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S. Robert Lichter - Politics Is a Joke!: How TV Comedians Are Remaking Political Life

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Book:
Politics Is a Joke!: How TV Comedians Are Remaking Political Life
Author:
S Robert Lichter / Jody C Baumgartner / Jonathan S Morris / Daniel Amundson
Publisher:
Routledge
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Year:
2014
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London
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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 OBrien, 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.

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Politics Is a Joke!

How TV Comedians Are Remaking Political Life

S. Robert Lichter

George Mason University

Jody C Baumgartner

East Carolina University

Jonathan S. Morris

East Carolina University

With the assistance of

Daniel Amundson

First published 2015 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Every effort has been made to secure required permissions for all text, images, maps, and other art reprinted in this volume.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lichter, S. Robert.

Politics is a joke! : how TV comedians are remaking political life / S. Robert Lichter, George Mason University, Jody C Baumgartner, East Carolina University, Jonathan S. Morris, East Carolina University.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8133-4717-2 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-0-8133-4718-9 (e-book) 1. Television in politics--United States. 2. Television talk shows--Political aspects--United States. 3. United States--Politics and government--1993-2001--Humor. 4. Television comedies--United States--Influence. 5. Political satire, American--History and criticism. I. Baumgartner, Jody C., 1958- II. Morris, Jonathan S. III. Title.

HE8700.76.U6L52 2014

973.930207--dc23

2014003779

ISBN 13: 978-0-8133-4717-2 (pbk)

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

Will Rogers

Contents

It may seem hard to believe today, but once upon a time there was almost no political humor on television. Until the 1980s, the broadcast networks were the only game in town, and their prime time sitcoms rarely ventured into the realm of politics. The main action took place after prime time on NBC. In the 1970s, Saturday Night Live featured some political comedy, and SNL cast member Chevy Chase became famous for portraying then-president Gerald Ford as a klutz who tripped over his own feet and many other objects. On weekdays in the same time slot, talk show host Johnny Carsons Tonight Show monologues included some one-liners that skewered politicians, unlike follow-up act in the 1980s David Letterman, who mostly steered clear of political material on Late Night.

Then Lee Atwater, the campaign manager for 1988 Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush, mentioned that he paid close attention to the political jokes in Carsons monologues as a barometer of how the candidates were playing in the real America outside Washington, DC. That comment in turn brought the content of late night talk shows to the attention of the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a research center that conducts studies of the news and entertainment media, of which I am director.

Up until then, the CMPA had concentrated on analyzing the content of political journalismnews coverage of presidential elections, controversial policy issues, political scandals, and the like. Its forays into entertainment media consisted mainly of counting instances of sex and violence on television, along with a study of social themes in TV entertainment, which became the basis of my book Prime Time: How TV Portrays American Culture (Regnery Publishing, 1993). In those days before the rise of infotainment, few people in politics or journalism cared about anything TV talk show hosts said or did. Even if they discussed politics, their comments were assumed to be too frivolous to take seriously.

More or less as a lark, the CMPA started tracking the political jokes featured in the Carson and Letterman monologues. This tracking process proved popular with the student coders, who enjoyed tracking the utterances of Carson and Letterman a lot more than those of Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings (the network evening news anchors at the time). The data produced from the tracking of the monologues proved even more popular with journalists, who rewarded the CMPAs efforts by providing its work with a heavy dose of publicity. It was probably the first time most journalists had ever thought about late night in a political context. And if it was news to them, that made it news for their readers as well. So, in a small and inadvertent way, the CMPA may have contributed to the rise of infotainment, or at least to the rise in attention paid to infotainment by serious journalists.

It didnt hurt that, at the 1988 Republican nominating convention, George Bush gave comedians a gift that kept on giving by choosing Indiana Senator Dan Quayle as his running mate. If you know who Dan Quayle is, you dont need any further explanation. If you dont, youre in for a treat as you encounter the wealth of Quayle jokes recounted in this book. The gale of jokes blew so hard that it almost swept Quayle off the public stage altogether. And by almost being laughed off the ticket, he personified the rising influence of political humor on the real world of politics.

In light of the positive response to the CMPAs initial studies, it continued to track the monologues throughout the campaign season and periodically thereafter until the early 1990s, when it began continuous tracking with the same kind of detailed analysis used for its studies of news contentcataloguing not only whom each joke was about but also what it was about (an extensive list broken out into topics and subtopics). Of course, it wasnt just the technical aspects of the work that created an audience for it; it was the fun of learning who were the most-joked-about politicians or candidates or public figures, as well as the simple enjoyment of the jokes themselves. Over the years, as a new generation of late night talk show hosts provided more and more material, the CMPAs reports became a marker and a measure of a new force in American politics.

Meanwhile, back in academia, scholars had taken notice of this phenomenon, and studies began appearing that examined the effects of late night jokes on audiences. Among these researchers were Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan Morris, whose interest in the subject came about almost accidentally. Soon after they started teaching at East Carolina University in the fall of 2003, they began casting about for ideas that might make for fruitful collaborative research. The following spring, during a six-hour drive home from a conference, Morris suggested combining his interest in media effects with Baumgartners in presidential campaigns by conducting an experiment. His idea was to expose students to short video clips from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to determine what effect, if any, viewership of the program had on presidential candidate evaluations.

The resulting publication explored the programs multiple effects on viewers attitudes toward candidates as well as the electoral process as a whole. However, the substance of the findings was almost secondary to the publications reception. The authors were completely unprepared for the attention this research received from national and local media outlets. After reading a number of stories focused on the article and granting numerous interviews, the obvious occurred to them: perhaps they had stumbled upon a research agenda. Since that time Baumgartner and Morris have, individually and together, written a number of articles examining the effects of viewing political humor as well as edited a book titled

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