| According to election-year surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a substantial percentage of Americans---and a large proportion of those under the age of 30---get some of their information about politics and national affairs not from traditional news outlets, but from late-night comedy shows like Jay Leno's and David Letterman's. To many media watchers, such results suggest that jokers have superseded journalists as the arbiters of the nation's political discourse.; The truth is more complex. Comedy is not a replacement for "The News," so much as a filter standing between the primary media and the audience/electorate, further mediating an already mediated picture of reality. The late-night comedians follow the lead of mainstream journalism to a considerable degree in creating their topical material, both in the subjects they choose to "cover" and in their allegiance to a principle of evenhandedness derived from the journalistic notion of objectivity.; But the late-night comedians' non-partisan ridicule reveals more than an affinity for journalistic "objectivity." Their embrace of what they call an "equal-opportunity offender" ethos draws as well upon the profound and deep-seated distrust with which Americans regard their system of representative government. For the hosts of Late Show and Tonight, the stated rationale behind this strategy is to avoid "taking sides"---by balancing every left jab with a right hook, the comedian purports to engage in political commentary without endorsing any particular candidates or positions. In fact, Leno, Letterman and the rest are heirs to a long tradition of antipolitical humor whose practitioners have included Artemus Ward, Will Rogers and---regardless of the antiestablishment idiom he employed---Lenny Bruce. The underlying message (and cumulative effect) of this all-encompassing disdain is, however, not so benign. Late-night's political jokes in fact reveal a troubling cynicism at the heart of the American body politic, a condition to which they also contribute considerably.; In developing and elaborating this basic argument I have employed an interdisciplinary approach, which draws upon theories and methodologies taken from communication studies, political science, literary studies and cultural history. |
