ON THE POWER OF POLITICAL PARODY

DEADLY FUNNIES

There's a great piece in the International Herald Tribune on the power of caricature in politics, focusing on the McCain/Obama Presidential race.  Here's an excerpt:

"A bumbling president, a rube candidate, a greedy politician - such are the caricatures of political life. Whether accurate or not, they can be more powerful than any argument.

Recall the fate of President Gerald Ford, doomed to be remembered as an irredeemable klutz, a judgment that readily slips into assessments of his political acumen. Why? Mainly because more than 30 years ago the comedian Chevy Chase used an incident in which Ford stumbled and made it the central feature of his impersonation on "Saturday Night Live." Every Ford skit ended with disastrous pratfalls. The caricature, of course, may have been flawed, since Ford was a star athlete in his youth. But the image persists."

What makes this example relevant of course is how Sarah Palin has been so successfully caricatured by Saturday Night Live in the weeks before the election:

"Such is the strange influence of caricature in politics. During the recent vice presidential debates, for example, one candidate, boasting of a "mavericky" perspective, when asked about how to deal with the world economic crisis, said: "We're gonna ask ourselves what would a maverick do in this situation, and then ya know, we'll do that." That same candidate, asked about global warming, said: "We don't know if this climate change whosie-whatsit is man-made or if it's just a natural part of the End of Days."

Oh, wait a minute. That wasn't Governor Sarah Palin in the debate. That was Tina Fey doing her impression of Sarah Palin in the debate on "Saturday Night Live," an impersonation - filled with perky winks and folksy gosh-darn-its and a self-conscious elimination of g's at the end of whatever word she happened to be sayin' - that was so resonant, it almost displaced Palin's own performance as herself.

Fey's impression appeared on countless news reports, inspired political punditry, racked up hits on YouTube and was watched in full on the NBC Web site, nbc.com, where it had, at last check, more than five million views."

Here's the clip on the mock Palin/Biden debate in case you missed it:

The Herald Tribune piece goes on to give a good example of the two Presidential candidates have been caricatured of late in the New York Observer:

"Another kind of political caricature appeared in last week's New York Observer: Jason Horowitz compared the supposed emotional style of Senator John McCain with the apparent unflappability of Senator Barack Obama - a point, as he noted, that has been made before. But the essay's focus came from an intellectual caricature, a portrait of exaggerated temperaments, reproduced by Drew Friedman in a color drawing.

The candidates - in a cloaked form of advocacy - are portrayed as "Star Trek" archetypes: McCain the demonstrative, emotional Captain Kirk; Obama, the coolly detached Mr. Spock."

These caricatures probably contribute to the widening gap between the candidates, as this CBS story illustrates:

"The Obama-Biden ticket now leads the McCain-Palin ticket 53 percent to 39 percent among likely voters, a 14-point margin. One week ago, prior to the Town Hall debate that uncommitted voters saw as a win for Obama, that margin was just three points.

Among independents who are likely voters - a group that has swung back and forth between McCain and Obama over the course of the campaign - the Democratic ticket now leads by 18 points. McCain led among independents last week.

McCain's campaign strategy may be hurting hurt him: Twenty-one percent of voters say their opinion of the Republican has changed for the worse in the last few weeks. The top two reasons cited for the change of heart are McCain's attacks on Obama and his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate."

The power of political caricature through the ages is not new.  But it's useful now and then to remind ourselves that it's power should never be taken for granted.

Comments

[Kate Elzer-Peters]

I always enjoy satire, and did my best to write my own satire of the presidential and vice presidential debates for the Queensboro blog. Because all of the candidates have so many interesting tics, I had LOTS of material to work with. Check it out!

http://queensboro.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/the-great-debate-newcomer-vs-insider/