when past comics have tried to compete with the most powerful man in the world, the president upstaged him. Starting at least with Bill Clinton, White House staffers have gotten smart enough to obtain expert help when crafting the commander in chief’s standup routine. This may not have been Obama’s sharpest performance, but he still was the best comedian in the room.

For this year’s bit, Obama employed visuals, including a well-produced video of Vice President Joe Biden and Julia Louis-Dreyfus sneaking around the White House with Louis-Dreyfus in character as the fictional vice president from HBO’s “Veep.” First Lady Michelle Obama’s cameo appearance in the video once again showed how comfortable she is on camera (post-White House, the first lady could easily be the next Oprah, if not the next Hillary Clinton).

The president’s main comic gimmick was to set up a joke and then turn to a screen image that delivered the punch line. An example of this was when he honed in on right-wing pundits who have expressed a curious admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Anyway, this year, I’ve promised to use more executive actions to get things done without Congress,” Obama said. “My critics call this the “imperial presidency ... You would think they’d appreciate a more assertive approach, considering that the new conservative darling is none other than Vladimir Putin. Last year, Pat Buchanan said Putin is ‘headed straight for the Nobel Peace Prize.’ He said this. Now I know it sounds crazy but to be fair, they give those to just about anybody these days. So it could happen. But it’s not just Pat -- Rudy Giuliani said Putin is ‘what you call a leader.’ Mike Huckabee and Sean Hannity keep talking about his bare chest, which is kind of weird.”

At that point, an image appeared on the big screen behind Obama. It showed Hannity, Giuliani and Huckabee bunched together on a bed like giddy, grinning teenage girls. Behind them, pictured on a heart-festooned pink poster, is the object of their crush: a shirtless “Vlad” Putin.

The image got a big laugh -- maybe bigger than the laughs I got with a cartoon on March 7 that showed pajama-clad Giuliani, Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh gathered on a bed, gushing over a poster image of a shirtless Putin. Could it be? Did the White House comedy crew see my cartoon and borrow the idea?

Well, a reality of the cartoon business is that, on any given day, several artists are likely to produce very similar images. Many cartoon ideas that seem brilliant and unique are actually pretty darn obvious and pop into more than one deadline-driven brain. Folks in my profession launch into frequent disputes about plagiarism because of this phenomenon. Though sometimes the ripping off is real and shockingly brazen, most of the time similarities between cartoons merely prove that the muse of satire is a promiscuous lady.

So, I guess I have to assume the president owes me no credit. Still, if he wants some help with next year’s presentation, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of great ideas -- or at least I know where he can go to steal ‘em.