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2008; Jay Leno quipped that the election was “a huge celebration over at Barack
Obama headquarters, otherwise known as MSNBC.”46 Much of the sniping was
directed at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network, and its perennial right-wing bias was
itself a subject of campaign humor. David Letterman joked that “At the end of
the evening, the electoral vote count was 349 for Obama, 148 for McCain. Or, as
Fox News says, too close to call.”47 Even comedians such as Leno and
Letterman were beginning to become frustrated with the traditional expectations
of fairness, and Letterman especially pushed the envelope with a half-joking
sequence of gripes directed at McCain after the latter conspicuously canceled an
appearance: “Did you see the concession speech last night? John McCain was
generous. He was gracious. He was statesman-like. And I was thinking well, he
should have tried that earlier.”48
A new and prominent factor was also network news shows which were
themselves satires of news shows, such as programs by Stephen Colbert and by
Jon Stewart. One episode of the Colbert Report has Colbert making fun of
McCain’s claims of superior experience, noting that “clearly he has hundreds of
years of experience.”49 In another episode McCain is stated as “pointing out that
Obama called Sarah Palin a fat ugly hog and offered legislation requiring
kindergartners to watch their parents doing it doggy style.” 0 Stewart, on The
Daily Show, mockingly parrots McCain’s rhetorical comment that “I know what
fear feels like” with “I know what an enlarged prostate feels like.”51 Despite the
vulgarity of much of the humor, as with the New Yorker cover, some of these
faux-news programs were so authentic that commentators fretted about voters
unaware that such comedians were being ironic and that most of the candidates’
video images were edited or faked for satirical purposes.
Satire became an election issue itself in 2008, and there were complaints
that satirists were in fact swaying the election. In the 1970s, Saturday Night Live
was considered edgy for even depicting a president humorously, although Chevy
Chase’s Ford did little more than pratfalls. In 2008 more people might have seen
Tina Fey’s impression of Sarah Palin than they did of the actual candidate. SNL
seemed to agree with Hillary Clinton’s charge that the media was favoring
Obama in a debate skit where the CNN moderators offer ‘Obama’ a pillow and a
hot and bothered Soledad O’Brien fans herself after Obama’s vacuous closing
remark that journalist