It happened again. Our humble magazine found its way into a Jon Stewart bit, this time about magazine mergers. The last time that happened we bought monocles and called a friend with a camera . This time, we're just pointing and laughing. If you want to see the segment, you'll find it at the Daily Show website.

Quotation marks aren’t just for quotes. They can also be used to denote “irony,” according to the AP style guide. A prime example comes on the opinion page of today’s Wall Street Journal. When deriding efforts by Congressional Democrats to pass the current stimulus bill, the editors explain, “the ‘stimulus’ claim is based on something called the Keynesian ‘multiplier,’ which is that each $1 of spending the government ‘injects’ into the economy yields 1.5 times that in greater output.”

The quotes around “stimulus,” “multiplier,” and “injects” are meant to cast doubt on the efficacy of the Democratic economic plan. They also give the feeling of superiority over whatever idea the editors are currently deriding. It’s a tactic used often in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, as Jonathan Chait points out in the New Republic. He writes, “The Journal’s fixation with the scare quote is one of the great journalistic marriages between medium and grammatical device.”

The effect of the scare quotes is similar to when cable news channels put a question mark after statements flashed on screen. As Jon Stewart pointed out on the Daily Show (video below), a question mark allows Fox News to say whatever it wants while retaining a thin veil of objectivity. When they broadcast a statement like, “Is the liberal media helping to fuel terror?” They make it seem as though they’re exploring the idea, instead of simply stating it. That’s why Stewart asked, “The question mark: A prophalactic protecting fox news from anything it might contract during its extensive GOP c**ksucking?” He wasn’t making that statement, he was just asking.

After 9/11 we heard a lot about the death of irony, but after an initial period of mourning, humor prevailed and even thrived in the troubled early aughts.

But with the departure of the president who gave political satire its all-time easiest target, and the arrival of an unflappable and extremely popular president-elect, will practitioners of political satire run out of fodder?

Of course not. The Daily Show’s ascendancy coincided with Bush’s increasingly disastrous presidency, but Jon Stewart & Co. won’t suddenly be irrelevant just because Bush is. “Assuming the Daily Show can only be funny under someone like George W. Bush gives far too much credit to the outgoing President and is obscenely insulting to the writers of the Daily Show,” writes Matt Tobey on Comedy Central’s blog. “As if there wasn't plenty of failed Bush-based humor from shittier sources than the Daily Show.”

Meanwhile, the South Park boys pulled an all-nighter after the election to complete their extremely timely Wednesday broadcast, in which overzealous acolytes of Barack Obama see his victory as license to riot drunkenly in the streets, and Obama’s campaign team shows its true colors as an upscale band of jewel thieves a la Ocean’s Eleven.

These comedy institutions are bellwethers of the general categories into which Obama Humor will fall, at least for now: Poking fun at the extreme fervor of Obama’s supporters, and pointing up the absurd paranoia of Obama’s opposition (much like the New Yorker did all those months ago.)

The reliable Onion covers those satirical bases and more, with headlines like “International Con Man Barack Obama Leaves U.S. With $85 Million In Campaign Fundraising” and “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job”.

There’s also the hilarious animated video below, from Get Your War On creator David Rees, making the rounds. (Consider it a sequel to the New Yorker cover.)

And when Obama inevitably falls short of the astronomical expectations set for him, satirists will pounce. The Daily Show’s John Hodgman told Politico, “As much as the show is fake news, its soul is very sincere, borne of a desire that everyone shares, that we don’t want to be lied to. If there is a whiff of insincerity [Obama] will be taken to task.”

John McCain's campaign tries on new messages like Paris Hilton tries on new shoes. But since Sarah Palin entered the race, they've managed to deliver at least one consistent rallying cry: We are the ticket of small-town values.

Small-town mythology has become the cornerstone of Palin’s pitch to voters. She spoke about “Main Streeters like me” in the vice presidential debate and talked up “Joe six-pack.” In her speech before the Republican National Convention, she told the audience that the nation grows “good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.”

Palin’s speech channeled Thomas Jefferson, who wrote to a friend in 1785, “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.” But the Jeffersonian portrait she sketched of rural America doesn’t tell the whole story.

Palin didn’t touch on the fact that small towns are hemorrhaging young people, who grow up and leave in search of opportunity. She didn’t mention that hope is scarce in some towns, as a 2008 survey (pdf) of rural Midwesterners completed by the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute found. Only 15 percent of those asked to forecast the future of their communities believed life there would be better in 10 years. Palin didn’t explain to the nation that small towns have fallen on hard times. Nor did she promise rural Americans that a Palin vice presidency would mean a better future was on its way.

