Laughing Matters

Humor and American Politics in the Media Age

Jody Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Jody Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135907778
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

This book examines the role of humor in modern American politics.

Writtenby a wide range of authors from the fields of political science and communication, this book is organized according to two general topics:

• how the modern media present political humor

• 
  
  

• the various ways in which political humor influences politics.

Laughing Matters is an excellent text for courses on media and politics, public opinion, and campaigns and elections.

III

Ready for Prime Time? Televised Political Humor

9

Our First Cartoon President

Bill Clinton and the Politics of Late Night Comedy

David Niven, S. Robert Lichter, and Daniel Amundson

“I'm going to miss Bill Clinton,” Conan O'Brien, host of Late Night, wrote as Clinton left the White House.¹ “And I don't mean only in a selfish ‘He was great for late-night comedians’ way. I'm going to miss Bill Clinton in that aching, visceral way.”

Unlike most presidents who provided only one main avenue for caricature, “Clinton was wildly generous to the comedic mind.” Indeed, O'Brien exalted, “Comedians will soon have to build their own Clinton Presidential Library just to catalog the thousands upon thousands of joke variations made possible by his two terms. He made our job so easy it was a challenge not to feel irrelevant.”

As O'Brien suggested, Bill Clinton was the central political figure in late night comedy during his presidency, and even in its immediate aftermath. Here we explore popular conceptions of Bill Clinton through the lens of late night humor. We note the scope of attention Clinton received on late night comedies, the topics for which he was mocked, and the portrayal of his political associates. We do so both to enhance our understanding of Clinton's place in the American zeitgeist, and to closely view the political side of late night comedy, an increasingly prominent presence in modern politics.

Clinton's Place in American Politics

For many scholars, pundits, and observers, President Clinton represents the greatest paradox in modern politics. Confounding the expectations of nearly every commentator alive, Bill Clinton made it through his scandal-plagued second term not only without a significant loss of popularity, but with a nontrivial gain in popularity. As John Zaller put it, “It has never been this clear that it is possible for public opinion and media opinion to go marching off in opposing directions.”²

Indeed, numerous scholars document the general upward trend in Clinton popularity in the face of sexually related scandals.³ Arthur Miller notes that Clinton's job approval was higher a year into the investigation of his activities with Monica Lewinsky than it had been at any time prior to the scandal being made public.⁴

Explanations for this anomaly vary. Some point to the importance of a robust economy in satisfying voters’ top concern.⁵ Generally, however, scholars suggest that the nature of the scandal and the level of attention it received may have shielded Clinton from the consequences of his behavior.⁶ To wit, Miller finds that even among Republicans, who were readily inclined to believe the worst about Clinton, there was a belief that media coverage of the scandal was excessive.⁷

Toward that end, some analysts argue that the people's notion of a private/public divide was violated by the investigation into Clinton.⁸ That is, even as polls showed a clear majority of Americans thought that Clinton had lied about his private life, a majority approved of his job as president, and opposed the impeachment proceedings.⁹ Instead of taking Clinton's private behavior as an indictment of his presidency, most Americans took interest in Clinton's private behavior as an indictment of the system, the media, and of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr.¹⁰ Examining a series of polls taken after the scandal, Miller found that “for most, the scandal was not about the rule of law or punishing a president who had lied under oath or obstructed justice; it was about a zealous special prosecutor.”¹¹

From this perspective, obsession with his private activities and the negative portrayal of Clinton's accusers only served to emphasize Clinton's greatest political asset with average Americans: his perceived empathy and concern for people in general and, in particular, people in need.¹² Indeed, after the Starr report was released, Clinton maintained the approval of a majority of Americans, while six in ten Americans disapproved of Kenneth Starr.¹³ A March 1998 Pew Center poll found 62 percent had a favorable evaluation of Bill Clinton, in contrast with 22 percent for Kenneth Starr, 17 percent for Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones, and 10 percent for Linda Tripp.¹⁴ Starr, even though he was working with a media hungry for every scandal tidbit, was ultimately seen as, at best, politically self-serving, and at worst, a scandal-monger delighting in the muck and mire.¹⁵

Quite tellingly, in a December 1998 poll, Americans by a large margin (60 to 34 percent) concluded that the best way to avoid future presidential sex scandals was to leave a president's private life unscrutinized, rather than to elect a president of high moral character.¹⁶ Concomitantly, Robert Spitzer argues that the larger lesson of the Clinton impeachment will be “that Congress will keep the impeachment blunderbuss in its cabinet, precisely because it was so easily used against Clinton.”¹⁷

