The politics of punch lines

>>> i believe that diplomacy should be the cornerstone of any foreign policy .

>> and i can see russia from my house.

>> gore realizes he's finished within the american legal system . now he's going straight to the hall of justice.

>> nixon got in trouble for illegally wiretapping democratic headquarters. bush is illegally wiretapping the entire country.

>> mother of [ bleep ]. you fired big bird !

>> a troubling new report from the shuttleworth institute shows that due to facebook, every potential candidate for the 2040 presidential race , no matter how smart or accomplished, is now completely unelectable.

>> that last one is not so funny. too close, too close. there's no denying that politics and humor have been strange bed foe l fellows for a long central's late night lampooning. jokes are often loaded with a serious political message. but when this satire sleeps in, is it subconsciously biased towards liberals. with is the author of "a conservative walks into a bar." alison one thing i noticed and i'm sure our viewers noticed from the clips we bumped in with are there are no conservatives other than our own s.e. cupp who is hilarious. are conservatives just not that funny.

>> oh, no, conservatives are very funny. sometimes they mean to be, sometimes they don't.

>> clint eastwood comes to mind.

>> there are some very good conservative humorists out there, but most of liberal. there are reasons for this. a lot of it has to do with the nature of political comedy. it's an outsider art , and some of it has to do with the job choice a conservative or liberal will make.

>> well,tory ray is begging for me to ask you who.

>> dennis miller . he may not be --

>> no, absolutely, he's hill larous.

>> nick dipaulo.

>> i want to make a comment. i think conservatives need to stop whining about this. either get funnier or realize that because jon stewart and " snl " are perceived as being left leaning, when they do skewer the president, as " snl " did this weekend or when they dothe admini stration for its handling of libya, it almost resonates in a much bigger way, yes or no?

>> no, i think you're absolutely right. i think part of comedy is taking shots, political humorists taking shots at everybody. that also is in the liberal wheel house . liberals tend to sort of eat their own and that's what comedians do. i think that if you go into comedy and say, i want to be funny, and then second airily, i want to be conservative, you can be pretty funny. if you go in first and i say i want to do conservative humor, you'll have a harder time being funny with that.

>> that line between comedy and making a serious political point is kind of interesting to me. you think about jon stewart , and his fallback it always seems to be when people really stoort to question him about his politics, i'm just a comedian. but i think of the other example, think of al franken , a guy who wrote all the material for " snl " for years, performer, writer, e used that intentionally toward the end as a vehicle to be taken seriously and to get into politics and he wound. in the united states senate . it seems interesting. some people may see, you know, comedy and satire as a way to get ahead in serious sort of endeavors.

>> that makes sense. i interviewed almost three dozen write ertion and comedians for this book and all of them said we're not trying to educate people, we're trying to be funny. know that when al franken ran for the senate and when he became a senator, he became very serious about his policy and he put that first. and so while his fund-raising letters can be very, very witty, truly he's a senator first and a comedian not.

>> alison, thanks so much.

>> thank you.

>> and up next, before joe biden and paul ryan square off this week, we have a little vice presidential debate