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Books: Reading
Russell Peterson: Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke
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Jay Leno, Courtesy NBC
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Thursday Oct 16, 2008 (6pm)
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Last year, the Pew Research Center released the report that launched a thousand jokes. It found that regular viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are more knowledgeable about current political events than watchers of news programs on Fox, NBC, CNN, CBS, and ABC. For University of Iowa professor Russell Peterson, however, late-night humor — which plays a large role in shaping the public's understanding of the political process — is no laughing matter. Tonight, he discusses his new book, Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Democracy into a Joke, which argues that Jon Stewart & Co.'s "antipolitical" humor often makes a mockery of democracy and ratchets up cynicism and apathy.