Late Night in Politics

While Bill Clinton was confounding analysts’ expectations, late night comedy programming was increasingly making its mark in our political communication information stream. When the Pew Center asked Americans in 2000 which media sources had provided them information about the presidential candidates, television comedies (such as Late Night, The Tonight Show, The Late Show, and Politically Incorrect) finished ahead of news magazines, the Internet, C-SPAN, morning news programs, public television news, political talk shows on cable networks, and Sunday morning network talk shows.¹⁸ Indeed, during the height of the presidential election contest in 2000, candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush received more opportunity to speak in their own words on late night comedies than on the major network news programs.¹⁹ Comments from presidential campaign advisors attest to the significance political professionals place on late night portrayals of their candidates. For example, Dan Schnur of the John McCain for President campaign claimed that “Jay Leno is a lot cheaper than polling. [Late night shows] often reflect what voters feel, and their observations have a tremendous effect on how voters view the candidates, much more so than evening news shows”²⁰; Alex Castellanos, a consultant who worked for the Bush campaign, asserted that late night has “the power to create conventional wisdom in politics; they'll set how a candidate is perceived in stone.”²¹

When George W. Bush appeared on the Late Show in October 2000, Letterman said emphatically to Bush, “Listen to me, Governor.” Bush answered, “I am listening to you; I don't have any choice.” That same month when Letterman drew laughs declaring to his show's audience that “The election will be decided here,” there was already a growing array of observers, experts, and involved parties who agreed with his sentiment. Indeed, one writer proclaimed that his influence over popular culture and, ultimately, political judgments meant that “Letterman is the Walter Cronkite of our generation.”²² Academics too, when consulted by the media, were anything but dismissive of the role of late night humor in our politics.²³

All this attention does not mean that a wide array of viewpoints was presented on late night television programming. There is no shortage of evidence demonstrating that the traditional news media value negative stories over positive stories when covering politics.²⁴ Studies of the portrayal of politics and public figures in television entertainment also tend to find a preponderance of negative depictions. S. Robert Lichter, Linda Lichter, and Daniel Amundson, for example, studied four decades of prime-time series television's portrayal of the public sphere and found a “jaundiced view of government” with politicians often shown as “corrupt evildoers” and the “handmaiden of special interests.”²⁵ Concomitantly, previous studies on the political content of late night comedy have found that the jokes were overwhelmingly negative and targeted at the personal characteristics of the candidates rather than on the issues.²⁶ In other words, such studies suggest the misadventures of Bill Clinton represented something close to a late night comedic ideal.

The significance of this tendency is suggested in research that finds humor is a particularly effective means of communicating political messages. Eron Berg and Louis Lippman, for example, observe that messages with humor are more easily remembered.²⁷ William Benoit, Andrew Klyukovski, and John McHale conclude that political humor has great potential influence because of its ability to make weighty political topics more accessible.²⁸ Jim Lyttle suggests that ironic humor enhances the persuasiveness of a message, in part by providing a distraction from counterarguments.²⁹ Bryan Whaley and Rachel Holloway add that use of humor can aid in making a political point not only forcefully, but concisely.³⁰

Data on Late Night Politics

With a database including every joke told on the Late Show, the Tonight Show, and Late Night from 1996 to 2001, and every joke told on Politically Incorrect from 1998 to 2001, we consider the political state of late night comedy through the depiction of its central target of that era, Bill Clinton, and those with whom he was closely associated. The database was built with the efforts of a team of trained coders who were asked to record the target and subject of monologue jokes and other comedy material during first-run episodes of the four programs.

We turn now to the data on late night political jokes to explore four main areas: (1) the amount of attention paid to Bill Clinton during his second term, (2) the subjects associated with Clinton, (3) the amount of attention paid to Clinton associates, and (4) the implications of late night comedy for Clinton.

Collectively, the four late night shows included 15,528 jokes about U.S. political figures between 1996 and 2001; 5,915 jokes (38 percent) focused directly on Bill Clinton. As Table 9.1 shows, Clinton was not only the dominant political target on these programs, he was the dominant target among all politicians, entertainers, and all other notables. For example, on the Tonight Show, Clinton was the number one humor target during each of the last four years of his presidency, and the top humor target for the year 2001, after he had been succeeded by George W. Bush. On Leno's program, Clinton was topped only by his presidential opponent, Bob Dole, in 1996. Similarly, on the Late Show, Clinton was the top humor target of 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2001. Here he was topped by Dole in 1996, and then-presidential candidate Bush in 2000. For the period overall, Clinton is far and away the top humor target, with Al Gore (1,157 jokes) second, and George W. Bush (1,118 jokes) third.

While President Clinton's many foibles certainly attracted late night attention, mere fame is the starting point for late night interest. As Jay Leno explains, “The audience has to know what you're talking about or else you'll be sunk. [The host] can't know more than anybody watching. An...