Post by Boomer Chick on Aug 16, 2004 14:52:48 GMT -5
Posted on Mon, Aug. 16, 2004
Political humor takes on a nastier tone
By Mark de la Viña
Mercury News
www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/9406195.htm?1c
If politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians, then send in the clowns.
Comedians and entertainers have taken an increasingly harsh tone in their political humor in recent months. At least, that's the consensus among observers asked by the Mercury News about the scabrous monologues heard on TV and in comedy clubs.
David Letterman and Jay Leno have been telling barbed jokes about the administration's handling of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and elastic justifications for the Iraq war. Stand-ups are cracking wise on a rise in poll numbers for John Kerry during the week when he stopped campaigning in order to honor the memory of Ronald Reagan.
Comedians, unlike many mainstream media outlets, can -- and increasingly do -- express what the average citizen is thinking, says Frederick Turner, assistant professor of communications at Stanford University.
``Sometimes, information is too hard to take in all at once, and that's one thing that comedians do in a culture -- they serve as early warning systems. They're the clowns who can tell the truth, the clowns who can say the emperor has no clothes,'' notes Turner, who specializes in media and American cultural history.
Leading the charge is Comedy Central's ``The Daily Show'' the news-program satire hosted by Jon Stewart. It has a ``huge influence on what other comedians are doing,'' according to Robert J. Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, ``and political leaders, the establishment and the intellectual minority are paying attention.''
``The Daily Show'' has been broadcasting hard-hitting pieces that, though laced with humor, take leaders to task at the same time. On June 21, the program ran a June 2004 clip of Dick Cheney saying he had ``absolutely not'' linked 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta with Saddam Hussein's government, and then followed it with a December 2001 clip where Cheney says a meeting between Hussein and Atta was ``pretty well confirmed.''
Gotcha!
``Mr. Vice President,'' Stewart said, staring into the camera, ``I have to inform you: Your pants are on fire.''
For nearly two years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, comedians treated political humor like a dinner guest with SARS. But as the nation became increasingly disenchanted with the war, comics sharpened their pens again.
Their frustration mirrors that of a significant number of Americans, hinted at by the strong box-office showing for ``Fahrenheit 9/11,'' Michael Moore's film trashing the Bush administration.
Thompson says the culture wars reflected in political humor were put on ice from 9/11 until Bush declared, ``Mission accomplished!'' in Iraq, in May 2003. Then, as disheartening news continued to flow out of the Persian Gulf, comics who had been restrained by a desire to support U.S. troops and the national resolve in time of war suddenly found targets and an audience ready again to embrace them.
``Comedians felt dammed up,'' Thompson says. ``That's now being released. Comedy is now the best place for these kinds of ideas to be talked about. And people are responding to it, like people responded to talk radio in the '90s.''
Club performers such as Carlos Mencia, who usually focuses on racial and cross-cultural tensions, now jokes that the war is just another chapter in the tome on American imperialism. Wanda Sykes, whose attitude-flecked shtick was formerly apolitical, now says that the war is less about terrorism than vengeance -- from a president looking to settle an old family score with Saddam Hussein.
``She's never gone after George Bush before,'' says Geof Wills, national comedy booker for Clear Channel Entertainment. ``But the Bush administration has absolutely become more of a target for comedians. And there definitely has been a shift in how they're going after him.''
Politicians, bless their little hearts, have been feeding entertainers punch lines ever since ancient Greece. Forty years ago, Vaughn Meader made fun of John F. Kennedy on the ``First Family'' comedy album. Talk show hosts razzed Dan Quayle about spelling and lamthingyed Jimmy Carter for confessing to the ``sin'' of lustful thoughts. They had a field day riffing on Clinton's sexual peccadilloes and George W. Bush's way with polysyllabic words. But mostly the quips were apolitical.
The exception was the boom in political comedy during the late '60s and early '70s, at the height of the Vietnam War-protest era, when TV shows such as ``Laugh-In'' and ``All in the Family'' ruled the airwaves. Since then, political comedy has largely taken a back seat to escapist material. ``ALF,'' anyone?
Tom Sawyer, co-owner of Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco, sees the rebirth of political humor in terms of questions about whether to give Bush a mandate in the upcoming election and about the administration's execution of the war.
Not going to take it
``Comedians, like many Americans, are getting mad,'' Sawyer says. ``For the audiences, there's nobody out there saying, `Enough!' But these guys are.''
Perhaps no mainstream entertainer reflects the postwar shift in tone more vividly than Letterman. Last September, in one of his most pointed jokes, the ``Late Show'' host said, ``President Bush is asking Congress for $80 billion to rebuild Iraq. And when you make out that check, remember there are two L's in Halliburton.''
Though ``Late Show'' executive producer Robert Burnett insists Letterman has no political agenda, the Democratic-leaning activist group American Family Voices used his quip as a lead-in to a television spot accusing the Bush administration of favoritism and Halliburton of war profiteering. (Vice President Dick Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, retains stock options in the company valued at more than $18 million and receives $150,000 a year in deferred compensation.)
Those jokes and more like them are playing an important role in the run up to the election, Thompson maintains. Though journalism was long ago dubbed the ``fourth estate,'' helping keep the three branches of government in check, humor is now doing something that far transcends escapism, he argues.
``I'd go so far to say that comedy is the fifth estate,'' Thompson adds. ``It's able to report certain ideas in keeping up with what the government is doing. In some ways, the fifth estate of comedy is able to keep the fourth estate of journalism in line.''
