Politics Is a Joke!

How TV Comedians Are Remaking Political Life

S. Robert Lichter, Jody C Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813347172
• eBook ISBN: 9780429972928
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Does late night political humor matter? Are late-night comedians merely entertaining, or do they have the power to influence the way we think about politics and politicians? Politics Is a Joke! situates late night comedy in the historical context of political humor and demonstrates how the public turn to this venue for political information, and are in turn affected by it.

Using exclusive data collected by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the authors conduct a detailed and exhaustive analysis of political jokes on late night TV shows dating back to 1992 in order to pinpoint the main targets and themes of late-night comedy. Politics Is a Joke! uses a wide range of examples, from jokes about politicians' physical appearance and sex scandals to jokes about Congress and even the news media, to assess and understand the impact of political humor on political institutions, politicians and their policies and behavior.

Engagingly written with analysis of jokes from comedians like Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Politics is a Joke! is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the crucial role late night comedy plays in our political universe - and anyone who enjoys a good laugh.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Politics Is a Funny Business

Does late night political humor matter? Is it simply entertaining, or is it something more? Most contemporary political humorists publicly claim that their humor has no importance beyond its comedic value. Jon Stewart, for example, regularly downplays his iconoclastic status by reminding viewers and journalists that he is “just a comedian.”¹ He once famously told the hosts of CNN’s Crossfire in 2004 that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart could not be taken seriously because “the show that leads into [it] is puppets making crank phone calls.”

Regardless of the political significance, many people find the humor of late night talk shows entertaining—as evidenced, in part, by the popularity of David Letterman and Jay Leno. (Letterman has been hosting a late night talk show since 1982; and Jay Leno, from 1992 through 2014.) A recent report suggested that a third of the adult population watched either The Tonight Show with Jay Leno or The Late Show with David Letterman at least some of the time,² while approximately one-quarter sometimes watched The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.³ Late night television and the hosts of these programs also garner their share of entertainment awards. Jon Stewart, for example, appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine in 2004 and was listed among Time magazine’s “Top 100 most influential people in the world” in 2005.⁴

But beyond its value as entertainment, many people take late night comedy seriously. In fact, throughout the ages political humorists and satirists have been perceived as agents of societal and political change. In certain ancient societies, satire was associated with magic, and because of this the satirist was accorded great respect.⁵ The idea that humor and humorists have political power is perhaps best illustrated by the almost legendary role that Thomas Nast’s newspaper cartoons played in exposing the corruption of “Boss” Tweed and Tammany Hall, a political machine that dominated New York City politics in the mid-nineteenth century. Nast illustrated and published so many cartoons about Tammany Hall that Tweed was said to have reacted by ordering his aides to “stop them damn pictures.”⁶

A more contemporary example of the power of political humor involves the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper in September 2005. Many Muslims were insulted by the cartoons, and violence and rioting erupted as a consequence. The protests surrounding this controversy resulted in over two hundred deaths worldwide.⁷ Even some humorists seem to think they may be important social and political actors. After the 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain canceled a planned appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman during the fall campaign, a clearly offended Letterman reminded viewers of something he had said—tongue in cheek, to be sure—for years: “The road to the White House runs through me.”

Many see late night political comedy as a legitimate alternative news source. In their view, including these programs in a balanced news-viewing repertoire may promote better citizenship.⁸ This is particularly the case with the programming on Comedy Central. Some see The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as a new and distinctive form of journalism, partly because Jon Stewart eschews a strictly objective approach.⁹ Others argue that Stewart and Stephen Colbert (the host of The Colbert Report) help inform and educate us simply by virtue of the fact that they show us the absurdities of the system—and, by extension, how absurd we ourselves have become for accepting these absurdities.¹⁰ In fact, several studies have indicated that the amount of news coverage in The Daily Show and The Colbert Report is comparable to that of traditional news broadcasts.¹¹ Furthermore, data from the 2012 election campaign show that almost one-third (31 percent) of the public reported learning about the campaign or the candidates from late night comedy shows such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Saturday Night Live, or The Daily Show.¹²

A number of journalists agree that late night comedy should be viewed as legitimate “news.” This, again, is especially true with respect to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams once confessed that his editorial team often talks “about what The Daily Show did the night before.”¹³ In another interview Williams referred to Stewart as “a separate branch of government … an essential part of modern media and society” and went on to suggest that if it came to a choice between watching traditional news and The Daily Show, “by all means watch The Daily Show.”¹⁴

TV news commentator Bill Moyers once speculated that Stewart may be practicing a “new form of journalism,”¹⁵ and Leslie Moonves, president and chief executive officer of CBS, went so far as to suggest—albeit half-jokingly—that he would consider Stewart a viable replacement for Katie Couric as anchor of the CBS Evening News.¹⁶ A 2007 survey report suggested that Stewart was the fourth-most-trusted journalist in America, behind Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Anderson Cooper.¹⁷

Others—mostly scholars—see late night humor as a necessary and valid form of social and political commentary or expression. The Daily Show, for example, has been widely praised for its “dissident humor.”¹⁸ While some consider the humor of Saturday Night Live and broadcast network late night talk shows like Leno or Letterman to be fundamentally apolitical, political satirists like Stewart, Colbert, Bill Maher, and the like can serve as watchdogs on government and politicians.¹⁹

These programs are also credited with serving as legitimate forms of political activism (contrary to the protestations of their hosts) as well as antidotes to the cynicism engendered by the political system.²⁰ In addition, such shows can be the basis of legitimate academic research. A case in point is the collection of essays edited by scholar Jason Holt in which he relates the philosophy of The Daily Show to classical philosophy.²¹

In short, there is no question that humor (late night or otherwise) is an enduring and entertaining mode of presenting political ideas. Beyond this, as we discuss in Chapter 2, humor can help shape people’s understanding of the political world. Research has demonstrated that viewing political humor has an effect on people’s attitudes toward the targets of the humor as well as the political system in general.

