Follow-up: The Lockbox Strategery

Jokes and Positive Perceptions

I ran across some more news today that ties in directly with what I talked about in my last post. The Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has tracked late-night jokes made about presidential candidates since 1988, reported that from September 1, 2008 through last Friday, October 24, the Republican ticket has been the butt of 475 jokes, while the Democratic ticket was mocked only 69 times. That is nearly a 7:1 ratio (6.88:1, to be more precise), and is a thorough trouncing that no previous elections have come anywhere near.

This is, of course, reflective of the larger trend in benevolent comments about Barack Obama. Since the party conventions, evening news shows have been 65% positive. This is based on data from ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and Fox Special Report. To McCain, the shows have only been 36% positive, and he (impressively?) falls behind even Sarah Palin's positive-comment percentage of 42%. (Evidently, Joe Biden gets talked about so little there isn't enough data for "meaningful analysis.")

As always, an addendum:

On Fox News Channel, by contrast, Obama's press has been only 28% positive during the general election, even worse than the 38% positive evaluations of McCain. Palin's coverage has been 49% positive on Fox, slightly higher than on the three networks.

Stay classy, Fox News. 

Punchlines Punching Back

Back in August, the CMPA released a list of the top joked-about public figures, and Obama was number four (behind W., Hillary Clinton, and John McCain, respectively). Jon Stewart told the most Obama jokes and Stephen Colbert told the most McCain ones, while Jay Leno joshed Hillary more than any other comics.  

Unfortunately, what this measurement doesn't weigh is what exactly about the candidate the comics make fun of. For example, Obama jokes in August were things like "The big story is Obama's world tour. Today, he made history by being the first man to travel around the world in a plane propelled by the media's flash photography." (Colbert) and "The tour may strike some a presumptuous. In fact, I joked that Obama would be stopping in Bethlehem to visit the manger where he was born." (Stewart). Those punchlines are built on public perception and veneration of Obama, not who he is as a person. This is a more accessible kind of humor for people of diverse political leanings, and funny in a both hey-that's-true and self-deprecation-of-the-media way. Nuanced! Of course, the ever-classy Leno writing room turned out one-note, candidate-specific gems like "Obama said he'll visit Iraq and Afghanistan because he wants to see an area overrun by violent extremists. So it sounds like he already misses his old church." Let's hope Conan takes all of his writers with him when he moves into that slot and doesn't have to inherit that kind of crap.