It's long been an axiom among creative writing teachers: "Write what you know."
That's good advice for the journalist or novelist, so why not for the joke writer as well?
Will Rogers and Art Buchwald stand out as icons among political humorists, but they are gone and have left behind only a handful of writers who are experts at throwing the political right cross (or left cross, depending on your partisanship): Mort Sahl, P.J. O'Rourke, Christopher Buckley, and Will Durst come immediately to mind.
This doesn't mean that the political joke itself is rare. Far from it. Turn on any talk show with a monologue these days and at least half the jokes are political in nature.
That, of course, doesn't mean that all the jokes being told are great jokes. Some are good, few are clever. Most are banal.
Current event jokes are in demand on the late night television circuit. Nothing unusual about that if you study the history of the TV talk show monologue dating back through Carson, Dick Cavett, Jack Paar, and even Steve Allen before them. Through the years, politics has risen to the top of the current events list.
One need not wonder why Jay Leno employs 22 staff writers and will also occasionally buy jokes from freelancers as well as writing jokes himself. David Letterman has over a dozen writers. Even NBC newcomer Jimmy Fallon oversees a stable of 11 comedy contributors.
It boils down to expertise. All of these writers might be funny in their own right, but each of them is not funny in every area.
Writer X may be able to pound out 50 political jokes a day for Leno while Writer Y might feed Letterman the greatest jokes you've ever heard on the topic of baseball. But if Y turned in a monologue on President Obama's health care policy and X went to bat writing one-liners about A-Rod, Leno and Letterman might be looking elsewhere for their material.
Not every writer is good at every thing! Comedians know this and that's why they have such large staffs.
Even in the world of comedy, you must write with the hand of an expert. I might go so far as to say, especially in the comedy world.
That's good advice for the journalist or novelist, so why not for the joke writer as well?
Will Rogers and Art Buchwald stand out as icons among political humorists, but they are gone and have left behind only a handful of writers who are experts at throwing the political right cross (or left cross, depending on your partisanship): Mort Sahl, P.J. O'Rourke, Christopher Buckley, and Will Durst come immediately to mind.
This doesn't mean that the political joke itself is rare. Far from it. Turn on any talk show with a monologue these days and at least half the jokes are political in nature.
That, of course, doesn't mean that all the jokes being told are great jokes. Some are good, few are clever. Most are banal.
Current event jokes are in demand on the late night television circuit. Nothing unusual about that if you study the history of the TV talk show monologue dating back through Carson, Dick Cavett, Jack Paar, and even Steve Allen before them. Through the years, politics has risen to the top of the current events list.
One need not wonder why Jay Leno employs 22 staff writers and will also occasionally buy jokes from freelancers as well as writing jokes himself. David Letterman has over a dozen writers. Even NBC newcomer Jimmy Fallon oversees a stable of 11 comedy contributors.
It boils down to expertise. All of these writers might be funny in their own right, but each of them is not funny in every area.
Writer X may be able to pound out 50 political jokes a day for Leno while Writer Y might feed Letterman the greatest jokes you've ever heard on the topic of baseball. But if Y turned in a monologue on President Obama's health care policy and X went to bat writing one-liners about A-Rod, Leno and Letterman might be looking elsewhere for their material.
Not every writer is good at every thing! Comedians know this and that's why they have such large staffs.
Even in the world of comedy, you must write with the hand of an expert. I might go so far as to say, especially in the comedy world.
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