The New Political Theater
Commentary: From the late-night comics to 'The West Wing,' politics makes for great entertainment. So why can't the real thing find an audience?
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The legendary political spitball artist, Lee Atwater, once remarked that the best way to keep track of how real people felt about politicians was to catch Johnny Carson's monologues on "The Tonight Show."
That was back in the late 1980s -- in retrospect, the horse-and-buggy era of late-night political humor. By today's standards, Carson's satirical darts were so tame as to border on the obsequious. The current generation of late-night comics -- Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Bill Maher -- wields its political humor with a machine gun. The jokes are more biting, more incessant, and leave a bigger bruise. According to the folks who keep track of such things (yes, there are such folks), the volume of late-night political humor shot up fourfold in the past decade. And that's just on the broadcast networks. Over on cable, there's Jon Stewart's "Daily Show," a nightly send-up of news and chat shows that employs as one of its correspondents Bob Dole, the Viagra spokesman who some may also remember as the Republican candidate for president in 1996.
The paradox here is that while political comedy is booming, politics itself is a bust. Voter turnout has been shrinking for four decades; Election Day has become little more than one big, unannounced boycott. This year's presidential campaign was waged between two charismatically challenged centrists running in a time of peace, prosperity, and raging contentment. It was dubbed by some as "The Thrilla in Vanilla," and it struggled vainly for much of the year to win the attention of a public whose taste in elections ran instead to a fake-reality soap opera set on a faraway tropical island. As Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, noted, twice as many Americans watched a single episode of "Survivor" on one network this past summer than watched any night of the national political conventions on all the networks combined.
How, then, does such a tuned-out citizenry learn about real candidates for actual office? Well, nearly a third of all adults surveyed in a nationwide Pew Center poll said they regularly or sometimes get serious political information from late-night talk shows like Leno and Letterman. Among adults younger than 30, that figure rose to almost half.
"It's an incredibly scary statistic," Steve Carell, a correspondent for the "Daily Show," told "NewsHour" on PBS. "If you don't know what the news is and aren't up on your current events...there's no context to put the satire in."
Actually, the late-night humor creates its own context. It frames politics inside a larger message to viewers: best not waste a whole lot of time paying attention to the jerks we joke about. When it comes to politics, cynicism and apathy are your best defense.
You have to be a prig to bellyache about the reigning humor of your time, so let me stipulate right away that the current crop of late-night monologists are all very talented and funny. I'll also stipulate that given our extraordinary season of national tranquillity, politics would have a hard time holding an audience these days even if the late-night funnymen never lobbed a single grenade in its direction.
But it does seem worth pointing out that today's political humor is curiously devoid of ideological content or social commentary. The signature television comedy of the 1990s was "Seinfeld" -- famously, a "show about nothing." Leno could be describing his entire generation of comics when he says of himself, "I'm an equal opportunity offender." Back in the 1960s, comedians such as Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl played to smaller audiences than today's late-night hosts do, but they used their satire to rail against the hypocrisies and injustices of the establishment. Then, politics loomed large, and humor provided a safety valve from the pressures of Vietnam, civil rights, the sexual revolution, the Cold War, the nuclear arms race.
Now politics has gotten small, entertainment huge. Never is this inverted relationship more evident than during that inevitable moment in a political campaign when a much-lampooned candidate turns up for a guest appearance on a late-night show, too eager by half to show off what a good sport he is. The rules of engagement for these encounters call for the host to turn deferential for just that one night, while the guest takes a stab at some jokes of his own. But there's never any mistaking who's the dominant partner in the comedy team -- or in the culture at large. As Letterman took to pronouncing all throughout this past year, "The road to the White House goes through me!" The boast was both comically over-the-top and metaphorically dead-on. Without anyone firing a single shot in anger, politics in turn-of-the-century America has become a mere colony of entertainment.
Late night isn't the only precinct on television where this conquest is apparent. In prime time, one of the most acclaimed new shows has been "The West Wing," an ensemble drama in which an inspirational president and his hardworking, idealistic, and exceedingly glib staff conspire week after week to keep the world safe for democracy. Its creator, Aaron Sorkin, calls the show "a valentine to public service."
It's certainly an exercise in wish fulfillment, made more poignant by the fact that among its writers are several refugees from actual White House staffs, no doubt relishing the chance to script lines for the sort of West Wing where they would have liked to work. "This is better than going to a psychiatrist," mused scriptwriter Patrick Caddell, who fled Washington in disgust after a stint as Jimmy Carter's pollster and strategist.
"The West Wing" pays homage to politics; the wise guys of late night make a mockery of politics. What's the common thread? Both have a much bigger following than politics itself, the only reality show on television that can't seem to find an audience. Not for want of trying, though, and not without the occasional breakthrough. During the first decade of the post-Cold War era, politics and public affairs in general became crossover hits in just two circumstances -- war and scandal. But the wars (Gulf, Balkan) were dispatched so quickly they couldn't sustain an audience for even a single season. And the scandal (Monica) went on so interminably that the audience was screaming for the curtain long before the actors could finally be ushered off the stage.
Still, Monica may be the template for politics in a soap opera age. The scandal provided a cast of characters you loved to hate, lots of transparent lying, and just enough sex and suspense to keep the plot moving. We all complained about it from the get-go, but we all watched, guiltily, like rubberneckers at a roadside wreck. And the late-night comics -- my, how they feasted! They told 2,461 jokes about the Lewinsky scandal in 1998 alone, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a research group based in Washington, D.C., that monitors late-night comedy. By contrast, O.J. Simpson in his best year (1996) topped out at only 376 jokes, and Dan Quayle in his prime (1992) drew just 357 jokes.
A few years ago Neal Gabler wrote a book called Life the Movie, which argued that the borders between entertainment and reality have disappeared, leaving behind one hybrid, all-purpose popular culture that sometimes forces the major players to fill roles for which they're not suited. Other social commentators have also noticed this tendency toward role reversal and confusion. "It used to be that Washington admired Hollywood for its sex and Hollywood admired Washington for its power," Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, quipped during the Year of Monica. "These days, Washington admires Hollywood for its power and Hollywood admires Washington for its sex."
In post-Bill Clinton Washington, it seems unlikely that illicit sex in the Oval Office will be the master narrative that builds an audience for politics. That's probably a good thing. But, be assured, something will unfold. And when it does, the late-night comics will be on the case with a quick joke. Or two. Or a couple of thousand.
