The Providence Journal

Or a skeptical sensibility -- Liberal bias in late-night comedy?

Paul Lewis


AS PART of his running critique of American politics and culture, Bill O'Reilly recently complained that "the late-night comics are all left wing . . . liberal guys." From someone who has, arguably, done to the news what he sees the networks doing to comedy, this seems disingenuous if not hypocritical. Perhaps he thinks that jokes, unlike reporting and commentary, actually do need to be "fair and balanced."

We could, then, dismiss O'Reilly's point on the grounds that it is rendered ridiculous by his standing as the Darth Vader of rude and ideologically driven political rhetoric. Or we could shrug it off as the familiar, self-promoting claim of liberal bias in broadcasting advanced with increasingly absurd conviction by conservative media stars.

Still, without cutting O'Reilly any more slack than he deserves, the reward for not simply telling him (as he has told guests he dislikes) to "shut up" is that his observation presents an opportunity to think about both the broadcast humor market and comic creativity.

Noting that the late-night comics (presumably including Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O'Brien) "mock the left as well as the right," O'Reilly was calling attention less to their jokes than to their political beliefs.

It is, however, worth noting that, though the nightly monologues springboard off recent news stories, they tend to concentrate more on the personal flaws of leaders than on specific policies. The sense that harsh satire could irritate 49.9 percent of the audience renders much late-night seemingly political network comedy actually apolitical.
Over on niche-targeting cable stations, one can find the provocative, at times edgy satire of pro-war Dennis Miller, progressive Bill Maher, ironist John Stewart and mock-conservative Stephen Colbert. On the major networks, jokes frequently seem familiar, relaxing and safe.

In part, this is based on the way humor builds on foundations of shared knowledge. As Leno's embarrassing walkabouts regularly demonstrate, members of the wide audience he's after are far more likely to know that Bill Clinton had "sex with that woman" than to understand the issues involved in developing cellulosic ethanol.
Above all, the late-night network hosts seem determined to resist even the appearance of rigidity and didacticism. When Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly criticized Leno from the left for not telling more anti-Bush jokes in 2004, Jay distinguished between satirists and comedians. "I don't want to be preached to as a member of the audience," he said. "I like to hear a joke."

Though one could argue that pointed satire can be at least as funny as tired jokes about stained dresses, Leno's observation highlights features of the mindset associated with comic creativity worth noting in connection with O'Reilly's complaint.

In a revealing study of comedians, clowns and actors, Seymour and Rhoda L. Fisher found that humor creation is often based on a doubting, skeptical sensibility, an inclination to question pieties and look for multiple meanings in words, phrases and events. Where most people take life and language as it comes, comic geniuses tend to see instability, disorder and deception everywhere. Constantly reaching for alternative interpretations, they frequently arrive at the incongruous, unexpected kernel of a joke.

Whatever one makes of this open, probing, critical and self-critical mindset, it is clearly at the other end of a spectrum from the self-righteous, take-no-prisoners, smirk-and-bluster certainty characteristic of such successful conservative media figures as Rush Limbaugh and O'Reilly himself.

One of the comics in the Fishers' study remarked, "there's a little lie in everything." Believing that it's easy to distinguish between deception and honesty, good and evil, truth and error may boost one's career in polemical broadcasting. But in humor creation, it's unlikely to help one advance beyond predictable and repetitive banter to flashes of comic insight.

Paul Lewis, a professor of English at Boston College, is the author of Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict (2006).