This article by Alyssa Quart for Columbia Journalism Review is hitting on something that I’ve been thinking about for a while.
A) Laughter always wins over screaming (see our MSM pundits)
B) Laughter/Light Sarcasm provides an easy accessability point to new audiences.
C) One of the big future trends for media will be a melding pop and politics

I’m still pondering, but I wanted to share some highlights:

Maddow’s mocking on-air demeanor reminds many people of what they liked most about college. But she’s not just clever: she’s a tough-minded Rhodes Scholar, former aids activist, and an out lesbian. Her very existence as an anchor on cable television defies a number of different common wisdoms.

That’s all remarkable unto itself. But to my mind, what really makes the show special is how it embodies the rise of what I think of as sarcasm news. More and more news programs are likely to go absurdist in the coming months and years.

What has caused sarcastic news to flower? For starters, today’s bloggers and YouTube snidesters see parody as information and information as parody. This is not entirely a mistake. Now, the news-with-satire approach can seem like the only thing that makes sense, since at least these shows are in on their own jokes. Even politicians sometimes embrace the idea of themselves as caricatures. They show up on Saturday Night Live to rap, or to meet their comedy doubles. They import self-parody into their own campaigns, as in Hillary Clinton’s faux Sopranos video on YouTube.

And Quart continues:

Also, the proliferation of niche audiences spurs sophisticated and partisan humor because these smaller groups of viewers have very particular tastes, identities, and affinities. They are thus more likely to share a sense of what’s funny.