I enjoy a good put-down of an opponent as much as the next person, but these days I sometimes feel like we’re in the court of Louis XIV where the ability to deliver a good zinger is a game-changer, if not the most important thing on earth. I get the feeling that Andrew Dice Clay and John Belushi would have become very influential political “pundits” instead of comedians if they had started out a couple of decades later.
Although I appreciate the entertainment factor, I’d like to see this balanced out with some more seriously written and lengthy pieces by good journalists, which seem to be getting more difficult to find. I personally found this Romney piece in Rolling Stone (of all places) to be more devastating than all the hit & run zingers on both sides.
Probably lacking perspective.
I found the Matt Taibbi piece pretty devastating too even though there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d have voted for Romney even before I read it. But how many other people do you think actually read it?
Good zingers and sound bites are the rule of the land how. Anyone who attempts to actually explain things risks being labeled ‘borrrrrring’. Look how well Obama did in the first debate where he discussed issues and explained policies.
Fortunately, you can still find seriously written and well researched pieces, but you have to look for them. Most people can’t be bothered.
I can’t really compare the present era to others, but I think hard-hitting political satire is one of America’s proudest traditions. And the Taibbi piece is devastating.
In terms of real comedy… Yes! We rejoice in The Capitol Steps, and fondly remember Tom Lehrer, but you can go back to the beginning, and American satirical political songs have been with us. Heck, they go back well before the origin of the U.S.
May I recommend “Hail to the Chief,” a collection of American political music, performed by the Chestnut Brass Company and friends? Amazon’s got it. Charming stuff; the art of biting political satire – and some inspirational, patriotic music too.
“If I had thought that I had got one drop of Democrat blood…
My jugular vein I’d cut in twain and spill the filthy flood…”
Rolling Stone. The magazine that published Hunter Thompson’s series Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and also Timothy Crouse’s takedown of the press corps, The Boys on the Bus, both in 1972. Nothing published in the magazine today comes within miles of those for comedy.
Will Rogers said millions of funny things about politics, including the immortal line, “I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat!” That was back in 1935.
Finley Peter Dunne wrote scores of stories about Mr. Dooley, an Irish immigrant who commented about the nation scene in dialect. His most famous line, from a 1901 book, is that the Supreme Court “follows th’ iliction returns.”
Politics always has been a gold mine for comedy. It goes all the way back. It’s never not been there.
When I think of comedy in politics, the first person who comes to mind is Mark Twain. “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
This HuffPo article has some great examples of comic political putdowns.
Here’s something I’m tired of seeing: “Satire doesn’t stand a chance against reality anymore.” Jules Feiffer made that remark in 1959 and I’m sure it was already trite. If I never see that imbecilic and erroneous sentiment expressed again I’ll be fine with that.
Tom Lehrer isn’t dead. I mean, we do fondly remember him, but I believe he’s still performing, and he’s certainly still alive.
You meant the Tom Lehrer who said that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger in 1973 made political satire obsolete? The Tom Lehrer who had already stopped creating new satiric songs several years before that? The Tom Lehrer who is 84 and most definitely not still performing? He did two performances in 1998; other than that he hasn’t performed since, hmmm, 1973.
The sentiment may be untrue, but Lehrer is the worst possible example to refute it. It’s obviously true, though, that some people are so attuned to their times that they can’t adapt their satire when the world changes. All of Feiffer’s best work was behind him in 1959. Hunter Thompson is another good example of not changing with the times. Mort Sahl was never the same after the Kennedy assassination. When they say that political satire is dead, they mean it’s dead for them. And that’s true.
I was wrong about him no longer performing, but I was right about him still being alive. But my mentioning Lehrer had nothing to do with the Feiffer quote, which was, perhaps, true of Feiffer. But I see it all the time; the one time it had any merit, however small, was the Onion article on the election of Schwarzenegger (in which it was implicit but not stated).