They've become a joking matter

This is the election that made politics a joke.

Or maybe it's the campaign in which politics discovered its sense of humor.

Either way, humor has become not only entertainment but also a major campaign tool in the 2008 presidential election cycle. Rarely a week goes by when a presidential contender isn't making an appearance on one of the many comedy shows on network and cable television.

"It is no surprise that politicians are going to where they have an audience," said longtime producer Norman Lear, who at age 85 has written more laugh lines than any politician has ever heard. "The politicians are in the business of seduction. And what better atmosphere to be seductive than where it is light and happy?"

People who are willing to make themselves the butt of a joke look like mensches. With all three candidates working to fix their image in the voters' minds, a mensch isn't a bad thing to be. They could do worse, a lot worse.

Blogger, journalist and author Daniel Kurtzman, whose Political Humor site on About.com is the most comprehensive anthology of political humor going, believes that comedy is the one of the "best ways for a politician to burnish their image."

Kurtzman points out that the candidates are visiting the chat shows more often than ever before. "A Gallup poll recently found that 8 out of 10 people surveyed think it's important for the president to have a sense of humor. And it's not just because they expect a president to make them laugh. It signals who they are as a person. It shows they can take a joke."

With the influx of young voters in this election cycle, humor has risen in importance because comedy is a critical part of the younger generation's cultural vocabulary. This is the first generation raised on YouTube and a 24-hour comedy channel, a group that doesn't distinguish too closely among Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and the front page of the local newspaper. A recent study by the nonpartisan Pew Institute found that, in fact, young voters were getting the majority of their news from heretofore unconventional sources, such as Colbert and Stewart.

And in such a campaign appearance on the late night (and even early morning) talk shows have become the equivalent of the traditional whistle-stop.

For example, when presidential contender Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton faced a credibility crisis concerning the account of her visit to Bosnia as first lady, she defused the issue with her recent guest spot on Jay Leno's show.