Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture
Satire Enters Television

Tom (b. 1937) and Dick (b. 1939) Smothers attained national success as a folksong and comedy duo during the folk revival of the early 1960s. Their innovative variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, debuted in February 1967, mixing old and new acts and styles of comedy. Their political satires on war, religion, guns, drugs, and racism, during increasingly polarized times, antagonized CBS officials and affiliates. The series was censored and eventually cancelled in 1969.

Less than six months after CBS fired the Smothers Brothers, Bob Hope invited them to appear on his NBC comedy special that satirized television censorship. “I'm revolting against NBC on this show,” Hope quipped. A few months later, when the brothers hosted their own NBC special on censorship and freedom of speech, Hope's appearance on the show provoked letters of outrage from fans. Tom Smothers sent Hope a respectful note of gratitude for his appearance.

Comedian Pat Paulsen (1927–1997) won an Emmy for his appearances on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour as an editorialist commenting nonsensically on political issues. To satirize the political process, in 1968 Paulsen ran a faux campaign for president on the show in the tradition of earlier comedians, including Will Rogers (1879–1935). At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Paulsen addressed California delegates before other candidates spoke to them.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, David Frye (1934–2011) frequented variety and late-night talk shows, creating some of the most acclaimed impersonations of politicians. Frye aimed “to get not just a few characteristics, but the whole presence” of his subjects. “Comedy,” he believed, “lies in the fact that all politicians pretend to be statesmen when they’re really politicians.” Frye’s career suffered after the downfall of Richard Nixon, of whom Frye did his most celebrated impersonation.

In Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, with its “Laugh-In Looks at the News” segment, light-heartedly interwove satiric political barbs into a mélange of silly and absurd one-liners, sight gags, and blackouts. It became television’s top-rated show during its first two seasons. Producer George Schlatter (b. 1932) noted that although the show presented “very barbed references to the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex,” it lacked anger and tried not “to change political views, but to comment humorously on all political views.”

Saturday Night Live took advantage of the immediacy of live television to offer satiric commentary on the news. Shortly after Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s account of the end of the Nixon presidency, The Final Days, was released, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi lampooned its depiction of the night before Nixon’s resignation when the president summoned Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the Lincoln Room and kneeled with him to pray.

For thirty years as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992), Johnny Carson (1925–2005) delivered topical monologues that lightly skewered those in power. “Carson’s comedic take on the events of the day,” critic Richard Zoglin judged, “has been the most reliable barometer of the public’s mood.” However, some viewers were at times offended by Carson’s topical humor, as the letter displayed here demonstrates. Carson provided late-night national exposure for leading comedians, including George Carlin (1937–2008) and Richard Pryor (1940–2005), shown here, and those hoping to break into the big time.