Vol. 8, Issue 2, April 27, 2010
Humorists Furious at Arms Race with Tea Party
For the fifth week in a row, satirists and humor commentators around the U.S. were frustrated in their designs to satirize the Tea Party due to real life events overtaking their most outlandish parodies.
"It was bad enough when Tea Partiers actually started saying 'keep the government out of my Medicare!' without a shred of irony," said Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers. "We had a 15-minute skit planned around a character who kept repeating that as a mantra. When it turned out to be real we had a pretty big hole in our show, though fortunately nobody noticed."
People attending Tea Party rallies have embraced positions more contradictory than believed possible, demanding that Washington "quit interfering" with federal programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, and NASA.
"A lady last week at one rally demanded an end to welfare despite depending on it to support her and her nine kids!" muttered Daily Show impresario Jon Stewart ruefully as he shook his head. "It is almost as if they are trying to put guys like me out of business. Which I might believe if I could possibly credit them with that much foresight."
Tea Party members, however, appear to be delighted at staying a step ahead of what they term the commentators of the 'liberal media'."
"Those news pundits like Jon Stewart are always twisting the truth to make us look bad," said Harriet Lanster, a community organizer from Chino Valley, Arizona. "Well, we're in charge of the twisting this time. And don't you dare call me a community organizer! That's a very racist term to use. Well, not racist I guess. But you know what I mean."
Faced with the reality that the Tea Party has effectively become immune to satire and parody, humorists are exploring other targets such as the Democratic Party.
"The Dems could in fact be funny, if they weren't such a tragedy," said Meyers. "I'm thinking it may just be easier at this point to forget Washington altogether and just focus on mocking Canadians."
