Reviews: 10 Top Sites for Political Cartoons, Funny Videos, Satire and Humor
March 4, 2007 by Blue Steel
Political Humor on the Web
Where to begin? The web is a veritable cornucopia of political humor-osity and satire. It's oozing with humor, and thanks to video sites like YouTube and JibJab, anyone with a web camera or cheap digital camcorder can now share their laugh riots for free. Of course, there's a flip side to all of the great political humor that's out there today -- all of the bad political humor that's out there as well.I spend hours each morning scouring the web for laughs to find what I consider to be the cream of the crop and presenting that gold to you here on Pollyticks.com, but to help you sift through the detritus to find the very best in funny videos, fake news, political cartoons and satire, here are reviews of 10 of my favorite political humor sites and how to use them to find that one great joke of the day.
Political Satire
The Onion
www.theonion.com
The folks at The Onion know a thing or two about satire. They've been at it since 1988, reporting with their own special brand of fake news. They practically invented the genre. But what started as a print publication almost 20 years ago, really only caught on after it hit the web in 1996.
The site is well organized, and finding something to laugh it isn't hard. They satirize just about everything, from pop culture to politics to social activism. There's a section devoted to politics (in the menu bar at the top of the home page), but I suggest using their search field to find articles about prominent political figures because a lot of the subjects don't fit nicely into single categories. Try typing "Bush" into the search field and see what comes up. Your joke of the day awaits.
The Onion offers some excellent email newsletters as well, called email dispatches, in both daily and weekly flavors. And if you prefer your fake news in dead tree format, they still print it that way too. Print subscriptions run $39.95 for US subscribers, and that'll get you 52 weekly issues a year.
Avant News
www.avantnews.comLike Back to the Future meets The Onion, Avant News delivers "Tomorrow's News Today," Specializing in all the news unfit to print, their articles are future dated, sort of a "what may come to pass" shtick. It works, like "California Scientists Map God Genome," story dated July 22, 2010, and "President Bush Nabbed In Effort to Alter Own Wikipedia Entry," dated December 19, 2008. Oddly, it keeps the stories feeling fresh.
Not a lot of bells and whistles, the site relies on Google Adsense advertising for revenue, but the ads are tastefully placed, always out of the way, and frequently interesting.
Borowitz Report
www.borowitzreport.comWinner of the first-ever National Press Club Award for Humor, Andy Borowitz is so funny it hurts. Similar to The Onion, only more consistently funny, Borowitz Report typically publishes one new story each day, Monday through Friday. It may not sound like a lot, but the archives house more than 1,000 articles already, the vast majority of them political satire. Andy will keep you coming back for more. Sign up for his daily newsletter and get 'em delivered right to your inbox.
And for bathroom reading, Borowitz is also the bestselling author of "The Republican Playbook," on sale now.
All Purpose Political Humor
About: Political Humor
http://politicalhumor.about.comAbout.com is famous for its helpful web sites dedicated to almost every subject imaginable, and if your assignment is to uncover everything there is to know about political humor, their political humor site will get the job done. It's the only all-purpose political humor site in this list.
Writer, editor and journalist Daniel Kurtzman manages the site's huge archive -- literally the largest anywhere -- of political cartoons, jokes, funny pictures, Bush quotes, commentary, offbeat news, satire and links to videos.
The content is pulled from other sources like Comedy Central, late-night television monologues and the editorial cartoon pages of America's largest newspapers and magazines, but that's fine because the absence of original content is barely missed. The world owes Mr. Kurtzman a debt of gratitude, and, for all the hours he's saved us from having to find this stuff on our own, an extended vacation too.
Funny Videos
Comedy Central
www.comedycentral.com
If you haven't been to Comedy Central's website yet, get on the ball. You're missing out. As the network of The Daily Show, Chappelle Show and The Colbert Report (to name a few), Comedy Central is TV's Godfather of political satire, and they have quite a strong presence on the web. With video clips galore, you could spend all day long watching funny videos without having to turn on your TV, but by watching on the web you won't escape the commercials. Sorry. Most of their clips are preceded by a commercial or two.
With clips not always updated as soon as the full shows air on television, the site still offers more than enough to keep you busy. Archive videos, wallpaper downloads, newsletters, a joke of the day, Flash games, tickets to live shows and information about programs -- take your pick. Their user forums are underutilized, but perhaps that's because visitors are too busy laughing to write.
YouTube
www.youtube.com
Barely two years old, YouTube lets users upload, view, and share video clips. Videos can be rated; the average rating and the number of times a video has been watched are both published. Among its thousands of other uses, YouTube is a political aficionado's dream come true, with thousands of funny videos and amateur political shorts.
