Political humor has serious consequences. Politics Is a Joke! How TV Comedians Are Remaking Political Life seeks to explain how political humor influences public perception of politics and politicians in the United States. The book analyzes political humor from a range of late-night comedy sources—including Jay Leno and David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and NBC's Saturday Night Live—to uncover the most joked-about politicians, events, and political issues and explore how these jokes affect viewers' attitudes. The authors echo and extend existing humor scholarship in arguing that late-night comedy should be taken as seriously as traditional news sources, both as a vehicle for news content and a shaper of public opinion. This book undertakes three main tasks: exploring the increasing importance of humor in American politics, using a unique data set to analyze who and what have been the most common targets of American political humor since 1992,...
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