Funny is as Politics Does

It’s no surprise that a large majority of people under 30 get their news from comedians.

The Pew Research Center discovered that 21 percent of people age 18 to 29 get most of their presidential campaign news from “The Daily Show” and “Saturday Night Live”.

Is this cause for concern or celebration?

Jon Stewart and Bill Maher are the new wave of political comedians that dominate the late night news scene. They offer a thoughtful and unapologetic reportage on current events. Some of their skits are a bit out there, but their broadcasts would not be funny if truth was missing from the jokes.

The fact that young people are interested in an alternative to fluff-filled local news and celebrity obsessed national news is healthy. The trouble comes when the under 30 crowd rely only on Stewart’s satirical commentators to be informed.

Before tuning in to Maher and Stewart do your homework!

Read a newspaper or spend an hour surfing for the top headlines. After all, these comedians get their material from the somewhere.

The skits and jokes are cleverly constructed. It would be a shame to waste them on a clueless audience.