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TwitterWhat are John McCain and Barack Obama doing on 'Last Comic Standing'?
They've already taped spots for American Idol and the WWE's Monday Night Raw. And now, in this endless and limitless campaign season, Barack Obama and John McCain will be part of Thursday's Last Comic Standing finale.
Note to the presumptive presidential nominees: Stop it. Just quit it already.
I'll grant the two senators that they'll probably need every vote they can find come November. And given that NBC will go all Olympics, nearly all the time starting Friday, maybe they figure this is one last free shot at the audience before our collective attention turns to Beijing. But still -- Last Comic Standing?
It's not that I'm the kind of guy who thinks the president always needs to be presidential. I also think, though, that a year or so of unrelenting coverage, not to mention the late-night talk-show appearances and Saturday Night Live cameos, have given us enough glimpses into the candidates' senses of humor. A little bit of scripted patter on a stand-up comedy show isn't going to add much to that. See for yourself:
Neither guy embarrassed himself there, but they weren't exactly funny either. And, given that Last Comic Standing is averaging only a little over 5 million viewers a week this summer, what, exactly, is the point here?
American Idol, sure. It's the biggest show on television, and the messages the two candidates (along with Obama's primary opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton) taped were part of the do-gooding Idol Gives Back telethon (they were bumped for time, though, and actually aired during the less altruistic results show that week), so they could offer up the kind of poverty-bad, charity-good platitudes that are hard for anyone to disagree with. The WWE doesn't get huge TV audiences either, but its fans are pretty intensely engaged with the product, and the Smackdown Your Vote initiative aimed at young voters has been up and running since the 2000 election. (If you have the stomach, you can check out the candidates' messages on an April airing of Raw at the Huffington Post.)
Last Comic Standing has neither a huge audience nor a well-established voter-engagement in its portfolio. So, congratulations, senators: You've just become padding for a too-long reality-show finale. See you at the conventions.
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Zap2it Twitter Talk 
This is the first season of LCS that i've missed, and having the candidates on doesn't make me want to see the finale. In fact, the ONLY thing I want to see on the final episode is Donald Trump coming out to tell Bill Bellamy "You're Fired" and then getting the hook ala Showtime at the Apollo.
I swear Bellamy is another in a LONGGGGGGG line of over-rated and alleged comics to come from MTV's bowels. The fact that Jon Stewart came from that dreck-work and actually succeed is nothing short of amazing.
I have to agree with Fakeem. Bil Bellamy just isn't funny. LCS disappoints me more and more every year.
It is so-o-o-o appropriate to have McCain and Obama on Last Comic Standing.
I don't know much about the show and thought it might be Comedy Central's coverage of the Presidential campaign. All those hilarious campaign promises, and the people like the campaign staff and other supporters who get all excitable and act like they sincerely believe those jokers are actually going to come through for the voters, are just too funny.
Dennis Miller and Bill Maher can only about dream about being like McCain and Obama who manage to keep a deadpan expression while inadvertently spewing out a seemingly endless stream of farcical political humor such as their proposed agendas, worldviews and criticisms of each other.
Every four years we-the-people get to narrow-down a bunch of comical candidates to just one podium-pontificating, stand-up comic. For the next four years afterwards, we are mercilessly subjected by the media to that one person's near-hallucinatory visions, bloopers and pratfalls - occasionally enhanced by those contributions of the comedian-elect's sidekick (da VeeP), staff and family - seemingly in order to fuel an entire spectrum of real and imagined comedians from Leno-and-Letterman to SNL-and-MadTV to JibJab, and finally, on to the next YouTube-vidiot-of-the-moment.
Is this a greatly amusing country or what?