Because that wasn’t really the point. Palin peddles small-town nostalgia and an outdated image of the “average American” to cast shadows of doubt on her enemies, not to offer solutions to her friends. The Wasilla gal is George Bush, the guy you’d like to swill beer with, in fierce pumps and trendy glasses. She embodies the same everyman appeal that Bush did and uses it to stoke the kind of fear and division that made Karl Rove a household name. But at a time when the country is fighting two wars abroad and trying to piece the economy back together at home, can the politics of cultural resentment still turn the election for Republicans?

Probably not.

To understand why, take a look back at the Republican National Convention, when McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told the Washington Post, “This election is not about issues.” If it was, the McCain camp looked to be fighting a losing battle as the campaign entered the home stretch: An ABC News / Washington Post poll released Oct. 13 reported that 68 percent of likely voters preferred Obama’s positions on the issues, with only 29 percent preferring McCain’s. But the poll found those voters favored McCain’s personal qualities over Obama’s 61 percent to 34 percent. The takeaway? McCain’s best shot at the White House was to make the campaign a referendum on character.

You might think that would mean we’d be hearing a lot about McCain’s dark days in Vietnam in these final weeks. But instead, the campaign has shaped its character attacks almost singularly around the image of Sarah Palin. They’ve deployed Palin’s small-town biography to tell the story of a fabled “real America” that the terrorist-friendly Obama, as Palin and others paint him, isn’t a part of. At an Oct. 16 fundraiser in Greensboro, North Carolina, Palin declared that, “the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America.” She went on that in these “pro-America areas of this great nation…we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans.”

“I bet bin Laden feels like a real asshole now,” Daily Show host Jon Stewart responded on the following Tuesday’s show. “What?! I bombed the wrong America?!” Stewart skewered Palin further saying, “I guess if you’re from New York City and you signed up to fight in Iraq and you died, I guess it doesn’t count.” Palin’s comments didn’t play much better beyond the Daily Show, either, and Palin eventually issued a half-hearted apology. The fact is, most folks don’t live in Palin’s “real America”; according to the New Republic, 84 percent of Americans live in the country’s metro areas.

It's true that rural voters play a disproportionate role in national elections. Just look at in Ohio in 2004, where they ignored pocketbook issues and handed George Bush the presidency because of his stances on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Palin’s job is to make sure rural voters put their values above their wallets again in 2008. But will they?

Small-town America no longer looks like a place Republicans can easily clinch by devoting a little airtime to their opponent’s Godless positions on abortion or gay marriage. Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research, told National Public Radio that those two hot-button wedges of 2004 aren’t even among religious voters’ top five concerns this year. With social issues taking a back seat to the economy, Republican dominance in rural areas is waning. A late September poll by the Center for Rural Strategies showed McCain with a 10-point lead over Obama in rural America. The center's newest poll, however, shows a dramatic shift. Conducted in the first three weeks of October, the poll reports Obama leading McCain 46 percent to 45 percent among rural voters in 13 swing states.

Unlike past Democratic candidates, Obama has made a point of showing up in historically unfriendly territory, making sure rural swing voters hear his message. Explaining to New York Times Magazine reporter Matt Bai how he won rural Nevada in the Democratic primary, Obama said, “a lot of it just had to do with the fact that folks thought: Man, the guy is showing up. He’s set up an office. He’s doing real organizing. He’s talking to people.” According to Bai, Obama has 50 campaign offices in Virginia, 42 in Indiana, and 45 in North Carolina, all states his party usually writes off in national campaigns.

When he shows up, Obama appeals to rural voters with an economic message he's been hitting for some time. In July, for instance, he swung through rural Missouri on an economic tour, giving particular attention to his vision for the green economy of the future. The McCain campaign, by comparison, has delivered a shaky economic message at best. The economy simply isn’t what they want to talk about. McCain adviser Greg Strimple told the Washington Post in early October, “We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis." But the page has not turned on our economic woes, and unfortunately for McCain, voters are interested in talking about it. 

Nevertheless, McCain and Palin continue to push a campaign that celebrates the common man in lore more than substance. Joe the Plumber, who has recently eclipsed Palin as the campaign’s “average” sensation, is McCain’s symbol du jour of the further economic pain a President Obama would impose on the country. Yet Joe, at his current income level, would fare better under Obama’s tax plan than McCain’s, exposing deep imperfections in the relationship between McCain's message and his policy.

McCain seized upon Joe without vetting just as he seized upon Sarah, out of a belief that symbolism could trump candor. Sarah Palin is indeed a powerful embodiment of a certain American story that has a tight hold on our imagination. America was born as a nation of small towns, and we tend to celebrate presidential stories that originate there. But that is no longer the America in which we live. In 2008, it's a mistake to believe that there is only one quintessential American story or that Sarah’s is any more American than Barack’s.

Photo by cmaccubbin, licensed under Creative Commons.

