Demean Streaks Nasty, Tasteless Ridicule Of Politicians May Have A Lasting Effect On Our Attitudes Toward Officials

Jay Leno hit below the belt to get his “first really big laugh” at Bob Dole’s expense.

“On MTV, they asked Dole if he wore boxers or briefs,” Leno told “Tonight Show” viewers during the presidential primary campaign. Pause, one-two. “And he said, ‘Depends.’

” As for President Clinton, it’s no wonder he “likes the Olympic torch so much,” Leno recently joked. “It’s the first time he’s been around an old flame that he hasn’t had to deny anything.”

Whether you’re grinning, groaning or grimacing depends on more than your candidate of choice. Sensibilities, generation gaps and any lingering “respect for the presidency” also can make or break America’s funny bones. Are today’s comedians less filling, more infantile? Or are they merely in sync with cynical times that demand a crass course in political humor? Can an avalanche of barbed one-liners affect an election or trivialize it to the point of absurdity? Go ahead, laugh.

Two generations ago, as a boy in South Dakota, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw recalls watching his father tip his hat to President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he visited the state. FDR was a liberal Democrat, and Brokaw’s father a conservative Republican.

“I’m not doing it for Roosevelt. I’m doing it for the office,” he recalls his dad telling him.

“You’d never see anybody doing that anymore,” Brokaw says now. “I don’t mean to raise politicians to sainthood level. But we’re kind of all in this together. If we just constantly demean people who come into public service in the most base possible way, I don’t think that’s such a great idea.”

Bob Hope’s gently jabbing monologues of the elder Brokaw’s time have given way to “Saturday Night Live’s” thumb-in-the-eye satire. The comparatively cerebral humor of a now-autumnal Mort Sahl collides with the gut-level “Animal House” instincts of Leno and fellow late-nighters David Letterman (“Bill Tubby, our president”) and Conan O’Brien (“Earlier today Bob Dole ended his 35-year career in Congress. Tomorrow he’ll be taken out to the country where they’ll use him to make glue”).

Dana Carvey’s since-canceled ABC comedy series depicted a mock Pat Buchanan chomping on a “spicy Mexican heart” to underscore his get-tough immigration policy. Mix in the Comedy Central cable channel’s ongoing campaign coverage, spearheaded by nightly doses of “Politically Incorrect.” And on HBO, Dennis Miller rants about the “ruddy-faced frat rat” running the country.

“When I was a kid, topical political humor was Bob Hope making a joke about Eisenhower’s golf game,” says ABC political analyst Jeff Greenfield.

As a grown-up, he wonders whether “this endless spate of jokes on mainstream television - that Dole is senile and Clinton is a fat, sex-crazed whatever” - is yielding a “whole bundle of ironic if not sarcastic coverage” of presidential politics.

His ABC colleague, Cokie Roberts, contends that “late-night comedians had as much as anything to do with the fact that Dan Quayle was never able to achieve a seriousness in the minds of the American people.”

“Late, Late Show” host Tom Snyder, who regularly has political comedians as guests, recoils at a joke about Dole “going in for his annual autopsy.”

“That’s kinda cruel,” he says. “There are a lot of young comedians today who have really got a mean streak going. I don’t find it funny.”

To which Leno defiantly replies, “I think people take it way too seriously. Ultimately, they’re just jokes!”

It’s a pat answer that most comedians fall back on. Roll with the punch lines and don’t worry about anyone getting hurt. But seriously, folks, might all of these jokes be reverberating in the voting booth?

“Politically Incorrect” host Bill Maher, whose show will move to ABC following “Nightline” in January, says comedians play on - or perhaps prey on - the “dictates” of their audiences.

“If you do a joke about Clinton being fat or horny, people find that funny,” he says. “If you do a joke about Dole being old, people find that funny. As a comic, you have to go with that.”

Bay Buchanan, whose brother, Pat, has been boiled down to a brown-shirted Nazi by late-night comics, says political humor “absolutely” affects and infects elections.

“The hardest thing to overcome as a candidate is ridicule,” she says. “It sets up a perception out there that is very hard to break. But when it’s strictly mean-spirited, it’s more a case of liberal against conservative. When Jay Leno beats up on Pat Buchanan, our people know Jay Leno is coming from a different point of view, and that’s how he is. You’d rather not have it, but it doesn’t have the same impact as ridicule.”

Former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro says politicians of all persuasions are taking too many sucker punches.

“If it gets mean-spirited, then it’s not funny,” says Ferraro, who recently became a co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire.” “I think going after somebody’s family is just wrong… . . They forget that the targets are human beings. It does affect people.”

Leno’s defense: He’s an equal-opportunity lampooner whose only agenda is easily grasped jokes.

“Americans think they like politics, but they really don’t know anything about it,” he says. “So all your jokes have to be fairly generic. Buchanan’s the extremist guy, Clinton’s the sexy guy, Dole’s the old guy, Perot’s the rich guy. And all your jokes go off of that. …

“To me, a mean joke is if you call someone a coward or you question their patriotism. I’ve never done a Chelsea joke. I’ve never done a joke about Bill Clinton as a father. Those all seem off-limits to me.”

Jokes about Dole’s age similarly would be taboo “if he came out with a walker and was shaking and had a stroke,” Leno says. “They’re funny only because he has the energy of a man half his age. He’s a vibrant guy. He’s out there 18 hours a day, boom, boom, boom.”

Larry King recalls a prediction by the late Lenny Bruce, whose explicit sexual humor and drug addiction landed him in and out of jail during much of his cut-short career.

“I’ll never forget that. We were walking along, and Lenny says, ‘One of the worst things that could happen is the fall of Communism. Because we’re going to have to turn inward. We’re going to hate our Congress, hate our Supreme Court, hate our president, hate our mayor … ‘ He was right. The political humor is nastier today, but the society’s nastier.”