Last Candidate Standing

I'm aware, by the way, that it seems sometimes as if I blog about nothing but politics here nowadays. But it's August, and it's an election year and that means that by default the election is itself the watercooler show on TV, at least until the Olympics start.

But don't take my word for it. Ask the producers of Last Comic Standing, for whose Thursday finale John McCain and Barack Obama are taping "funny campaign ads," NBC announced yesterday.

Yeah, yeah, I know—silly season, lowest common denominator, cheapening of the public discourse, etc. But far more people will be watching than see any given episode of Hardball. Both candidates have been conscious of the pop-culture primary, having taped messages for Army Wives and WWE wrestling, and they could both stand to gain something here: Obama, to show a bigger audience that he can laugh at himself; McCain (whose campaign has been in the snarky-ad business lately anyway) to show that he can be funny without being Don Rickles. It may be silly, but it's no joke nonetheless.