I’m not sure how many readers caught “The Daily Show” last night, but I’m sure if you did, you didn’t miss major Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s interview on the show. This isn’t his first appearance, and it came under the shadow of a similar interview on “The Colbert Report” last week. Hillary Clinton also made an appearance on the Colbert Report that same episode, clearly capping off Colbert’s Doritos-backed coverage of the Pennsylvania primary.
This also isn’t the first time political candidates have appeared on the show on the eve of a major election for their campaign. Before the so-called “firewall” Texas and Ohio primaries, Hillary Clinton finished off a week of brutal “kitchen sink” campaigning with a light, entertaining “Daily Show” interview.
Comedy shows, no doubt, have been important outlets for campaigns. John Kerry frustrated pundits last cycle when he refused to appear on mainstream news shows but did manage to appear on Jon Stewart’s nightly parody of them. John Edwards, twice a presidential candidate, even announced his candidacy through this outlet. Mike Huckabee promised to make Stephen Colbert his running mate if successful, and Republican presidential nominee John McCain even hosted “Saturday Night Live” in the past.
While far less predictable than regular news shows, comedy shows often are ways to reach a younger demographic. I find personally that it’s much less discouraging to get my news from these shows, and I’m sure others feel the same.
But what’s curious to me is the campaigns that choose to use these avenues of the free press as their last major outreach before some of their most crucial elections. This has now happened a few times over the course of this never-ending and constantly tiring election season, and I’m almost certain we’ll see more appearances like this as it grinds to a close sometime in the not-so-distant future, around November.
Other more professional-seeming comedians like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh have begrudged candidates’ preference for anti-establishment shows such as Stewart’s as an attempt to look “hip,” or “cool.” In reality, this is probably little more than professional frustration that “The Daily Show” is able to score better and more important interviews than is “The O’Reilly Factor,” but it speaks to an interesting phenomenon no less.
Comedy and politics have always been closely tied – or even, I might argue, one in the same. As far back as the Roman republic, citizens have loved nothing more than to poke fun at their often corrupt, decadent, incompetent, hypocritical but sometimes good-intentioned politicians. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast provided us with some of the best political commentary in American history through comedy, also giving us the Republican elephant symbol and the Democratic donkey.
I believe that the projection of politicians through comedy is actually quite important to candidates’ election hopes. Today, the Pennsylvania commonwealth primary is going to be important to both of the Democratic hopefuls. And with 7 percent of Pennsylvania voters still undecided, last minute choices could greatly impact the election. It’s not totally unreasonable to expect that 7 percent might make a choice based on general feelings about a candidate, wherein appearing human and good-spirited on a comedy show could be highly beneficial.
Either way, I feel like these appearances and their consequences do suggest that it might be time to stop ignoring comedy shows as being just entertainment and actually acknowledge that many Americans both today and throughout history have made comedy a major – and necessary – part of the political conversation.
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