The War on Ridicule.

Sarah Palin is not alone.

Had her resignation speech been more coherent, she might have more clearly pointed the point guard finger at the cruel forces that had driven her out of office — and the threat they post to democracy. 

I speak, of course, about late-night comics.

Last month, during a court hearing on the case [over access to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's interview with Dick Cheney about White House involvement in the exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame], Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith told the judge that release of the transcript might open Cheney to ridicule from late-night comics and thus could discourage other White House officials from cooperating with government prosecutors.

"If we become a fact-finder for political enemies, they aren't going to cooperate," Smith said during a court hearing. "I don't want a future Vice President to say, 'I'm not going to cooperate with you because I don't want to be fodder for The Daily Show.'"

According to this, jokes in Africa are a way for ordinary people to make sense of "democratic" regimes that are indistinguishable from the preceding authoritarian ones.

In Nigeria jokes serve a double function as a tool for subordinate classes to deride the state (including its agents) and themselves. Jokes are therefore a means through which an emergent civil society, ‘behaving badly’, subverts, deconstructs, and engages with the state.

Either way, it seems, ridicule is the enemy of the state.