Making a Joke of the 2012 Election

President Obama on The Daily Show. | Photo courtesy of Pete Souza via Wikimedia Commons

The National Monitor recently reported that “Governor Romney was the butt of 148 jokes on late-night talk show monologues, which is more than twice as many as President Obama.” Moreover, “The CMPA [Center for Media and Public Affairs] counted 290 jokes about Republicans and 138 jokes about Democrats.”

In 2008, “President Obama finished fourth with 243 jokes…. His opponents, Arizona Senator John McCain and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had a combined total of 1,224 jokes told about them.”

This joke bias is not exactly alien to anyone with basic cable and a computer, but while selecting the funniest satire of this 2012 election, the absence of a Republican funny bone is painstakingly clear.

Conservative candidates and pundits are consistently at the tail-end of political punchlines. Most of these same quips streamed on Twitter, where many comedians took to live-tweeting the debates, providing a welcome break from the rather uncomfortable and aggressive rhetoric shared between the candidates. The tweet ticker and tracking of hashtags during the debates also accomplished the same engaging effect. Twitter certainly is the social media victor of the 2012 debate season.

While memes also exploded, most would agree that they exhaust themselves too quickly. Scott Brown, a theatre critic for New York magazine, said that “when Obama uttered his ‘horses and bayonets’ zinger in the third debate, we all instantly envisioned the blizzard of memes it would set off—it felt that rote. Have presidential sloganeering and campaign gaffes fatally infected the great American free-range meme? Is any of this crap even funny anymore?”

Are any of these political witticisms still amusing? Don’t fret, America, there is still some priceless satire out there in the World Wide Web.

Republican novelty accounts parody the remarks and attitudes of Congressman Paul Ryan and Governor Mitt Romney consistently well. Twitter accounts @MottRomney2012 and @OvenMittRomney both produce equally hilarious interpretations of the Romney political campaign from the point of view of an ancient Pharaoh and oven mitt:

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/OvenMittRomney/status/263889853354229760″]

@PaulRyanGosling adapts the Feminist Ryan Gosling meme in order to disguise Paul Ryan’s conservative sentiments as flirty come-ons:

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/PaulRyanGosling/status/261850470719574016″]

At least for Fork Lift Comedy, there is nothing dreamier than Paul Ryan wearing cotton-nylon blend:


Want to know more about Romney’s Tax plan? The Democratic National Committee cleverly exposes its concerns with Romney’s evasive economic goals.

Democrats clearly rely on this established sense of humor. President Obama has cracked successful jokes in the past, while Vice President Joe Biden more recently found everything Paul Ryan said at the vice presidential debate overwhelmingly riotous.

One would think that a conservative counter-attack would exist. The Looking Spoon attempts conservative satire but only rivals the 2007 attempt of Fox News at a Daily Show counterpart, the 1/2 Hour News Hour. The same pun on Barack Obama’s initials (“Vote for the same reason you wear deodorant”) appears in both a 2007 episode of the 1/2 Hour News Hour and on The Looking Spoon as of November 3. This joke is about as fresh as 5-year-old deodorant.

And yet, there are even more satirical websites that corroborate the pre-existing jocular elitism of the political left.

The I Bet Mitt Romney Tumblr suggests that Romney chases waterfalls and answers rhetorical questions. The I Bet Barack Obama Tumblr suggests that he not only created Nutella but is also the Real Slim Shady. Both are harmlessly humorous, but the intentions of both Tumblrs diverge when browsing further–it is clear that left-of-centers manage both accounts. D. Jerrod Beary, the creator of I Bet Mitt Romney, says, “Romney isn’t just a bad option for this country, but he’s also a pretty douchey person, so I thought it’d be fun to come up with a bunch of stuff he probably does.”

(A personal favorite from I Bet Mitt Romney: “I bet if you say Bloody Romney three times in the mirror with the lights out, Mitt Romney will pop out of the mirror and take away your basic rights as a woman.”)

Governor Mitt Romney laughing. | Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons

Mitt Romney does in fact have a sense of humor. Although his delivery is awkward at times, his speech given at the Al Smith dinner successfully jabs at both parties and his own Mormon beliefs. However, his punchline about climate change at the Republican National Convention undermines an important, and rather neglected global issue as much as The Looking Spoon’s photo of a t-shirt which reads “I’d rather shower at Penn State than vote for Obama” perversely abuses the Sandusky scandal.

