Interesting analysis below, but what’s most glaring is that neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nor House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi received enough attention from our brave Late Night gang to even rank on this list. However! Two years-plus out of office, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney got hit 36 and 66 times respectively.
Takes an awful lot of guts to Speak! Truth! To! The! Out! Of! Power!
Republicans were joked about by a margin of 3 to 1 over Democrats on late-night talk shows last year, but the biggest joke for Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon was President Obama, according to a new George Mason University study provided to Whispers.
Republicans took the top title because so many of them were speared by Fallon, Leno, and David Letterman, according to Robert Lichter, president of the school’s Center for Media and Public Affairs. …
But when it came to the top target of the 2011, Obama and shamed former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner came in first and second. Obama was gored by 342 jokes, Weiner 220. Third was former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, followed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 186 and Osama bin Laden at 172.
Lichter noted that far down on the list were the winners of Tuesday’s Iowa GOP caucuses, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul. “This shows,” he says, “that it’s hard to vote for somebody while you’re laughing at them.”
But, he adds, it’s probably not an ominous sign for the president that he’s late night’s biggest joke target. Lichter tells Whispers that his totals are far below the 500-plus that used to slam former Presidents Clinton and Bush every year. “Obama is substantially lower than any other president,” said Lichter.
And this was during an off-year without any kind of major election.
These brave establishment Palace Guards will be much, much worse this year.
[Cross-posted from Big Hollywood]
