Comedy has become a liberal genre

Takes big role in presidential political race

Actress Tina Fey imitated Sarah Palin's accent. (Dana Edelson/NBC/AP)

WASHINGTON - Last week John McCain tried to make peace with David Letterman, who has been in a snit with McCain since the GOP presidential nominee canceled an appearance on his show weeks ago. But the jokes didn't exactly flow; in what felt more like a rant than a ribbing, Letterman grilled McCain in disapproving tones about everything from his attacks on Barack Obama to his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Palin, meanwhile, good-naturedly joined the "Saturday Night Live" cast this weekend to poke fun at herself. But the real Palin seemed oddly flat next to Tina Fey's celebrated impersonation of her as a ditzy hick who resorts to cornball flirtatiousness when confronted with basic policy questions.

"And now I'd like to entertain everybody with some fancy pageant-walking," Fey's Palin announced in the middle of a faux press conference, bringing down the house as the real Palin looked on backstage.

Both appearances drew gargantuan ratings, the highest in 14 years for "SNL" and almost three years for Letterman. But they also underlined the extent to which comedy has become a liberal genre in America, at a time when comedy has taken on an unprecedentedly important role in presidential politics.

Though the nation has been closely divided along partisan lines for years, the funniest and most politically important acts are overwhelmingly at the expense of conservatives and often carry a clear partisan message.

"You do have conservative humor, but in the mainstream, it has become so dominated by liberal dislike of conservatives," said Richard Vatz, a professor of rhetoric and communication at Towson University in Maryland who writes for a conservative blog. Millions have downloaded Sarah Silverman's Internet video urging Jewish children to fly to Florida and persuade their grandparents to vote for Obama, whom she calls "our last hope of ending our reputation as the [expletive] of the universe."

Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show," a relentless critic of the Bush administration, depicts McCain - once a frequent guest on his show - as an ill-tempered oldster and a President Bush toady. After the second presidential debate, he gently teased Obama about his perfect composure before mercilessly comparing McCain's perambulations during the town hall-style forum to those of a dotty retiree searching for his dog. ("Mr. Puddles! I have Snausages!" Stewart's faux-McCain muttered in a voice-over as he wandered the stage.)

"SNL" features impersonations of Obama and his running mate Joe Biden as well as Palin, and producer Lorne Michaels told the Globe that the show favors what is funny, not a particular candidate.

"They all do awful things," he said of politicians in general. "People running for office, fighting for power, do awful things, and it's our job to go after that. We don't have a partisan perspective." But - perhaps because of their close physical resemblance or Fey's dead-on imitation of Palin's accent - Fey's Palin is comedy of a completely different order than the show's riffs on Democrats.

In the vice presidential debate skit, Fey's Palin had the best lines, and the jokes were not just about her idiosyncratic habits but her politics as well; in an answer to a question about gay marriage, she deadpanned, "I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers," a reference to her disclosure her teen daughter is pregnant and plans to marry the father.

Comedy naturally has a liberal bias, many comics and cultural critics say, because humor is inherently subversive. Most jokes are fundamentally anti-authoritarian or anti-establishment; they distort the social order or expose truths society prefers to hide. And no matter who is in the White House, they say, Republicans are more culturally aligned with the churchgoing, manners-minding establishment than Democrats ever are.

"A joke has to feel like it's overcoming some kind of norm, some kind of inhibition," said John Limon, a professor at Williams College and author of "Stand-up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America." "I think Republicans are always better at norms and inhibitions than Democrats."

If comedy has a natural left-leaning sensibility, many comedians and critics think it has been temporarily exaggerated by a long period of Republican rule. Comic author, actor, and radio host Harry Shearer, a "Saturday Night Live" alum whose latest CD, "Songs of the Bushmen," is a musical satire of the Bush administration, said comedy always takes on a more anti-incumbent tone, particularly at the end of a two-term president's tenure.

"To me, the iron law of doing comedy about politics is you make fun of whoever is running the place," he said.

In 2000, Shearer added, the fashion was to make fun of Al Gore and George W. Bush as almost indistinguishable. That was before Sept. 11, the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, the housing boom, and the financial crisis.

"The stakes are higher," said Paul Lewis, a Boston College English professor and author of "Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict." "People are paying more attention; it seems less trivial."

But some conservatives think comedy has gone too far to the left. Vatz thinks some have missed opportunities to lampoon Obama and have gotten too preachy about McCain.

"It's much more fun to watch [while] suspending your disbelief - and you can't suspend your disbelief if you think you're being manipulated," Vatz said.

What is striking is how few prominent conservative comics there are to respond. Dennis Miller is perhaps the best known, but the former "SNL" star has little company. The Fox News Channel's answer to "The Daily Show," "The 1/2-Hour News Hour," bit the dust after only a few months.

The film "American Carol," was written and directed by David Zucker, the man behind such iconic comedies as "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun." The movie promised to be among the boldest of the season because it is the rarest of breeds, a conservative send-up of the political left.

But nobody is paying much attention to the movie - the reviews are in, and they say it's just not that funny. Even though it stars such pedigreed funnymen as Leslie Nielsen and Kelsey Grammer, it grossed just $3.8 million the weekend it opened.

Zucker attributes "American Carol's" poor reviews to the critics' own liberal bias. "When we showed it to conservative audiences, it was like they loved it."

But he says he's done with making conservative comedies. Maybe half the country pines for them, he said, but it's the half that waits for movies to come out on DVD.

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.