Laff Riot

Sarah Palin's visit to Saturday Night Live two evenings ago in some ways echoed the reciprocal McCain-Obama ribbing at the Alfred E. Smith annual dinner in New York a few nights earlier. The Palin gig's comedy was pretty much restricted to her simply appearing on the show that has made the most effective fun of her. But it did re-raise the question of the place and meaning of campaign "meta" humor, in which candidates step outside the premises of their own campaigns for what is supposed to be comic respite.

At the Smith dinner, much more full-bodied than Palin appearance, the candidates' jokes were greeted by those in attendance with what sounded like exaggerated laughter. The jokes were in fact fairly good. The best? McCain saying that even in that den of Democrats, he felt sure he had some supporters, and then saying a special hello to Hillary Clinton--as if to say he knew she's hoping that Obama loses. In fact, and naturally enough, all the jokes played off overtly and covertly serious suspicions and charges--McCain's age, Obama's exotic provenance, McCain's multi-domicile lifestyle, Joe "the Six-Term Senator."

But they weren't *that* funny. Then why did the audience laugh its collective head off? Relief, I would say--relief maybe in part from the dream that we'll still be able to get along after this savage election. As the campaigns have grown more vicious, especially at the McCain and Palin rallies, many have become more anxious about the possibility of real violence or at least a complete breakdown in civility. On MSNBC on Friday, Congressbabe Michele Bachmann of Minnesota--and of the ice-blue eyes and the frozen smile--indicated that she thought members of Congress should be investigated for anti-Americanism. And Katrina Van Den Heuvel, Editor of The Nation, spoke of the potentially apocalyptic consequences of hate-tainted campaign tactics. So it's no surprise the Al Smith dinner's friendly-seeming jests were greeted with not only amusement but relief. See? It's just part of the game they're forced to play. Give them a few minutes with the gloves off and they'll turn into clever high-school buddies.

Well, fine, I guess. But which is it? If it's in an important way just a game, then, as ever, it's too bad that the candidates and the media and many of us play it as if it were entirely real, further inflaming those unable--because of ignorance or temperament--to see it as a game. On the other hand, if the political and personal hostility is as great as it seemed before and then breathtakingly soon after the Al Smith dinner--and as it resumed yesterday, after Palin's SNL cameo--then the joke relief is only temporary, like a painkiller that masks an infection.

Colin Powell's highly serious and considered endorsement of Obama yesterday was much closer to something like the cure--reality, not a game.

Comments

[zanzig]

The jokes may be funny for the candidates and their colleagues in the rarified halls of Congress, and after this is all over they probably can get back to business as usual but it is almost a foregone conclusion that a cadre of their supporters will not be able to brush this off so easily. The nasty impulses that have now been exposed to the light of day will never quite go away (or at least, not for a very long time). How will we ever be able to forget the unmitigated obscenity of dark brutish thoughts that have been expressed at so many rallies? How will Alaska ever look at Gov Palin again the same way after the exposure of her lies and ethically challenged actions? I foresee a mass of studies for psychologists on the horizon.

[NationalTreasure]

Mr. Menaker:

Just in case you missed it thing have begun to heat up and vet violent.
There have been verbal attacks and heckling at voters and Obama supporter has tires slashed.
How much more violent or heated do you want things to get?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-bellantoni/mccain-supporters-heckle_b_136099.html

[Daniel Menaker - Huffpost Blogger]

This kind of furious behavior is exactly why this kind of joking around has always seemed so very odd to me--as if it were taking place on another planet or some kind of comic parallel universe. I really do think that the SNL Palin thing and the Al Smith dinner and such are sort of surreal efforts--schizoid rituals-- to reassure us that when all is said and done, when the election is over, the knives will be put away and the candidates will be friends again.

[Fez]

I have never understood any of these so-called events (e.g., the Al Smith Dinner, the Gridiron Dinner, etc.) where politicians attempt to wrest "comedy" from their incompetent and often violent actions. The fact that they can shift gears so effortlessly from the campaign and swap jibes with one another shows how deeply trivial and insincere they are... all of them... the press, the pols, the handlers. Bush's tragically unfunny "search" for the missing WMDs at the Gridiron Dinner a few years ago was the absolute nadir of this sort of buffoonery. I am not some blue-nosed hater with no sense of humor but these folks should be able to laugh at themselves more frequently. God knows the rest of us do. When some creep politician of either party goes on SNL, Letterman, or Leno to prove what regular folks he or she is, the result is often pathetic, grim, and anything but funny or entertaining. It only reminds us that we are ruled by a kakiocracy of morons and a confederacy of dunces. Maybe if Al Franken is elected we will finally have someone in the Senate who can make us laugh at The Fools on the Hill.