ABSTRACT
Does late night political humor matter? Is it simply entertaining, or is it something more? Most contemporary political humorists publicly claim that their humor has no importance beyond its comedic value. Jon Stewart, for example, regularly downplays his iconoclastic status by reminding viewers and journalists that he is “just a comedian.” 1 He once famously told the hosts of CNN’s Crossfire in 2004 that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart could not be taken seriously because “the show that leads into [it] is puppets making crank phone calls.”
