“Ho ho ho, who’s got the last laugh now?”
That line is from the great George/Ira Gershwin standard “They All Laughed” (here is Ella Fitzgerald’s equally great version).
The reason it came to mind is Alex Christy’s piece at newsbusters.com, which talks about juuust a tiny, slight little difference in the number of jokes late-night show hosts told about the two presidential candidates this year.
Take a look, and I’m pretty sure you’ll see why I’m amused:
During the fall presidential campaign, a Media Research Center study found that hosts of the late-night “comedy” shows told a total of 1,463 jokes about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris — but 1,428 of them were about Trump, and only 35 were about Harris. That’s a whopping 40:1 ratio or almost 98 percent to 2 percent.
In addition to the 1,428-35 Trump-Harris split, analysts also found that the comedians told 302 jokes about the vice presidential candidates. Of these, 236 were directed at J.D. Vance compared to 66 at Tim Walz. That equates to a 4:1 ratio with 78 percent aimed at Vance.
Combined, that comes out to a 1,664-101 comparison with a 16:1 ratio targeting the GOP ticket 94 percent of the time.
Over the same time span, the comedians also welcomed 44 liberal celebrity, journalist, and political guests compared to zero conservatives. Those included one Colbert interview with Harris, two — one Kimmel and one Daily Show — with Walz, and one Kimmel with Doug Emhoff.
Boy oh boy, they really got Donald Trump didn’t they? They really nailed him. They whupped him eight ways from Sunday. And that goes for J. D. Vance too.
Except…
…who will be President and Vice President three weeks from now?
Oh, one other thing: in case you’re wondering what the years’ long one-sided “comedy” of these shows is doing for their ratings (it’s not just 2024), we have this from David Ng’s article at breitbart.com:
Colbert’s CBS show — usually the top-rated among the three major networks — garnered an average of 2.6 million viewers during the 2023-24 season, way down from 3.81 million five years ago. The current 2024-25 season isn’t looking better. For the recent third quarter, Colbert attracted an average of 2.5 million.
Kimmel’s ABC show drew an average of 1.37 million viewers for the third quarter.
Like the song says: “Ho ho ho, who’s got the last laugh now?”
