A television comedian was elected President of Ukraine last Monday, provoking headlines such as: “Buffoons Are Taking Over the Court” and “Why a Bit of Humorlessness Might Go a Long Way.” Volodymyr Zelensky – who once played a sitcom character shockingly elected President after his angry video rant goes viral – beat the incumbent Petro Poroshenko in a landslide, reaping over 73% of the vote. Are clownish outsider candidates like Zelensky the future of global democratic politics?
Pranksters run for government
Pranksters have been gaining a foothold in national elections since the news satirist Stephen Colbert ran a fake Presidential campaign in 2008, following the publication of his best-selling book I Am America (And So Can You). Like Pat Paulsen, whose joke bid for the White House in the tumultuous year of 1968 started as a gag skit on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (CBS, 1967-1969), Colbert’s campaign was pure parody.
Sponsored by Doritos snack chips, it quickly ran afoul of FEC rules, just two years ahead of the 2010 Citizens United Decision that unleashed vast corporate wealth on political elections. Colbert used dark satire, not grey money, to gain national attention. He ran in South Carolina with the outrageous slogan, “First to secede, first to succeed,” taking aim at the dog whistle race-baiting that’s clinched the southern electorate since Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Presidential Campaign. But Colbert’s nonsense rhetoric clearly marked his own candidacy as a farce, not the real thing.
