That’s the title of an article in the Christian Science Monitor by Gloria Goodale and Daniel B. Wood that offers a survey of the current political comedy landscape along with a bit of a glance at political humor in other parts of the world. Quotes from professors and comedians like Drew Carey, Bob Newhart and Cary Odes keep it moving along.

There’s a point or two made about how different things are these days and a stab at where it’s going. And there’s also some half-baked theory about the “normalization” of political satire. It’s your typical political humor article.

At one point, Bob Hope and Stephen Colbert and their approach to humor in the theater of war are compared.

Contrast that with Mr. Colbert’s recent trip to Iraq. The war was almost his entire shtick. At one point, he interviewed Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, onstage. “Bob Hope’s material stayed far away from the realities of the Vietnam War,” says Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University in New York. “But Stephen Colbert kept it onstage at all times.”

Well, Bob Thompson, there was one big difference: Colbert’s audience volunteered for service, whereas Hope’s audience had a high concentration of draftees. We suspect that might alter one’s approach.

And there’s at least one other difference and that would have to do with media coverage. In Hope’s day (during the Vietnam War era), there were often two and three dailies in each major American city, three major television networks whose nightly newscasts had enormous (compared to 2009) audiences and various popular publications providing words and pictures on the war. Troops– and viewers at home (who were just as much a part of the intended audience for such performances)– were well-versed in “the realities of the Vietnam War.” Not so in 2009. The main theme of Colbert’s trip to the Middle East was that there had been a drop off in such coverage. In fact, Colbert says at the beginning of the four-episode series of special broadcasts that, “I thought the war was over, because I haven’t seen any stories about it in a month.” It’s post-modern, war zone comedy at its finest. And it automatically sets up a bond between Colbert and the troops– You’re over here fighting and there doesn’t seem to be much mainstream coverage of your situation.

The article speculates on the effect of so much (too much, they worry?) political humor. Inexplicably, John Lithgow is quoted. He says, of Colbert and Jon Stewart, “They are incredibly important to the body politic. When I think about newspapers failing and important journalists looking for paying work, I think ‘thank God at least Jon Stewart is there.’ Our whole society depends on people having skeptical intelligence.”

Of course, this should be of little comfort to Lithgow or anyone else, as comedians do not have any ethical responsibility to present both sides of a story. Nor should they. (It can be argued that it has been some time since mainstream major dailies have demonstrated that they possess anything of the sort.)

Others worry that as political humor becomes more prevalent, it will also become more polemical, further dividing the nation. Many comedians, to be sure, are equal opportunity offenders. Yet some in the industry would like to see more parodying of the political class the way Will Rogers did it in the 1920s, in a nonpartisan way. “Real comedy should be daring enough to cross party lines, because the truth doesn’t live on just one side,” says Cary Odes, who teaches stand-up comedy in Los Angeles. “A comic’s job is to pry up the floorboards of our preconceptions and show what’s really going on beneath us.”

Might one conclude that political humor is expanding is because real news reporting is contracting? Might comedians be picking up (some) of the slack?

The authors wonder, “If we turn too many politicians into cartoon characters and if young people get their news from monologues– which polls today show they do– doesn’t this affect our worldview?” And conservative Brent Bozell is quoted as saying, “We should be very worried about the cynicism this satire engenders.”

Will our joking and monologizing engender “cynicism,” as Bozell worries, or “skeptical intelligence” as Lithgow hopes for? Or a healthy blend of both?

There’s a danger in ceding too much of the “reporting” to comedians. There have been countless articles over the past 18 months that portray comedians as tongue-tied when it comes to making fun of the current occupant of the White House and his administration and policies. We’re optimistic that the market will correct this and that eventually (as always happens) some stories will come along that prove too hard to resist for comedians of any stripe.

Case in point: The recent ACORN story. Check out this Stewart clip. It’s exceptionally well done, and it’s political and cultural and media commentary all rolled into one.

Monologists have always depended on being able to exaggerate (or lie!) about topical humor. If they’re depended on for news, migh they then feel obligated to hew closer to the truth? If so, would that hurt comedy? Or if they don’t feel so obligated, might that not hurt society? Of course, none of this would be a consideration if the news media would just do their job.

Perhaps, in an analogy to the ACORN story, the balance will be achieved via humor that doesn’t come from the mainstream or cable humorists, but from non-traditional humorists, like those online– via Facebook, Twitter and blogging. Twitter is especially emerging as an online, stream-of-consciousness standup comedy club existing solely in cyberspace. Jokes fly fast and furious and they are, by necessity, concise, due to Twitter’s 140-character limit. And often the “jokes” are accompanied by a link to the legit media story that spawned the jibe in the first place. It’s a form that’s in its infancy, but it’s growing and evolving. But following a dozen or so choice Tweeters is a good way of simultaneously keeping up on the day’s headlines along with a dose of skepticism, wit and satire. It’s also interactive. It’s the ultimate in “crowd-sourcing” our humor.

In any event, we suspect that Leno’s new five-night a week strip will have little to do with any real evolution of political humor. We suspect that Leno was grafted onto the story to make it appear timely.