Indeed, the power of late night political humor extends far beyond the realm of its effects on individuals. Late night political humor can act as a grand echo chamber, helping to spread negative messages about politicians and other aspects of political life.²² Collectively the comedy of late night talk shows constitutes a constant barrage of critical commentary about politics and politicians. Preexisting negative images, beliefs, perceptions, truths, and half-truths about the political realm are picked up and propagated even further by late night comics, who in turn likely help to strengthen these impressions.

This negative effect results from virtually all types of late night political comedy: the simpler stand-up comedy of Leno and Letterman, the more sophisticated political satire of Stewart and Colbert, and the sketch comedy of Saturday Night Live. It is even possible that such messages decrease trust in—and increase cynicism toward—politicians, government, and the political system.

In the first five chapters of this book, we review the content of late night political humor—the jokes themselves. As we examine this body of work by late night comics in some depth, it is apparent that the overall message being sent is overwhelmingly negative. And as we show in Chapter 6, this negativity seems to mirror the predominantly negative news coverage of individual politicians, suggesting that negative news about politicians and late night political humor tend to move in concert, one reinforcing the other. This is the “echo chamber” effect at work.

Mandy Grunwald, media adviser to Bill Clinton in 1992 and to Hillary Clinton in 2000, acknowledged that once the late night comedians “are making jokes about you, you have a serious problem. Whatever take they have on you is likely to stick much more solidly than what is in the political ads in papers like the Washington Post.”²³ In this sense, as noted earlier, late night comics actually serve (along with the traditional news media) as watchdogs of sorts. Chris Lehane, Al Gore’s campaign press secretary in 2000, saw these late night shows as a political weathervane: “If [a story] makes it onto Leno or Letterman, it means something.”²⁴ Many accounts suggest that Saturday Night Live’s spoof on the first presidential debate in 2000 was at least partly responsible for Gore’s decision to change the way he presented himself to the public.²⁵

Politicians not only understand this effect, they have developed ways of coping with it. As we discuss in Chapter 7, presidential candidates, who are skewered by late night comedians on a nightly basis, now regularly appear on these same programs as a way to improve their image and perhaps reach potential voters who are more familiar with the late night talk shows than with the evening newscasts. During the 2008 presidential campaign, for example, Jay Leno featured twenty-two such candidate appearances on his program, and Jon Stewart had twenty-one.²⁶ In total there were over a hundred such visits to late night programs by various candidates. Of course, these visits are made at least in part to deflect, preempt, or otherwise deflate the power of the hosts’ nightly barrage of negative messages.

In order to provide some context for our examination of late night televised political humor, we turn next to a brief history of political humor. While it might be tempting to believe that political humor is a product of the modern age, nothing could be further from the truth. Following this, we introduce the unique data utilized in our exposition of televised late night political humor. The chapter concludes with a short discussion of the plan of the book, previewing the remaining chapters.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF POLITICAL HUMOR

Political humor seems to be an inherent part of the human condition that has persisted throughout history.²⁷ While a full historical analysis of political humor is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is not difficult to find prominent and well-known examples throughout the ages. For example, the unpopular father-in-law of the Egyptian leader Tutankhamen was the subject of an unflattering caricature drawn by an unknown artist in approximately 1360 BC.²⁸ Satirical drawings of other Egyptian leaders, including Cleopatra, have also been found. Indian cartoonists poked fun at inept rulers and the Hindu god Krishna.²⁹ Many pre-Islamic Arab tribes had a poet who, prior to a battle, composed humorous verses about the enemy.

Vases and wall paintings from ancient Greece often represented their Olympian gods in profane parodies.³⁰ The comedies of Greek playwright Aristophanes frequently targeted Athenian leaders and other notables. In his play The Clouds, Aristophanes even lampooned Socrates.³¹ During the Roman Empire, political satire targeted at military commanders and various fringe religions could be found represented on walls.³² The Roman poet Horace is credited by some scholars with developing satire as a literary form in its own right.³³

In the mod...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• List of Boxes
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: POLITICS IS A FUNNY BUSINESS :
• CHAPTER2. THE RISE OF LATE NIGHT COMEDY
• CHAPTER 3. A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE
• CHAPTER 4. POLITICIANS BEHAVING BADLY
• CHAPTER 5. WHAT’S SO FUNNY?
• CHAPTER 6. LAUGHING MATTERS
• CHAPTER 7. IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM, JOIN THEM
• CHAPTER 8. POLITICAL HUMOR: PROSPECT AND RETROSPECT
• Bibliography
• Index