Late-night comics sock it to democracy, some say

April 13, 2008|By Stevenson Swanson, Tribune correspondent

NEW YORK — John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in a rowboat out in the middle of a lake. The boat rolls over. Who's saved?

The United States.

Making fun of politicians is as American as singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the start of a baseball game. But does the relentless ribbing have a serious underside? If the late-night talk shows make fun of every politician, night after night and election cycle after election cycle, is the butt of the joke no longer the politician but the American democratic system?

Russell Peterson thinks so. Peterson, a University of Iowa professor who once worked as a political cartoonist and stand-up comedian, contends that the cumulative effect of nightly monologues by Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O'Brien is corrosive. If all politicians are corrupt, laughable, puffed-up egomaniacs, what difference does it make who gets your vote, or whether you vote at all?

"I really do think that this sort of belief, that it doesn't matter, is one of the most damaging beliefs that a democracy can harbor," said Peterson, author of the recently published "Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke." "I don't think comedy invented that belief, but it's one of the most important avenues through which it is expressed."

Political comedy is hardly new. Take that rowboat joke, which Peterson calls the "ur-joke of political comedy," a laugh line so basic that it can be easily updated and still tap into a fundamental distaste for politicians. Put any set of candidates from previous elections in the boat -- whether it's George Bush and John Kerry from 2004 or Theodore Roosevelt and Alton Parker from 1904 -- and a contemporary audience would laugh at the punch line.

In the television era, the only consistent source of late-night political comedy for a couple of decades was Johnny Carson, the longtime host of "The Tonight Show." But he wielded his comedic sword carefully.

"He was by no means a satirical political comedian," said Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University. "He was the kind of guy at a party who makes people laugh but never crosses a line."

But since the 1980s, the late-night scene has grown far more crowded. Among the biggest names, Leno, Letterman and O'Brien are on network television; cable offers Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher, among others.

Inevitably, the competition has altered the nature of political comedy.

"You've got to shout a little louder to get attention," Thompson said. "But the culture has changed vastly too. You can't get through Vietnam, Watergate, O.J. Simpson and Monica Lewinsky without changing."

Cable shows changed scene

The proliferation of late-night comics on broadcast and cable channels has increased the potential impact of political comedy, especially in light of the popularity of Stewart's satirical news program "The Daily Show" and Colbert's mock commentary show "The Colbert Report," both on the Comedy Central cable channel.

A 2004 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 21 percent of people age 18 to 29 said they regularly got their political information from late-night comedy programs, up from 9 percent in 2000.

Capitalizing on his popularity among young adults, Colbert will do his show this week from the University of Pennsylvania in advance of the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.

The fact that more under-30 viewers are getting their information from Colbert and his comic cronies has disturbed many political commentators, but other factors make it worse, in Peterson's view. Political comedy, at least as it's practiced by Leno, Letterman and O'Brien, tends to focus relentlessly on personality flaws, such as Bush's verbal gaffes or former President Bill Clinton's skirt-chasing, instead of on questions of political policy.

"That fits into the natural realm of comedy," said Peterson, who did a turn as a stand-up comic in the early 1990s. "And you can make jokes without really being political."

Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew center, agrees that some politicians are unfairly pigeon-holed, citing Gerald Ford, whose occasional stumbles Chevy Chase lampooned mercilessly on "Saturday Night Live." In reality, he said, Ford was far from a bumbler, and arguably one of the most athletic men to occupy the White House.

"One could certainly watch these shows and come away with the idea that all politicians are crooks and liars," Keeter said. But, he added, "I think it's important to keep in mind that cynicism, skepticism, even anger are not necessarily related to lack of participation."

Keeter noted that conservative talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh specialize in riling people up so they will be more motivated to vote.