A new content analysis of late-night television confirms what many conservatives have long observed: the joke writers overwhelmingly reserve their punchlines for Republicans.
According to Breitbart, the New York Post reported that from September 8 through the following Friday, 45 of the 52 jokes about the high-stakes Senate races on Comedy Centrals The Daily Show, ABCs Jimmy Kimmel Live! and NBCs The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers were aimed squarely at GOP candidates. Barely seven jokes targeted Democrats, according to a Media Research Center (MRC) study provided exclusively to the newspaper, underscoring how the entertainment establishment continues to function as an auxiliary arm of the Left rather than an equal-opportunity critic.
The MRC breakdown shows that fourteen wisecracks were aimed at Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running against Democratic state Representative James Talarico for the U.S. Senate; nine slammed Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is trying to fend off Democratic challenger Troy Jackson; and six targeted Michigan Republican Mike Rogers, who is running for an open seat against far-left Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. The study did not include tracking gags against other politicians, including President Donald Trump, who remains the ceaseless target of late-night TVs mawkish jokes, exaggerated send-ups, and scarcely disguised innuendo.
The report notes that MRC President David Bozell expressed no surprise at the lopsided, anti-Republican outcome, describing a landscape where ideological conformity has replaced genuine satire. Late-night comedy has become remarkably predictable, he said.
Bozell argued that the bias has become more revealing than the punchlines themselves, as hosts and writers repeatedly shield Democrats from the same ridicule they heap on conservatives. When the same people are always the punchline, and the same people are almost never the punchline, eventually the pattern becomes funnier than the jokes. Comedy is sharpest when nobody is off limits. Late night should try it.
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