USA TODAY International Edition
What’s so funny about Mike Pence?
As satire grows harsher, writers see religious VP as dull, homophobic
You might have laughed at a satirical headline in The Onion about Vice President Mike Pence asking a waiter to remove a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup from the table until his wife arrives. Or you could have seen the “Saturday Night Live” Christmas skit in which the stiff-armed, buttoned-down vice president says he doesn’t like “Deck the Halls,” because the carol mentions gay apparel, “which I’m pretty sure is a mesh tank top.”
Or you might have heard Stephen Colbert’s recent riff on Pence’s political strategy of being “so boring people forget you exist.”
“He is a manila envelope taped to a beige wall,” Colbert said. “He could go back to his old job. I think it was off-white paint swatch. Sunfaded department store mannequin. Ghost of a plain yogurt.”
Jokes about Pence, and impersonations of him on shows like “SNL,” have consistent themes.
Of the 80 jokes targeting Pence on the late-night talk shows in 2017, most were about his alleged dull
personality, prudishness and homophobia, according to a database compiled by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.
“He is really portrayed as a Christian fundamentalist, very homophobic, the whitest person in politics,” said Edo Steinberg, a doctoral candidate at Indiana University’s Media School. “He’s a very sinister character.”
The effect of political humor on a politician’s reputation varies, ac-
“Now America knows I’m not stuck in the ’50s. I’m just stuck in the ’90s.”
Mike Pence, on his use of an AOL email account
cording to experts. But it’s more likely to have an impact on the image of someone like Pence, who had a low national profile before becoming vice president, than on President Donald Trump.
“Trump jokes will not be changing anybody’s opinion about Trump,” said Jody Baumgartner, a political scientist at East Carolina University. “Everybody already has an opinion about Trump.”
And Trump is such a target for comedians that Pence and others in his orbit often get less attention. Jokes about Pence have made up a slightly smaller share of George Mason University’s database of jokes about politicians than those of other recent vice presidents.
“Pence has embraced the traditional role of vice president: Don’t call attention to yourself,” said Robert Lichter, communications professor at George Mason University and director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
That backfired, however, when Pence sat silently in the Oval Office as Trump sparred this month with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer over funding a border wall and preventing a government shutdown.
After people made jokes on the Internet comparing Pence to an “elf on the shelf” and “the worst member of this improv team,” late-night hosts Colbert, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah and Jimmy Kimmel joined in the fun. “I guess when Schumer said ‘shutdown,’ Pence took him literally,” Meyers joked.
The religiosity of Pence – who introduces himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican – in that order” is one of the things many people tend to know about him. (Another is that he follows a practice common among some evangelicals to avoid being alone with a woman other than his wife.)
But other national leaders have been openly religious without that becoming significant fodder for satire.
“George W. Bush, for example, he was also a Christian president, but he had other traits that people knew about that they could joke about,” Steinberg said.
Also, former Vice President Joe Biden, like Pence, doesn’t drink alcohol. But while “SNL’s” “Mike Pence” worries that he’s slurring his speech after imbibing ginger ale, The Onion dubbed Biden “Diamond Joe” and celebrated his “wild-ass magic carpet ride.”
Chad Nackers, the satirical publication’s editor-in-chief, said the Biden character – who tearfully took down a black-light poster of a topless Barbarian chick from his office wall in one article and washed a Trans Am, shirtless, in the White House driveway in another – went against Biden’s nature, which was serious, despite his Cheshire cat grin.
“But I feel like, during this time when the truth has lost some of its meaning, to be authentic, you can’t treat Pence like he’s off womanizing,” Nackers said. “Instead, we have to play into what he does to stop himself from doing those types of things.”
Hence this Onion headline: “Pence Passing Time During Trump’s Speech By Mentally Baptizing Senators.”
But when The Onion “reported” that Trump accidentally fired off a “Boring Mike Pence” tweet during the vice president’s speech, that joke apparently hit too close to home.
“People were like, ‘Why is he attacking Pence?’ ” Nackers said.
Pence’s supporters might also wonder the same thing about late-night comedians. Political humor has become more critical and negative, according to Lichter.
The jokes could be more biting because of who is making them, Baumgartner said.
“If you look across the late-night talk show landscape,” he said, “you can see that we have openly activist, progressive, left-leaning hosts who are dominating the landscape and getting the ratings to show it.”
When Pence’s wife and daughter published “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo,” a children’s book that describes the vice president’s job as seen through the eyes of his pet rabbit, John Oliver put out an alternative version that was meant as a criticism of the vice president’s record on gay rights. The parody book rose higher on bestseller lists than the original.
Bill Horner, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, sees the jokes on “SNL” and elsewhere as revealing the writers’ underlying fear of what would happen if Trump left office and Pence replaced him.
“I think the humor seems to really reflect that,” Horner said.