
eBook - PDF
Dubious Pundits
Presidential Politics, Late-Night Comedy, and the Public Sphere
- 181 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
About this book
Over the last decades of the 20th century, and into the 21st, humor on late-night TV became a more influential part of the United States' political conversations. Not only did viewers talk about what the shows were saying, but serious journalists in newspapers and television news did as well. This book explores how Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert became popular pundits, with their commentaries often being shown on the news or quoted in the papers, and how Tina Fey's parody of Sarah Palin eclipsed the real life candidate herself. This transformation occurred after the attacks on 9/11 and the beginning of the War in Iraq, when comedy figures were often more critical and informative than traditional news sources. At the same time, they became more substantive in their critiques than political humor often had been in the past, which relied heavily on mocking political candidates' personality quirks. Using transcripts from Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report during the presidential elections from 1980-2008, this book takes a comprehensive look at how the comedy itself transformed. In addition, the analysis includes how journalists in the Washington Post and the New York Times discussed the shows at the time, revealing how they once denigrated the programs, but came to regard them as valuable narrative resources.
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Dubious Pundits by Nickie Michaud Wild in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Communication Studies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Contents
- Introduction: The Political Comedy Public Sphere
- Chapter One: Political Comedy in the Reagan/Bush Era: Unkind and Not So Gentle
- Chapter Two: The Clinton Era: Humor Below the Belt
- Chapter Three: Bush v. Gore and the Comedy of Chaos
- Chapter Four: The 9/11 Era: “Now They Are Pundits”
- Chapter Five: The 2008 Election: Authenticity (Or Lack Thereof)
- Conclusion: The Structural Transformation of Political Humor
- Methods
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author