During the 2000 national election season, there was unprecedented attention paid by the media, and by presidential campaigns, to the political content of late night comedy shows such as the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the Late Show with David Letterman. Focusing on the more than thirteen thousand jokes about U.S. political figures from 1996 to 2000 on late night comedy talk shows, this study explores the choice of targets and subjects of political humor. The authors find that late night humor is heavily centered on the president and top presidential contenders, that the various late night shows tend to exhibit the same patterns in their choice of targets, and that the humor is generally devoid of issue content.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Amundson, Daniel, and S. Robert Lichter. 1988. “Heeeeeere's Politics.” Public Opinion11(July-Aug.):46-47.
2.
Berg, Eron, and Louis Lippman. 2001. “Does Humor in Radio Advertising Affect Recognition of Novel Product Brand Names?” Journal of General Psychology128(2):194-205.
3.
Crawford, C. B. 1999. “Analysis of Humor in the 1992 Presidential Debates.” Perceptual and Motor Skills88(2):417-420.
4.
Duerst, Lindsey, Glory Koloen, and Geoff Peterson. 2001. “It May Be Funny, but Is It True: The Political Content of Late-Night Talk Show Monologues.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, Aug. 30–Sep. 2.
5.
Dye, Thomas, Harmon Zeigler, and S. Robert Lichter. 1992. American Politics in the Media Age. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
6.
Gans, Herbert. 1980. Deciding What's News. New York: Vintage.
7.
Hess, Verena. 2001. “The Role of Political Comedy in the 2000 Election Campaign: Examining Content and Third-Person Effects.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, Aug. 30–Sep. 2.
8.
Just, Marion, Ann Crigler, Dean Alger, Timothy Cook, Montague Kern, and Darrell West. 1996. Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates, and the Media in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9.
Kiousis, Spiro, Philemon Bantimaroudis, and Hyun Ban. 1999. “Candidate Image Attributes: Experiments on the Substantive Dimension of Second Level Agenda Setting.” Communication Research26(4):414-428.
10.
Lichter, S. Robert. 2001. “A Plague on Both Parties: Substance and Fairness in TV Election News.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics6(3):8-30.
11.
Lichter, S. Robert, Linda Lichter, and Daniel Amundson. 2000. “Government Goes Down the Tube: Images of Government in TV Entertainment, 1955-1998.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics5(2):96-103.
12.
Lichter, S. Robert, and Richard Noyes. 1995. Good Intentions Make Bad News. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
13.
Lyttle, Jim. 2001. “The Effectiveness of Humor in Persuasion: The Case of Business Ethics Training.” Journal of General Psychology128(2):206-216.
14.
Miller, Arthur, Edie Goldenberg, and Lutz Erbring. 1979. “Type-Set Politics: The Impact of Newspapers on Public Confidence.” American Political Science Review73(1):67-84.
15.
Patterson, Thomas. 1994. Out of Order. New York: Vintage.
16.
Schaefer, Richard, and Robert Avery. 1993. “Audience Conceptualizations of Late Night with David Letterman.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media37(summer):253-272.
17.
Speier, Hans, and Robert Jackall. 1998. “Wit and Politics: An Essay on Laughter and Power.” American Journal of Sociology103(5):1352-1401.
18.
Wagg, Stephen. 1998.“ `They Already Got a Comedian for Governor'—Comedians and Politics in the United States and Britain.” In Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics, and Social Difference, ed. Stephen Wagg, 244-272. New York: Routledge.
19.
Whaley, Bryan, and Rachel Holloway. 1997. “Rebuttal Analogy in Political Communication: Argument and Attack in Sound Bite.” Political Communication14(3):293-305.
