There may be one thing Democratic and Republican presidential candidates can agree on: they’ve been saved lots of potential embarassment by the television writers’ strike which has forced late night TV talk shows into re-runs.
That has allowed the candidates to escape merciless teasing about their campaign gaffes from Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, as noted in today’s Washington Post:
Look at all the juicy targets that have passed without extracurricular commentary these past three-plus weeks. What would “Indecision 2008″ have done with Hillary Clinton’s comment about being able to stand the heat of the campaign because she’s “real comfortable in the kitchen”? What would Leno make of Mike Huckabee’s surge in Iowa (and his endorsements from both Chuck Norris and former pro wrestler Ric “Nature Boy” Flair)? What fun could “SNL” have with the news that arch-social-conservative Pat Robertson has endorsed Republican Rudy Giuliani, a candidate who: (a) is thrice-married, (b) once engaged in an openly adulterous affair, (c) is pro-abortion and (d) supports gay and lesbian rights?
If an irony falls in the primary and there’s no late-night comic to tell a joke about it, did it really exist?
There’s really no substitute to fill the parody void. Although the occasional JibJab satire will go “viral” on the Internet, the Web has no equivalent to Leno and Letterman for consistent political satire.
Our question is: how will Generation X, Y and Z be in the political know without Stewart’s “Daily Show”??
–Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Blake
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3 comments so far
A sense of loss will come over them. The yearning for laughter will overpower their sense of reason and cognition. At the strike of 10:00 pm, they will become restless as they click away from channel to channel. Eventually, they will turn into morbid souls danger of being abandoned by their love ones. As a result, politics will remain as a well staged theatrical show to be viewed and analyzed by lobbyist-feed pundits. Daily Show fans, on the other hand, will drift away to the local bars seeking refuge in tonic and gin.
- Posted by FunnyFodderThey’ll overcompensate when a candidate does get elected into office and when Leno does get back to business. This is repression, the lack of laughter is causing a storm of boredom and bad feelings to build up inside the angry college teens and young Y2Kers, they’re bottling it up. Then when the writers get their extra eight cents an hour and go back to work, the voters of America will be MERCILESS! They will unleash the devil will their antics and name calling and make the candidates who got out of jail free this time cry like little girls!
- Posted by NicoleMaybe Gen-Xers can start a new channel on YouTube to post their own commentary. My guess is, they’d do pretty well!
- Posted by Jean McMenamin