Last Friday morning NPR host Mary Louise Kelly wrapped up a segment on the debt ceiling debate by quoting the Onion headline "Congress Continues Debate Over Whether or Not Nations Should Be Economically Ruined." It was an attempt for the news program to import some levity into their coverage of this perplexing voluntary crisis, but it was also the truest thing that's been said about the debt ceiling to date, and you could sense Ms. Kelly knew this.
The debt ceiling debate in Washington has been dragging on for a long time now. The comic reaction was measured at first — comedians were taking their time to ponder [...]
On Wednesday night Stephen Colbert took on Comedy Central's parent company Viacom, calling out their lawyers for trying to block his attempts to form a political action committee for the 2012 election. For the second time this year, he has publicly defied his corporate masters on air to try to keep his campaign going.
By promoting his Colbert Super PAC on the Colbert Report against Viacom's wishes, Colbert is crossing the comedy line yet again. He is using his cable news persona's megalomania to bring exposure to some brand new and potentially devastating realities in campaign financing, something that most voters are not even aware of, not because we [...]
Queens Congressman Anthony Weiner spoke at the Congressional Correspondents Dinner this week, and it was well liked. These dinners are events where politicians stand up in front of journalists and attempt to tell jokes. Except for the one that had Stephen Colbert, these political correspondents dinners are generally cringe worthy and forgettable. Politicians recite inside jokes about current political controversies. At the White House dinner last May, Obama cracked about his birth certificate and Arizona immigration.
But Weiner’s self-deprecating routine would have felt at home at an open-mic stand up. He quipped about Jewfros and childhood bullying. He had a multimedia presentation and talked about his [...]
If the internet has a down side for anyone, it's that it makes it much harder for casual sexists and racists to tell jokes among friends. (And yes, Chris Lee, it’s also made it harder for casual adulterers, but that’s last week’s story.)
It would be tough for me to claim that this week's top political comedy story was anything other than the joke that went awry: journalist Nir Rosen's poorly conceived tweet belittling CBS correspondent Lara Logan's sexual assault while covering the revolution in Egypt. As Tom Scocca of Slate rightly points out, it’s foolish and ill-advised for me (or most anyone, but particularly men) to say [...]
I had no idea whether current events would overlap with Splitsider's Women in Comedy week, but then Michele Bachmann happened. At first I was like, that's great! Her Tea Party State of the Union response was like a media coverage suicide bombing. Bachmann blew herself up for a greater cause: to keep Obama’s speech from dominating the news cycle.
This should be political comedy gold, right? Indeed. On Thursday afternoon there were four video parodies of Michele Bachmann's rebuttal just on the Huffington Post Comedy page, plus one of those things Andy Borowitz does. It worked!
The appeal for comedians is clear: Bachmann is a nut job. This is [...]
