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Clinton Jokes Are All the Rage
By CALVIN WOODWARD Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- David Letterman said traffic was so bad ''I had to squeeze
through spaces that were narrower than President Clinton's definition of sex.'' Fellow
comic Bill Maher dreamed up a cream rinse that the president could use ''after a day of
splitting hairs.''
The Clinton-Lewinsky melodrama is playing out against a riot of ribald humor. Late-night
comics and no-name Internet meanies alike are intravenously hooked to it.
Never mind getting booted. Might President Clinton get hooted from office?
The Center for Media and Public Affairs, which tracks the content of late-night comedy
with numbing precision, has never seen such a torrent. But Clinton seems inoculated, says
Robert Lichter, president of the research institution.
''What's remarkable is that Clinton is a laughingstock and it doesn't seem to matter,'' he
said.
William Weld, former Massachusetts governor and Clinton's choice for Mexico
ambassador last year, wondered whether snickers could reach critical mass. ''If
everybody's laughing when the president of the United States walks into the room, it's time
to go,'' he said on PBS.
Laughing at the president may also help the nation heal -- a yuk to cure the yucks. That
role for wit was cited by the dead white guys of Western philosophy, one of whom
considered laughs ''the natural signs of an increase in freedom.''
A common defense, submitting to barbs and turning them to one's advantage, appears
unavailable to the president.
Portrayed as wooden, Vice President Al Gore exaggerates his woodenness and charms
the crowd. But no one expects Clinton to ham it up over women.
Others are busy doing that.
''Macy's has a Clinton Day sale,'' goes one joke from cyberspace. ''All pants half off.''
Asks another: Why does Clinton have a lady's undergarment strapped to his arm? ''That's
the patch -- I'm trying to quit.''
The tortured legal theory that Monica Lewinsky made sexual contact with the president
but he made no such contact with her has provided more fodder: Jay Leno told his NBC
''Tonight Show'' audience that Clinton denied kissing the Blarney Stone while visiting
Ireland, ''claiming the stone kissed him.''
''Comedians have gotten so much material they could do all-Clinton monologues all the
time,'' Lichter said. ''President Clinton is the best thing to hit late-night comedians since
Dan Quayle.''
Actually, better.
Lichter's center has counted 1,138 Clinton jokes from late-night monologues so far in
1998. That's on track to double the previous record -- Bob Dole with 838 in 1996, the
election year. Quayle topped the jokefest in 1990 with only 162, back when shows were
doing less political humor overall.
(Q: What's the problem with political jokes? A: They get elected.)
On any program where comedians riff off headlines, there's little else. On his Web site,
Leno breaks the Clinton scandal into 16 joke-stuffed categories: the Dress, Apologies, the
Videotape and more. He's got 18 cigar jokes alone.
''Andy, go call my mother and tell her not to watch tonight,'' Conan O'Brien told his
sidekick on late-night NBC after relating yet another too-blue joke inspired by the Clinton
video testimony.
On the World Wide Web, a frightening number of jokes lead to the same punchline,
''Close but no cigar.''
California Gov. Pete Wilson told Clinton jokes when the House voted to release the
report by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. ''Today I saw him look more nervous than
a balloon salesman in an acupuncture convention,'' he cracked.
What's going on here? Philosophers said humor can be used to sting the subject or lance a
boil in society, or both.
Comedy is found in ''the Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly,'' Aristotle opined.
''The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or a deformity.'' Essayist Arthur Koestler
observed ''tension finds its outlet in laughter.''
And Sigmund Freud said wit is a ''release from inhibition.''
Freud also thought, ''Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.''
AP-NY-09-26-98 0153EDT
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