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact Mark de la Viña at mdelavina@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5914.
Political humor takes on a nastier tone
By Mark de la Viña
Mercury News
www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/9406195.htm?1c
If politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians, then send in the clowns.
Comedians and entertainers have taken an increasingly harsh tone in their political humor in recent months. At least, that's the consensus among observers asked by the Mercury News about the scabrous monologues heard on TV and in comedy clubs.
David Letterman and Jay Leno have been telling barbed jokes about the administration's handling of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and elastic justifications for the Iraq war. Stand-ups are cracking wise on a rise in poll numbers for John Kerry during the week when he stopped campaigning in order to honor the memory of Ronald Reagan.
Comedians, unlike many mainstream media outlets, can -- and increasingly do -- express what the average citizen is thinking, says Frederick Turner, assistant professor of communications at Stanford University.
``Sometimes, information is too hard to take in all at once, and that's one thing that comedians do in a culture -- they serve as early warning systems. They're the clowns who can tell the truth, the clowns who can say the emperor has no clothes,'' notes Turner, who specializes in media and American cultural history.
Leading the charge is Comedy Central's ``The Daily Show'' the news-program satire hosted by Jon Stewart. It has a ``huge influence on what other comedians are doing,'' according to Robert J. Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, ``and political leaders, the establishment and the intellectual minority are paying attention.''
``The Daily Show'' has been broadcasting hard-hitting pieces that, though laced with humor, take leaders to task at the same time. On June 21, the program ran a June 2004 clip of Dick Cheney saying he had ``absolutely not'' linked 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta with Saddam Hussein's government, and then followed it with a December 2001 clip where Cheney says a meeting between Hussein and Atta was ``pretty well confirmed.''
Gotcha!
``Mr. Vice President,'' Stewart said, staring into the camera, ``I have to inform you: Your pants are on fire.''
For nearly two years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, comedians treated political humor like a dinner guest with SARS. But as the nation became increasingly disenchanted with the war, comics sharpened their pens again.
Their frustration mirrors that of a significant number of Americans, hinted at by the strong box-office showing for ``Fahrenheit 9/11,'' Michael Moore's film trashing the Bush administration.
Thompson says the culture wars reflected in political humor were put on ice from 9/11 until Bush declared, ``Mission accomplished!'' in Iraq, in May 2003. Then, as disheartening news continued to flow out of the Persian Gulf, comics who had been restrained by a desire to support U.S. troops and the national resolve in time of war suddenly found targets and an audience ready again to embrace them.
``Comedians felt dammed up,'' Thompson says. ``That's now being released. Comedy is now the best place for these kinds of ideas to be talked about. And people are responding to it, like people responded to talk radio in the '90s.''
Club performers such as Carlos Mencia, who usually focuses on racial and cross-cultural tensions, now jokes that the war is just another chapter in the tome on American imperialism. Wanda Sykes, whose attitude-flecked shtick was formerly apolitical, now says that the war is less about terrorism than vengeance -- from a president looking to settle an old family score with Saddam Hussein.
``She's never gone after George Bush before,'' says Geof Wills, national comedy booker for Clear Channel Entertainment. ``But the Bush administration has absolutely become more of a target for comedians. And there definitely has been a shift in how they're going after him.''
Politicians, bless their little hearts, have been feeding entertainers punch lines ever since ancient Greece. Forty years ago, Vaughn Meader made fun of John F. Kennedy on the ``First Family'' comedy album. Talk show hosts razzed Dan Quayle about spelling and lamthingyed Jimmy Carter for confessing to the ``sin'' of lustful thoughts. They had a field day riffing on Clinton's sexual peccadilloes and George W. Bush's way with polysyllabic words. But mostly the quips were apolitical.
The exception was the boom in political comedy during the late '60s and early '70s, at the height of the Vietnam War-protest era, when TV shows such as ``Laugh-In'' and ``All in the Family'' ruled the airwaves. Since then, political comedy has largely taken a back seat to escapist material. ``ALF,'' anyone?
Tom Sawyer, co-owner of Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco, sees the rebirth of political humor in terms of questions about whether to give Bush a mandate in the upcoming election and about the administration's execution of the war.
Not going to take it
``Comedians, like many Americans, are getting mad,'' Sawyer says. ``For the audiences, there's nobody out there saying, `Enough!' But these guys are.''
Perhaps no mainstream entertainer reflects the postwar shift in tone more vividly than Letterman. Last September, in one of his most pointed jokes, the ``Late Show'' host said, ``President Bush is asking Congress for $80 billion to rebuild Iraq. And when you make out that check, remember there are two L's in Halliburton.''
Though ``Late Show'' executive producer Robert Burnett insists Letterman has no political agenda, the Democratic-leaning activist group American Family Voices used his quip as a lead-in to a television spot accusing the Bush administration of favoritism and Halliburton of war profiteering. (Vice President Dick Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, retains stock options in the company valued at more than $18 million and receives $150,000 a year in deferred compensation.)
Those jokes and more like them are playing an important role in the run up to the election, Thompson maintains. Though journalism was long ago dubbed the ``fourth estate,'' helping keep the three branches of government in check, humor is now doing something that far transcends escapism, he argues.
``I'd go so far to say that comedy is the fifth estate,'' Thompson adds. ``It's able to report certain ideas in keeping up with what the government is doing. In some ways, the fifth estate of comedy is able to keep the fourth estate of journalism in line.''
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact Mark de la Viña at mdelavina@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5914.