Beary agrees: “A lot of conservative humor about the election seems really mean-spirited. To me, there’s a huge difference between making fun of the kind of jeans Mitt Romney wears and using racial slurs against [Obama] or comparing him to a monkey.”

At the same time, Photoshopping Scumbag Steve’s fitted cap to Mitt Romney lacks residual, negative connotations, whereas Photoshopping the President to resemble Mao Zedong is cheap and abrasive. The penurious qualities of this satire alone determines its shelf life on the Internet; it is not comedy, but rather bitter propaganda. Conservative comedy ultimately fails because it is not only infused with this “fire and brimstone rhetoric,” as Beary suggests, but overall is wholly awkward. Try saying “Barackward” as a pun on the 2012 slogan “Forward.” It doesn’t work.

The New Republic raised similar concerns about the absence of conservative satire in 2011 when the partisanal comedy trends of the Bush era extended into Obama’s presidency. Jonathan Chait suggested that successful liberal satire takes “the sting out of losing” elections, or at least the sting of inefficient government.

The satirical supremacy of the political left fundamentally divides liberals and conservatives even further. While the comedically gifted are pitted against the comedically challenged, as a consequence, both political parties fail to register the humor and platforms of the opposing side. Although liberals have the clear advantage in this comedic contest, what would happen to America if the far-right suddenly became funny? Comedy must be behind this perpetuity of contemporary partisan politics.

 

About Kelly Felsberg

Kelly is a senior English major and copy editor for The Quad. She only writes with Sharpie pens.

View all posts by Kelly Felsberg →

9 Comments on “Making a Joke of the 2012 Election”

  1. Humor is extremely subjective, especially political humor. It would be helpful for you to know that the ONLY people who think liberal humor is superior are liberals who seem to be desperate to reassure themselves of this “fact”.

    I’m not going to go point by point, but some of the examples of liberal humor you cite aren’t even smirk inducing…maybe they are for you, and that’s fine.

    Frank J. Fleming gives a good run-down on why he thinks liberals aren’t funny at http://pjmedia.com/blog/face-it-liberals-just-arent-very-funny/?singlepage=true, give it a look.

    It’s a good thing you linked to my homepage, you cited one of literally hundreds of piece I’ve made over the years, so it will be good that your readers will see you’re quite the cherry picker.

    While I’m flattered you cited my blog, you did miss several other great sites who do great work.

    http://www.imao.us

    http://www.thepeoplescube.com

    http://www.iowntheworld.com

    http://www.itsbigfurhat.com

    http://www.imaksim.com

    http://www.daletoons.blogspot.com

    http://www.hopenchangecartoons.com

    That’s just a few off the top of my head. I hope you and your readers give them a look.

  2. You wouldn’t notice conservative humor only if you live in a solid liberal bubble. This article illustrates how impenetrable that bubble is at BU.

    You won’t understand a cultural joke if you don’t know the culture, will you? Have you tried to learn anything about the conservative culture – or tried to look at the world through their eyes? Try it sometime. That’s what many conservatives are doing on a daily basis – trying to look at the world through their eyes of liberals to understand where they are coming from. That in itself is an endless source of hilarity.

    Humor is only funny if the audience shares the author’s frame of reference. Everyone understands animal jokes or mother-in-law jokes because those references are universally shared. But if it’s a computer code writing joke, only those familiar with computer programming will laugh at it. It’s even worse when it comes to politics: two completely separate words.

    Liberals don’t know half of what conservatives see happening to the country under the Obama Admin. If the mainstream media didn’t report about the failure of Obama’s investments into “green” projects, they won’t understand any of the conservative Solyndra jokes. If they haven’t heard of the Operation Fast and Furious, they won’t get the gun-running jokes, and so on.

    Conservatives have created and/or hijacked quite a few Twitter trends lately, with many great one-liners. Liberals usually comment on such trends about how unfunny those are. The same liberals might as well go on some Chinese joke forum, run it through a Google translator, and post snide comments about how unfunny Chinese jokes are. But those comments would be telling more about them than about the jokes they didn’t understand.

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