Wordsmith.org, whose “Word.A.Day” emails dispatch daily doses of rare vocabulary, has taken up the election as its theme this week. Specifically, creator Anu Garg is featuring words that contain the candidates’ names.

These words have been on the books since long before this never-ending campaign began, but let’s see if we can force some creative connections and use each in a candidate-related sentence.

Here’s the list so far:

palinode (PAL-uh-noad)
noun: A poem in which the author retracts something said in an earlier poem.
From Greek palinoidia, from palin (again) + oide (song). It's the same palin that shows up in the word palindrome.

Please use the word in a sentence:
If Sarah Palin had apologized for her recent bilious musings on the “Real America” in poem form, rather than as a hypothetical hedging, it would have been a Palin palinode. (For Palin-inspired poetry, check out the submissions to our Great Writing Salon.)

bidentate (by-DEN-tayt)
adjective: Having two teeth or toothlike parts.
From Latin bi- (two) + dens (tooth).

Please use the word in a sentence:
One wanting to caricature Biden’s latest campaign-trail gaffe might show him as a bucktoothed, bidentate goofball. 

obambulate (o-BAM-byuh-layt)
verb intr.: To walk about.
From Latin ob- (towards, against) + ambulare (to walk). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ambhi- (around) that is also the source of ambulance, alley, preamble, and bivouac. The first print citation of the word is from 1614.

Please use the word in a sentence:
This one’s too easy. Any candidate can obambulate a stage at a rally, so: Obama will certainly ombambulate in Richmond, Virginia, today. Perhaps it’s a more fitting word, though, to describe his opponents’ wanderings during their second, townhall debate. (You can relive those moments with The Daily Show video below, starting around 7:20.)

Check in tomorrow or Friday with Wordsmith for the McCain edition.

In the wake of John McCain's surprising VP pick, the media's rush to answer the question “Who is Sarah Palin?” was quick and intense.

But when news broke that her 17-year old unwed daughter was pregnant, the scrutiny became both personal and political, sparking intense debate about what’s fair and foul in campaign coverage.

Palin has dominated the headlines of nearly every major news outlet and many minor ones for the last week. You might think the McCain campaign would welcome the spotlight shining on someone other than Barack Obama, but instead, they're outraged. They claim the media's treatment of Palin—which has included stories about her pregnant daughter, questions about her qualifications for the job and the McCain campaign’s vetting process, inquiries into ethics scandals under investigation in Alaska, and examinations of her record—is sexist, liberally biased, and out of line. The campaign is even now refusing to answer further questions about Palin's vetting.

Surely the McCain campaign can't be surprised that voters and reporters want to know more about a woman whose name few outside of Alaska even recognized two weeks ago. But would the questions being asked of Sarah Palin be asked of a male candidate? And has the media gone too far?

Here's a round-up of opinions on the key fronts in the Palin media wars. What's your take?

Palin and John McCain and the Republicans deserve every column inch, every broadcast second of scrutiny they're getting. I believe—unlike Barack Obama—that members of a candidate's family are fair game once a candidate thrusts them onto the public stage—as did Palin when McCain presented her as his pick for vice president in Dayton, Ohio, last Friday. The eagerness with which politicians deploy their children as campaign props stands as an open invitation to the press to write about them. —Jack Shafer at Slate

The spin du jour is that her choice reflects poorly on Candidate McCain because she wasn't properly vetted. Yet this seems to be false. . . . On Monday, Time magazine's Nathan Thornburgh wrote from Wasilla, Alaska, that Bristol Palin's pregnancy had been known by virtually everyone there, with little made of it. But what do these private family matters have to do with Mrs. Palin's credentials to be Vice President in any case? —Wall Street Journal, Review & Outlook

They have said this was Bristol’s decision and we should honor that. . . . The reason why I think it’s fair game is Sarah Palin is on record saying she would veto abortions for women even in the event of being raped. So what she is in essence saying: Respect my family’s ability to make this decision and elect me so that I can keep your family from having the same opportunities. —Jon Stewart, September 3, on the Daily Show

What we’re dealing with now, there’s nothing subtle about it. We’re dealing with the assumption that child-rearing is the job of women and not men. Is it sexist? Yes. —Georgetown professor Deborah Tannen, quoted by Politico, responding to questions about whether Palin's maternal responsibilities are compatible with the VP job.

Palin is simply not known. McCain's staff says the press is punishing her because pundits so desperately want to be in the know. But leaking has its benefits, one of which is that her flaws might have been scrutinized and even dismissed ahead of time by the press. —David Folkenflik at Media Circus, NPR

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice? Bad questions. Bad media. Bad. —A sarcastic Roger Simon at Politico

Image by buddhakiwi, licensed under Creative Commons.