Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy Into A Joke
by Russell L. Peterson
While comedy and politics have always been intertwined, something strange happened in our culture over the last forty years: political humor became more and more pervasive yet the messengers eagerly declared that they held no political allegiance and that, c’mon folks, this is all just a joke anyway (just like our government). You do not have to hold a degree in philosophy to understand the basic foundation that Freud advanced in that jokes have a dual nature: they allow us to say what we really mean and that they act as a release from the internal struggles between our mind wanting to adhere to strict rules and our nature wanting an exemption from time to time and what Peterson writes in Strange Bedfellows is that, yes, jokes are great and true satire can ultimately be a positive societal force, but what exactly are we watching and hearing on a nightly basis? Does it undermine and overly simplify what our government’s role is? By scrapping all elements of true satire in sketches and monologues in favor of character attacks, does late-night humor dumb us down? It may sound irrelevant but like anything else, it says a lot about who we are that The Tonight Show is significantly more popular than The Daily Show or that Stephen Colbert’s routine at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner went over so badly with the people in the room, whereas a Bush impersonator had the room on its knees.
To be sure, stand-up comedy, late-night comedy, and SNL-type skits all bathe in the same swimming pool as the news and pop culture outlets (how else would we get the jokes if the context was absent?) but in gradually following the news’ outlets lead in sacrificing basic journalism for broadcasting character summaries (i.e.–John McCain is a maverick, Barack Obama is hope personified, Hillary Clinton is cold, etc.), late-night comedy too has shied away from its basic principle of digging into its subjects while also informing its audience in favor of character summaries too (i.e.–Bush is a dumb, monkey-looking hick, Gore is stiff and statuesque, Clinton is a horny old man, etc.). It is one thing to say that the media and political spheres are hopelessly broken but quite another to actually formulate thought-provoking satire that points out why it is broken. Peterson points out that politics can polarize large portions of an audience and that is why most shows (starting with Carson) are politically neutral and cling to its inherent “equal opportunity offender” status.
A show like The Daily Show, with its smaller audience size (which Peterson creatively refers to as narrowcasting), is more likely to spend more time pointing out the absurdity of a CNN piece or a Cheney speech than say, Conan O’Brien, who would rather make a couple of light-hearted jabs. While shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Real Time can possess a definite left/liberal slant sometimes it is worth asking if the glaring differences between them and Conan, Dave, and Jay are really political or social. Does the latter group always score higher rating over the former group because the political jokes are more generic?
Throughout the book, Peterson highlights political moments that forever changed the late-night comedy machine, with the Watergate scandal being the primary event and secondary events such as the arrival of Dan Quayle and Bill Clinton marking the new age of the modern finished comic product. Sometimes jokes are simply meant to be jokes–nothing serious, nothing polarizing–but this new era of equal opportunity offending and the character jokes (rather than the substance jokes) have actually done the opposite of their intentions. It is now a political rite of passage for Presidential candidates and Senators to pull up a seat next to Jay and Dave or make an SNL appearance. By distilling political jokes down to nothing more than caricatures we Americans have collectively agreed that we want to humanize our political leaders and candidates by poking fun at them and, at the same time, applaud them for looking “more real” because they can take a joke.
Of course, it is easy to see what the residual side effect of this relationship has brought: political campaigns, the incumbents, and the candidates now go out of their way to say nothing of substance and agree to be entertained by the people who impersonate and mock them. It is kind of a retarded cycle and one that Peterson does a good job of pointing out and expanding on. Strange Bedfellows is a pretty concise read (just over two hundred pages) yet does well to point out a brief history of late-night television (and Civil War era satirical writing), expanding on the “equal opportunity offender” ideal, and providing plenty of examples of the tones of jokes told during monologues. I found this book to be very good but it definitely seems to be missing something yet I don’t know what it is exactly. Maybe it is because the nature of the topic lends itself towards contradictory avenues (mostly, because late-night humor and pop culture and politics are so intertwined it can be hairy to sort out who is the lesser of two evils) but Peterson makes a noble attempt at cracking this subject matter. And it is also hard to disagree with his last point in the book: that the era of information that we now live in makes it much easier for people to only search out the entertainment and political channels that they really want to and, thus, just want to be convinced by their convincers.
Shouldn’t there be a group of people who embrace living on the fray and point out the absurdity of some of this stuff? Don’t we like to see the little guy stick it to the Man? Aren’t we a country that loves, in the name of freedom of speech, to watch comics throw up a middle finger to authority? When Stephen Colbert spoke at the 2006 Correspondents’ Dinner, he made the following jab at the press:
“But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – FICTION!”
It seems kind of sad that no one, during that night, had an “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe he said that in a room full of the press”-type reaction. Maybe we have been dumbed down by late-night comedy a little bit.
