"I'm sure you're alarmed at the big news out of Washington...Hilary Clinton has stopped using her maiden name...What Hillary is she?" Colbert pretends to be outraged, and the presumed liberal listening audiences laughs as the commentator notes not only are: "the other 17 candidates" not "dropping their maiden names" but they are not getting adequate media attention for bad hair days, as has Clinton. Even liberal members of the media fall into the trap of judging female politicians by their appearance. Colbert quotes commentator Chris Matthew raving about Hillary's "pearls" which make her look like "Grace Kelly! Dynamite." Matthew's clip is from a real-life, supposedly serious news broadcast and Colbert's audience laughs at the absurdity of making Hillary's name, clothing, and hair the focus of so-called reputable journalism.
The media tries to use Hillary's appearance and femininity against her like a dirty joke, to intentionally and sometimes unintentionally make her seem like a less serious contender for the White House, but Colbert engages in aggression against the
The listener is presumably 'in' on the joke, and laughs along with Colbert, and feels better about Hillary. Finally, Colbert playfully notes that he would love to hear what Governor Mike Huckabee who lost 112 pounds was wearing as well as Hillary, during a recent appearance, and wonders why Rudolph Giuliani has not changed his name, given how many times he has been married. Showing that male candidates are not held to the same standards as Hillary in terms of beauty or being judged by their marital status brings the real point of the satiric report home, and provides a punch line. The affirmed relationship of the comic commentary is largely social, as listener and teller affirm mutual political point-of-view, in a positive way. The joke also affirms a
personal need in at least some listener's minds to invalidate the sexist standards of the media.
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. New York W.W. Norton
Company, 1963.
Rodham." The Colbert Report. The Word. Comedy Central. 2007. http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml-ml_video=88259&ml_collection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show&ml_origin_url=/shows/the_colbert_report/videos/the_word/index.jhtml&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=true