Founded in February 2005 by three former employees of PayPal, the San Bruno-based service utilizes Adobe Flash technology to display video, and since most users will have Flash installed on their computer without even knowing it, the videos work without asking requiring you to first install and configure a proprietary video player. In other words, YouTube is easy to use. Click, and the video plays. The wide variety of site content includes movie and TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content like videoblogging and short original videos. Make no mistake, a lot of it is bad Š I mean BAD, but some is also brilliant.
Late in 2006 search giant Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. Since then, not surprisingly, the site has vigorously purged copyrighted material like network TV clips from its inventory. Drat.
Finding something specific on YouTube can be difficult, to say the least. There's just so much to sift through. Granted, too much of it is soccer clips, Japanese anime and no-holds-barred fighting, but there are also great political humor shows like Red State Update, by member travisandjonathan.
From the Videos tab at the top of the site, try the Most Viewed, Top Rated and Most Linked links to see what's hot. The Subscriptions feature is probably the site's most useful option, letting you keep up with new videos by members whose work you like. Once subscribed to, a member's newest clips appear for you on your personal Subscriptions page.
Oh, and for bloggers and web site owners, YouTube's "Embed" feature, located on every video's page, makes it easy to share videos with your own visitors by copying and pasting code snippets into your site.
PoliticsTV.com
www.politicstv.comPolitical videos -- nothing more, nothing less. Their considerable library of news and humor clips is dedicated to American politics, with hundreds of clips to choose from, each organized into more than 60 categories ranging from funny comedy videos to presidential candidates to news clips featuring the usual cast of characters like President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
Most of their clips come from YouTube and Comedy Central, but their own original programming, news segments and interviews of prominent political figures and web personalities like Arianna Huffington of Huffingtonpost.com, is also top notch.
Think of it as YouTube without the soccer.
Google Video
http://video.google.comNow that Google and YouTube are business partners, much of YouTube's content has made its way into Google's inventory, but a great deal -- and in Google terms, "great deal" means hundreds of thousands -- of Google-only political humor clips can be found.
It's a similar idea to what YouTube has done, although a bit clunky, with content uploaded by users like you and I. Oddly, considering the source, the search feature is inferior to YouTube's, and the ability to embed Google videos into your own site is frequently disabled. Plus, a substantial number of clips are pay-per-view.
If you donÕt mind digging for it, Google Video has the gold.
Current TV
www.current.tvAn independent media company led by former Vice President Al Gore, among others, Current is really just YouTube with quality controls and a cable television channel. It bills itself as "The TV network created by the people who watch it." Clips are referred to as "pods," which are typically a little longer in duration than the two-to-three-minute shorts that abound on YouTube and most other video sites, and are of generally higher quality as well.
Political humor is a staple but not the main course. There are Current pod documentaries on whaling, hiking the Sierra Nevada mountains and just about any other topic, as well as game shows and dramatic programming.
The home page is visually daunting, and browsing through pods in an organized fashion could be made a lot easier to do, but the vast majority of clips are at least of a high enough level of quality that when you do find something to watch, it probably won't be a waste of your time to watch it.
The biggest downside to Current TV is the inability to embed pod videos into blogs or other sites. You can email links to video clips that direct people back to Current's web site, but it's not the same. YouTube and Google Video both have Current beat in the video-sharing department.
JibJab
www.jibjab.com
Founded by brothers Greg and Evan Spiridellis in 1999, JibJab took to the stars before the presidential election in 2004 with their political Flash (name of the program used) animation, "This Land," a musical parody cartoon starring caricatures of George W. Bush and John Kerry. It was a massive success.
While JibJab.com is home to the many animated political parodies created by the Spiridellis brothers, it has also become so much more. Visitors upload, rate and share their own funny videos, funny pictures, political cartoons and jokes ala YouTube or Google Video, but the site's premise has remained humor. Most everything you'll find on JibJab fits into that category.
A lot of it is political humor, although you'll still find an odd duck hunting accident or two. And, like YouTube and Google Video, JibJab video clips can be embedded into blogs and web sites using snippets of code.
Flash Political Cartoons
Honorable Mention: Mark Fiore's Animated Political Cartoons
www.markfiore.com
If there's room for an honorable mention in this list, this has to be the place for it. Mark Fiore, also a Flash cartoonist, has been making animated political cartoons since he left the world of newspaper editorial cartooning in 2001.
Where the Spiridellis brothers at JibJab produce just a few new animations per year, Fiore produces dozens, typically one each week. His style is subtler and slightly smarter than JibJab's. While his clips aren't set up for embedding into blogs or other sites, Fiore's site is simple to navigate, filled entirely with his work, and his archives are easy to browse. Sign up for his newsletter and be alerted of new animations by email.
Well, that about wraps things up, and since you stuck with me through the end I'll throw out one final recommendation: www.fark.com. It's a great headline farm for political satire and other offbeat news. Yet another site in my daily rotation. I hope you found these reviews helpful. Stay tuned for future reviews and articles on political cartoons, humor and satire.
-Blue Steel