Political jokes: too soon?
The answer from many quarters at midweek was a resounding yes, days after an assassination attempt against Republican former president Donald Trump rattled the nation over political violence that has been brewing in the United States for decades.
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Several late-night shows that thrive on political comedy changed plans immediately, with Comedy Central's “The Daily Show” canceling its Monday show and its plan to broadcast from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week. Its host, Jon Stewart, and his counterparts delivered somber monologues.
By Tuesday, the comedy rock duo Tenacious D, made up of Jack Black and Kyle Gass, had called off the rest of its world tour “and all future creative plans” after Gass stated his birthday wish onstage: “Don’t miss next time.” Gass apologized.
Democratic President Joe Biden, no stranger to mocking Trump, phoned his wounded rival, paused his political ads and messaging and called on the nation to “cool" the rhetoric.
So if comedy is tragedy plus time, when is joking okay again? And who gives the thumbs-up, given that the shooter who took aim at Trump also killed former fire chief Corey Comperatore as he shielded his family?
How to determine when to return to laughs?
There's nothing funny about the assassination attempt Saturday or any of the violence that has plagued the United States since its earliest days. Trump was hit in the ear as he spoke to rallygoers in Pennsylvania. A Trump supporter and the gunman were killed and two bystanders were injured. The attack raised serious questions about security lapses. It was the latest episode of political violence in America, where attacks in politics date to at least 1798 when two congressmen of opposing parties brawled in the U.S. House.
History books are littered with other examples, but the list just this century is jarring. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in the head in 2011. Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, now House majority leader, was shot and critically wounded in 2017. A mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's election. Paul Pelosi was bludgeoned in his house in 2022 by a man hunting for his wife, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Add that to unyielding concerns about Biden's fitness for office after his disastrous debate performance, Trump's convictions on 34 felony counts — and American politics in 2024 seem anything but amusing.
But political humor is as old as politics and government.
It takes some of the edge off the democratic decisions at hand and is a potent weapon for politicians looking to ease concerns about themselves or raise some about their rivals. And in recent years, Trump has been the subject of more jokes than others. A 2020 study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University found that 97% of jokes by late-night hosts revolved around Trump.
“It's never too soon, unless it's not funny,” Alonzo Bodden, a standup comedian for 31 years, asserted during a phone interview on Wednesday. Not a Trump fan, he said comedians “will always make it funny no matter what happens. That's what we do. It's how we communicate."
“In this case, Donald Trump is such a character and the fact that he wasn’t killed, the jokes started immediately,” Bodden said. “And I don’t think he minds. He’s one of those people that as long as you’re talking about him, it’s a win.”
Humor humanizes outsized figures
Perhaps most effectively, political humor can make highfalutin' leaders appear more human, or at least self-aware.
See "covfefe,” Trump's mysterious middle-of-the-night tweet in 2017 that went viral and caused Jimmy Kimmel to lament that he'll never write anything funnier. Or “ Make the Pie Higher,” a poem by the late Washington Post cartoonist Richard Thompson composed entirely of President George W. Bush's garbled statements and published for his inauguration in 2001.
“It is a very complicated economic point I was making there," Bush explained with a wink to the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner a few months later. “Believe me, what this country needs is taller pie.”
Biden has tried using humor to drag the age issue out front before the debate made clear that the question is more about his cognitive ability. “I know I'm 198 years old, ” Biden has said, to raucous laughter and applause.
Humor is so valuable a campaign tool that candidates flock to the guest seats of late-night shows, which have grown in political influence. But after the assassination, a pause settled over everything, as evidenced in Stewart's serious monologue Monday.
“None of us knows what’s going to happen next other than there will be another tragedy in this country, self-inflicted by us to us, and then we’ll have this feeling again,” Stewart said.
“The Late Show's Stephen Colbert described his horror at the attack, relief that Trump had survived and ”grief for my beautiful country."
“Though I could just as easily start the show moaning on the floor," he said, "because how many times do we need to learn the lesson that violence has no role in our politics?"
Social media was showing less restraint, as it does. “I think it's ironic that Trump almost died from a gun today because he was too far right-leaning,” comedian Drew Lynch said on YouTube. “Alright. That's all I got. I think my neighbors might be in earshot.”
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Kellman reported from London. AP Media Writer David Bauder contributed to this report.