The Media Research Center, a conservative “media watchdog” roughly the Right’s equivalent of Media Matters but with a much bigger job, analyzed six of the daily late night comedy shows: Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “The Late Late Show with James Corden” until its April exit, from January 3, 2023 through December 22, 2023. The results are here. The researchers counted 9,518 jokes they judged political in nature, and broke them down into categories. 1,601 targeted progressive, Democrats and figures on the left of the political spectrum. 186 aimed at people, groups, or institutions not associated with either side. 7,729 or 81% of the jokes were considered barbs at were directed at individual, organization or positions considered to be conservative. 493 targets were the objects of a single joke, with 285 of these on the right, 167 on the left, and the remaining 41 on non-partisan topics.

The unbalanced percentages are only a surprise in that they are less lopsided than I would have guessed, but still obviously showan absurdly unfair partisan bias. If, as was once the norm in all political comedy, all sides and parties were mocked relatively equally with the President in the White House taking most of the fire, political humor can be fairly categorized as entertainment with the primary objective being to make as many people laugh as possible. Distorted to this extent, however, late night comedy becomes a self-evident propaganda weapon that plays a significant part in the mainstream media mission to sway elections and manipulate public opinion.

Some telling findings:

• The top 10 targets were  Donald Trump (2,440), Joe Biden (912), George Santos (835), Republicans generally (371), Ron DeSantis (310), Tucker Carlson (265), Rudy Giuliani (242), Mike Pence (205), and Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene tied with 196 each. That’s res ipsa loquitur, smoking gun evidence of a “Get Trump!” mission. He has no political office, and is not in the new every day. It is unprecedented for any such figure to lead all politicians as the target of comedians, but the numbers are especially damning when one considers what a rich comic target President Biden is. Similarly crying out for ridicule is Vice President Harris, and in more balanced eras of political comedy, whoever was Vice-President was an easy target: consider Dan Quayle. Harris is one of the most gaffe-prone and ridiculous politicians ever to hold the office, yet is apparently considered immune. The survey found that Harris, was targeted for only 34 jokes all year. Melania Trump, who was hardly in the news in 2023, was the topic of almost twice as many. (The current First Lady rated only 23 jokes.)
• Joe Biden was the only Democrat among the top 25 joke targets.
  
• Republican leaders were ridiculed more frequently than Democrats by a score of  338-9.  (Mike Johnson: 103, Mitch McConnell: 39 vs. Chuck Schumer: 9). Mike Johnson, who was virtually unheard of until he became Speaker on October 25, was the butt of 103 jokes to Senator Schumer’s 9.  House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jefferies was never joked about at all. 
• Despite the astounding slob attire of Democratic Senator John Fetterman, another seemingly irresistible target of satire and ridicule, the late night comics could only think of a single joke to make about him. Though superannuated Republican Senator Strom Thurmond was constantly mocked in his last years in the Senate, the aged and virtually non-functional Diane Feinstein also escaped the year with but a single joke at her expense.
• The writers for these shows could only think of 27 jokes about Hunter Biden all year, despite the mystery coke in the White House and other prominent less anonymous misadventures. (Give me an hour, and I’ll come up with more Hunter jokes that that without breaking a sweat.) In contrast, Trump’s children were joked about 250 times.
• On the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas had the distinction of being the black man with the most jokes made about him, with Republican Senator Tim Scott—he’s such a funny guy!—finishing second. What about the ridiculous Mad Fire Alarm-puller Jamaal Bowman, you may ask? No jokes at all. No jokes about any of “The Squad,” though AOC in particular should be any comedian’s dream target.
• More jokes were told about Abraham Lincoln  (6) than Bob Menendez, the indicted Democratic Senator (4). Former Presidents Martin Van Buren (3) and Chester A. Arthur (2) rated more mockery than Liz Cheney (1). Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, despite her performance in Congress and the wave of plagiarism charges, was somehow considered joke-worthy only once.
• The conclusion that leaps out at you from the list: today it is virtually taboo to ridicule any black woman no matter what she has done, and making a joke about a black Democrat of any kind is considered racist.