Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke [Hardcover]

Russell L. Peterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2008

It is no coincidence that presidential candidates have been making it a point to add the late-night comedy circuit to the campaign trail in recent years. In 2004, when John Kerry decided it was time to do his first national television interview, he did not choose CBS's 60 Minutes, ABC's Nightline, or NBC Nightly News. Kerry picked Comedy Central's The Daily Show. When George W. Bush was lagging in the polls, his appearance on the David Letterman Show gave him a measurable boost. Candidates for the 2008 presidential election began their late-night bookings almost as soon as they launched their campaigns.

How can this be? The reason is that polls have been consistently finding that a significant number of Americans-and an even larger proportion of those under the age of thirty-get at least some of their "news" about politics and national affairs from comedy shows. While this trend toward what some have called "infotainment" seems to herald the descent of our national discourse-the triumph of entertainment over substance-the reality, according to Russell L. Peterson, is more complex. He explains that this programming is more than a mere replacement for traditional news outlets; it plays its own role in shaping public perception of government and the political process.

From Johnny Carson to Jon Stewart, from Chevy Chase's spoofing of President Ford on Saturday Night Live to Stephen Colbert's roasting of President Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Strange Bedfellows explores what Americans have found so funny about our political institutions and the people who inhabit them, and asks what this says about the health of our democracy. Comparing the mainstream network hosts-Jay, Dave, Conan, and Johnny before them-who have always strived to be "equal opportunity offenders" to the newer, edgier crop of comedians on cable networks, Peterson shows how each brand of satire plays off a different level of Americans' frustrations with politics.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A cultural analysis so smart, supple, and frisky that it instantly stands as required reading for every aspiring critic in the country." --Troy Patterson, Slate

"This book takes an insightful look at the increasingly complex media landscape, where "legitimate" cable and network journalists, cable-news pundits, and TV comedians all fall under the same category of "infotainment" and political leaders and celebrities alike are both ridiculed and revered. He also raises the question whether late-night comedians have a moral role to play as individuals who reach a mass audience with their jibes. Especially timely now that the election season is underway." --Library Journal

"Jay Leno may be annoying, but is he a threat to American democracy? That is the eyebrow-raising charge that Russell L. Peterson levels at the host of The Tonight Show and his mainstream comedy peers in Strange Bedfellows." --Evan Goldstein, The Chronicle Review

From the Back Cover

Praise for Strange Bedfellows

"Ever since cable TV exposed American journalism as a niche entertainment genre, comedians have rushed in to grab responsibility for safeguarding American democracy. With Letterman, Leno, Stewart, Colbert, Maher, Kimmel and the other witty white boys of the night delivering the news, it was just a matter of time before comedy reviewers caught on and accepted their new role as postmodern metajournalists. But don't take my word for it; read Russell Peterson's Strange Bedfellows." --David Marc, author of Television in the Antenna Age

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 254 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (March 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813542847
• ISBN-13: 978-0813542843
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,159,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-have information presented with humor and rapid-fire wit, June 25, 2008

By 

Guy Strauss - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke (Hardcover)

I enjoyed every page of this book, and for me that's unusual. It was like reading a favorite editorial columnist's thoughts, but on a fresh and inventive topic. Russell L. Peterson's thoughts run toward those of political humorists in the great American tradition of serious debate infused with serious wit. His insights into television's uneven record on political humor is well-informed and cautionary, including "mainstream" news, commentary, and political humor from Saturday Night Live to Stephen Colbert, as well as all the usual suspects of late-night "talk show" monologues. And when was the last time you read a humorous political book that was fully annotated and indexed? Strange Bedfellows is a scholarly work cleverly masquerading as a highly entertaining fun-with-politics romp. (Or maybe it's the other way around?) No matter, entertaining it is. There are some clues modestly inserted here and there on the cover flaps that indicate what kind of chops the author has utilized to pull this off: A PhD in American Studies, real-life experience in standup comedy, political cartooning, and (this is a guess) a heckuva lot of critical T.V. viewing. Not since the late Neil Postman's "How to Watch T.V. News" have I read anything as eye-opening about television and its subtle, maybe even unintentional, but certainly powerful affect on its viewers.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and Funny, March 23, 2008

By 

John Krumm (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this book. It's both funny and insightful. The book's main topic is political humor on late-night comedy shows like Leno's, Letterman's, and O'Brien's. It looks at these shows in the context of the history of American political humor as well as the less mainstream, more satirical cable shows like Colbert's, Stewart's, and Maher's. The main thesis is that the big-audience, big-network, late-night shows do anti-political humor, which avoids taking political sides in favor of cynically joking about the personal foibles of politicians from all parties and the ineffectual government in general. The book's assertions are well-supported, often with jokes from television, which makes it both pleasantly thought-provoking and humorous. The author himself is plenty funny, too, with an engaging, intelligent, witty writing style and his own wry parentheticals. The book will be interesting and entertaining to anyone who follows politics and/or political humor on television. The author obviously follows both, and it shows with the frequent, funny examples that explain why late-night comedians really walk a narrow line in their political humor, maybe narrower than what the audience should be hearing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Overview of Late Night and Politics, Though a Little Dated, November 29, 2009

By 

Mediaman "TVviewer" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke (Hardcover)

This book is a great historical overview of late night talk shows and their impact on national politics. There is quite a bit on Johnny Carson, Arsenio Hall and even Dennis Miller. Then there are all the necessary references to the more recent jokes from Leno, Letterman, Jon Stewart and Conan.

The book's main flaw is that it doesn't contain many current references. For a 2008 copyright, there should be much more dealing with Obama, Saturday Night Live and the Colbert Report. The Colbert examples are particularly dated and the author focuses on the 2006 correspondence dinner that Colbert hosted--so it seems that the book may have been written a couple years before the publication date, with just a couple minor Obama references tacked on once a publisher was found.

But this is a great first foundational effort on a very important topic. It's academic enough for researchers but easy to read for non-students. The author goes in depth on the modern history of media satire and gives some nice subjective views of how comedians have impacted the political process.