Jessica Bloustein: From ancient Greece to the modern day, people in power have been mocked

As long as there have been people in power, there have been wiseacres mocking the people in power. Those Paleolithic French cave paintings of horses? It's a safe bet that at least one of them is an old-school political cartoon meaning"Tribal leader Gary is a jackass."

Greek playwright Aristophanes' satirical comedies were filled with jabs at influential citizen leaders of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. While in exile, Dante Alighieri wrote his"Divine Comedy," in which he placed prominent political figures directly in hell. Even Shakespeare is thought to have ridiculed Elizabethan politics in some of his plays, notably"Richard II." More recently, Mark Twain and Will Rogers stood out as eminent political satirists of their respective times. ("Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress," Twain famously wrote."But I repeat myself.")

With politics dominating our news coverage for much of this year, it's no surprise that satirists have been having a field day. Standup comedians, mock news shows such as"The Daily Show" and"The Colbert Report," late-night television monologues, publications like The Onion, and videos from the likes of JibJab.com and FunnyorDie.com all regurgitate popular tropes from the upcoming election—John McCain's too old, Barack Obama's a hollow, Paris Hilton-like celebrity. But the truth is that despite technological advances, the nature of political satire hasn't changed much over the centuries."Daily Show" co-creator Lizz Winstead would say the reason for the lack of evolution is that the democratic process itself actually isn't funny.

"I think politicians and the decisions they make are funny," Winstead said recently after performing a standup routine in Washington, D.C."Democracy is actually awesome. It's when people f--- it up so badly that it becomes the subject of humor and ridicule."

Peter Grosz, a writer for"The Colbert Report," joined Winstead this month in Washington for a panel discussion on why politics is funny."Comedy is based off of something that's either true or universally acknowledged," Grosz said during the panel."I think especially because Stephen [Colbert] is a character—he's a fictional character even though he's a real person standing in front of you—everything else that happens has to be really true, or else what we do specifically doesn't work as well."...