Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Sunday Joke Revue

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From Daniel Kutzman’s political humor blog:

“Did you all see that? She took the shot with the beer chaser. Did it like an old pro. To give you an idea how much she drank, when the phone rang at 3 am, slept right through it.” –Jay Leno

“John McCain said he disagrees with President Bush on the issue of climate change. And believe me, McCain knows what he’s talking about on this subject. Of all the presidential candidates, he is the only one who’s actually lived through an ice age.” –Jay Leno

“Hillary Clinton was shown at a bar in Indiana drinking a beer, and doing a shot of whiskey. Hey, and it worked. Today, Ted Kennedy switched back. ‘I’m for Hillary now!'” –Jay Leno

“The president picked up the pope at the airport. How bored is our president? He’s not the president anymore. Now he’s like your college stoner roommate, doing favors for pizza. Next week I think he’s helping Putin move.” –Jon Stewart

“This seemed odd to me. For the pope’s arrival ceremony at the White House tomorrow, they’re going to give him a 21-gun salute. Now, really, isn’t there a better welcome for the Apostle of Peace than a show of firearms? I mean, whose idea was that? Dick Cheney’s?” –Jay Leno

“But did you hear about this? He’s getting on the flight in Rome, and he was almost not allowed on the aircraft because he tried to bring on more than three ounces of holy water.” –David Letterman

“We also want to wish Pope Benedict a happy birthday. Tomorrow, he’ll be 81 years old. Do you realize in a couple more years, he could be the next Republican nominee?” –Jay Leno

“Even my wife seems to think my image needs polishing. At breakfast today I asked Lynn if, deep down, it bugs her that people have taken to calling me Darth Vader. She said, ‘Not at all. It humanizes you.'” –Dick Cheney at the Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner

After Pope Benedict delivered his speech at the White House, Bush said, “Thank you, your Holiness, awesome speech.” (Watch video clip) Jimmy Kimmel: “I’m surprised he didn’t give him a high-five. When did the president actually become Will Ferrell’s impression of him from Saturday Night Live?”

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  1. Ever since I read this article a couple of weeks ago, I’ve found it interesting to read these Joke Revue posts in light of what Russell Peterson said in that interview:

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    “In spite of the fact that comedy about politics is now as common as crabgrass, political comedy — that is, genuine satire, which uses comedic means to advance a serious critique — is so rare we might be tempted to conclude it is extinct.”

    Go ahead. Think back on the monologue you heard the other night on TV. Chances are good that, whether it was delivered by Jay or Dave or Conan O’Brien, it was nothing more than a theme-and-variations spin on the same old equations: Bush = dumb; Clinton = cold; McCain = old. Oh, boy, is he old! His Secret Service name is “Enlarged Prostate,” and the two State Department employees who were looking into Barack Obama’s passport file were also inspecting McCain’s Civil War records, and John McCain is so old he remembers when Iraq was called Mesopotamia, and hey, have we cracked a Monica Lewinsky joke lately? No?

    “Topical comedians,” says Peterson, “keep finding new ways to tell us what we already ‘know’ about politicians.” And because they harp so remorselessly on candidates’ individual quirks — ignoring the hard, complex, often maddening substance of policy — they declare, in effect, that every choice is equally bad and that the system itself is “an irredeemable sham.” “Election after election,” Peterson writes, “night after night, joke after joke, they have reinforced the notion that political participation is pointless, parties and candidates are interchangeable, and democracy is futile.”

    There are good and sound economic reasons for this, of course. Someone as focused on numbers as Jay Leno is not about to sacrifice half his viewers for the sake of bringing down George W. Bush’s immigration policy. Johnny Carson never even mentioned the Vietnam War. True satire can take root only in the exurbs of cable, where comic pioneers smoke out the vipers in democracy’s den. Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert — in Peterson’s cosmology, these are the true heroes of late-night, because they ground even their harshest commentary in “a faith in the political process.” And on that score, nobody has ascended higher than the “Lincolnish” Colbert, whose Gettysburg Address coincided with the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner […]

    Colbert’s address perfectly meets Peterson’s criteria for genuine satire: It causes its targets either to take umbrage or to “adopt a studied silence.” Pseudo satire, by contrast, is often embraced and even co-opted by its purported victims. Think of Bush père inviting Dana Carvey to the White House, Janet Reno bopping around with Will Ferrell, Al Gore competing with David Letterman to tell the best Al Gore joke. The lampooned pol can safely join in the bloodletting because no blood is actually being let. “Real satire,” growls Peterson, “means it.”

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    p>In this particular roundup, I must say pretty much none of them are “real satire” by Peterson’s standard – even the Jon Stewart quote doesn’t really hit the mark, though it comes closer than most.  Letterman’s joke about airport security is on par with it it.  Those are the only two that tripped my real-satire-meter a little bit.

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    p>Try it, the next time you see one of these joke lists: Which jokes are just “harping on quirks” and “telling us what we already know”, vs. which ones are “grounded in a faith in the political process”, “mean it”, and let some real blood.

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