Jay Leno no longer delves into political humor.
He told Piers Morgan: “I just stopped doing politics in my act altogether because, you know, when I did The Tonight Show, the idea was you made fun of both sides equally.… They would both be angry, and I’d be, ‘That’s good.’”
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But in the decade since Leno left NBC’s late-night lineup for good, the world has undergone a massive transformation. A sizeable number of people regard commercials, awards shows, and even sports as important not as an end in themselves but as a means of advancing a political-cultural agenda.
“Now, you’ve got to take a side, and people are angry if you don’t,” Leno told Morgan. “I find when I start to tell a political joke, they want to know the punchline before — is this pro or against — you know? So, I just, I just stopped doing it. I just want people to come and laugh and have a good time.”
Think about what he said. People want to know the punchline before hearing the joke. In a social situation, when a loudmouth interrupts you by telling the punchline prematurely, you understand that he ruined your telling of the joke (or that you recycle stale jokes). People now demand this rudeness. They want to know that Donald Trump or the conservative punching bag of the moment gets pummeled before the act starts. They know what’s coming. This explains why so much of modern comedy fails to cause laughter.
What does the most Norm Macdonald Norm Macdonald joke share in common with this one from Christina Mariani and this one with a prolonged punchline from Hans Kim?
They all contain the element of surprise. We laugh in part because they succeeded in misdirecting us. Saturday Night Live, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show, and so much else that fails lacks this component. The audience, which laughs out of ideological solidarity rather than anything inherently humorous, can anticipate, like any other cliché, what follows. Seth Meyers, who knows about this phenomenon, coined the portmanteau “clapter.” It describes audiences approving of the comedian’s message but the humor of it not quite affecting them. They laugh as a sort of clapping. They approve but do not find it funny even if they pretend they do. Unfunny comedians rely on clapter as a crutch.
Jon Stewart, who returns to host The Daily Show every Monday — it’s an election year, you know — made a career on clapter. So did John Oliver. It’s almost a prerequisite to hosting a late-night comedy program. (READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: Trump’s Primary Win Exposes General Election Vulnerability)
Clapter does not describe all politically themed jokes. Here Dave Chappelle uses Donald Trump as the punchline. It works because one could vote for or against Trump and still appreciate the humor. Funny knows no party.
The ideal comedy club does not remain innocent of political humor but instead steers away from politics that uses humor as the Trojan horse to convert a captive audience. That’s dishonest and boring. As with the misguided Bud Light promotion of transgenderism, it represents a corruption of purpose. Everything is politics to whom politics is everything.
“I’m not trying to influence you,” Leno confessed. “That’s why Rodney Dangerfield and I were great friends. I knew Rodney Dangerfield for 40 years. I have no idea if he was Democrat or Republican. It was just about the jokes.”
Nobody knows how Fatty Arbuckle or Redd Foxx voted, either. That’s normal. It’s weird that we know how Jimmy Kimmel, Chelsea Handler, and Amy Schumer vote.
Leno invoked Rodney Dangerfield a second time near the close of the Piers Morgan Uncensored interview. He recalled Dangerfield suffering a stroke from which he never really recovered on his program. On Dangerfield’s death bed, where he could hear but not speak, the comedian’s wife asked her husband to squeeze Leno’s finger as a sign of his awareness. He faintly did. Leno then said, “Rodney, that’s not my finger.” Dangerfield, almost vegetative by this point, then moved his shoulder in a manner that grabbed everyone’s attention.
Comedy brings joy to death beds. Politics brings death to comedy.
