Humor and Persuasion: Real World Writers
Rush Limbaugh
Well, I'm conservative. Is that unique? No. A lot of conservatives, aren't there? Yep. So how do I get noticed? And then after I've gotten noticed, how do I hang around? And how do I convince people that I'm worth hanging around with? Again, I think that humor is maybe one of the most effective ways, as satire, wit is one of the most effective ways of persuasion there is.

Michael Moore
I think humor is really an incredible vehicle to make your point and also a very effective weapon in the fight for whatever you're fighting for. In part, because it's hard for people that you're going after to respond to ridicule. I mean this is something actually we learned back in grade school. If someone is laughing at you, how do you respond to that? How do you make a response? So if I can get people laughing at General Motors, they don't know how to respond to that. So I'm already two steps ahead of them at that point. And then I can start making the political points, I can start giving out the facts, once I've got people thinking on a humorous level.

Limbaugh
Anger is…confrontation. That's what I mean by… I said earlier, I'd never go to somebody, point a finger in their face and tell them, "You're wrong." All you do is steel their resolve. But humor, and I'll tell you a key here, the reason why humor is so effective, because for humor to be funny, for comedy to work, there has to be an element of truth in it. And the more you do satire and parody, the more that is true.

Al Franken
Anger and humor go together a lot, I don't think of myself as an angry person, but I think it's appropriate to be angry about certain kinds of things.

Jeffrey Goodby
But it is all about assuming the tone of voice that the viewers go, "This is true." To presume that people have a sense of humor, to presume that they're going to get this, to presume that they're intelligent enough to be able to follow this argument and have fun with it. And I think that that gets them on your side so that when a piece of persuasion starts to occur, when you suggest something you might want to suggest, they're more open to it then, you know?

Good persuasion is logical and emotional at the same time, and I think that, you know, the logical part is really in many cases, the easiest part. The hard part is the emotional part. And the way that you get listened to is the emotional part, you know. You have to get somebody's attention, you have to lead them through it, you can't just lead them through it through their head, you have to lead them through their heart, too. And it's the emotional part I think of advertising that really makes it work, you know. The funny part. And those are the things that really persuade and they have to be emotional to persuade.