July 28, 2008
Dick Jokes on Colbert/Stewart
Would the shows be the same without them?
A friend of mine recently tried to explain to her boss what the Colbert/Stewart hour was--yes, incredible as it may seem, there are people who still haven't even heard ofThe Daily Show or Colbert Report--and she had been using the rhetoric that we all use to justify our fervent dedication: It's smart political satire. It's an influential media phenomenon. All the kids are watching it.
Reluctantly, her boss agreed to watch the shows that night. And it was then, as she envisioned her reserved superior watching, that my friend realized just how many "dick" jokes appear on these shows. She immediately charged me, the humor theorist, with explaining this phenomenon in a way that would get her out of the trouble she was now in. I quickly agreed to the challenge, relentlessly pursuing her scholarly imperative to watch every night.
When both shows returned from summer hiatus, I started my experiment. For two weeks, I tracked "dick" jokes on the Stewart/Colbert hour. My mission was twofold: to see just how prevalent the jokes were and what their purpose was. In order to be thorough I expanded the definition of "dick" jokes to include all regions of genitalia as well as any scatological or sexual joke that, well, might offend conservative superiors.
Monday, July 14. Six jokes are made. In his intro Stewart makes reference to "low-hanging fruit" with hand motions. He then claims, "I didn't mean that as an innuendo, by the way, although I know the hand motions didn't help." Next up is a visual sex joke when John Oliver presents a (blurred) photo of Stewart with a vagina. In the transition segment, Colbert obsesses about Stewart's vacation diarrhea, saying "the fluids you lost through your, uh..."
Same night. Colbert finishes his opening with: "Hey, OK magazine, if Brangelina turns you down, I got a pair of twins you can photograph: my balls." Later, he refers to Belgians as "waffle-humpers," and uses a pretty obvious innuendo about a flagpole as a "steel, hard pole...thrusting...yearning...to heroic conclusion...I'm spent." So far, so good. But the rest of the week is disappointing, aside from the July 16 "drilling me softly" caption on Colbert, and Colbert's July 17 demand that the audience compare him with a sexy ad from Esquire because,"I know I will-later tonight."
