The Comedians Work Over Cheney

As President Bush would say, the Vice President shooting incident “resignated” with the people. So how would the late night comedians handle it? The Olympic Games mean Leno comes on after midnight so I was able to watch Jon Stewart, David Letterman, and Jay Leno.
Leno, who’s bought over 500 of my jokes, has the classic joke structure. He’s not doing a news parody show like Jon Stewart is. He fired off a string of actual jokes – none of them mine – including one where Cheney shoots a fat man after the snowstorm in Washington because he thinks he’s a polar bear. I thought the joke had too much information in the last few words. I had sent one comparing the poor aim of Cheney to the poor aim of Clinton: One hit a blue dress, the other hit a lawyer. Leno had a version of this but it wasn’t mine. As so often happens, buried in Leno's safer material is a Lenny Bruce-style barb that turns into the harshest joke of the night, but no one remembers it. That's what quantity allows him. The joke: The worst part was that Cheney tortured the guy for 20 miniutes before he shot him. I guarantee everyone today will say Leno played it safe, as they usually do, but that is not safe. I was proud of him for that one.
Leno seemed happy and he did well. His stuff was actual jokes so it will be reprinted more in the newspapers and on websites around the world, including our own Sunday Oregonian where I often see my stuff.
Leno is taking the hardest path: Tons of actual jokes.
Letterman’s material scored the most with his Top Ten list of Cheney excuses including: I thought he was trying to go gay cowboy on me” and “I had a bet with Gretsky’s wife.” They both illustrate a standard comedy technique of tying two topical subjects together. The joke that cracked me up was about the snowstorm. He saw a cop up to his neck in snow and he said, “This is tough on you.” and the cop said, “Yeah, but it’s even tougher on my horse.”
That probably goes back a ways but it’s silly and it caught me just right. Anytime you can work an animal into the joke it’s going to do better. Animals are great in comedy.
Now we turn to Jon Stewart. His format is perfect for making fun of the Bush administration because he’s doing a parody of the truth and, frankly, so are they. He didn’t go for a bunch of jokes you would put in the paper but when he was interviewing one of his reporters the magic moment happened. The reporter said, “Even knowing what he knows now he would still have shot his friend. Otherwise it would send the wrong message to the pheasants.”
That is what I call “Hero Comedy.” Jon’s team essentially held the entire White House spin machine on the subject of Iraq up to ridicule, and this was brilliant. Now, he had that comedic device already in place but when you insert this set of facts, it becomes huge. It points out how absurdly stupid the Bush administration sounded when they said, “Even knowing we were wrong about everything, we would have still done it.” This is the type of comedy that makes me proud to be alive.
In closing some trivia: Were you aware that President Bush made that "resignated" comment right here in Portland? If someone had just stood up and said, "It's resonate, you dumb ass" it would have been a huge news story, and none of this would have happened. So, Portland, we have only ourselves to blame.