NORFOLK, Va. -- Bill Maher debating President Clinton's sex scandal with faded sitcom stars and up-and-coming rappers. Jon Stewart cutting to news dispatches on the war in Iraq from "Mess-o-potamia."

To the purist, the seepage of news into TV entertainment shows evokes horror and dismay. It shouldn't, says Jeffrey P. Jones, an assistant professor of communication at Old Dominion University, in his new book, "Entertaining Politics" (Rowman & Littlefield; $27.95).

The rise of the comic commentators, he says, has broken open the monopoly on political talk held by the pundits.

"It allows political outsiders and non-experts to talk about politics, and audiences really like that," says Jones, 41, who has taught at ODU for the past two years. "Everywhere else you go, this is how people talk about politics -- except on TV. Everywhere else, it can be funny, shortsighted, polemical, misinformed."

But shows like Stewart's "The Daily Show" and Maher's "Real Time," he writes, also are "refreshingly honest, impassioned, diverse, stimulating, witty and smartly common-sensical."

Jones can't gauge what effect the shows will have on the presidential election. (Maher and Stewart are unabashed Bush-bashers; Dennis Miller, he says, underwent a "conversion experience after 9-11. Everything is the fault of the liberals.") But he does believe they heighten viewers' political involvement.

Jones interviewed audience members of Maher's previous show, "Politically Incorrect," and looked at Web exchanges and viewer mail. "What you found in every instance was people's desire to talk about politics," Jones says. "The conversation wouldn't end when the TV program was turned off. They would talk about something for days or weeks or months."

The book's title carries a double-edged message: That entertainment has grown comfortable drifting into politics -- a no-no for comic forebears like Johnny Carson -- and that "politics can be pleasurable."

Jones says he's always been intrigued by how average folks talk about politics. He likes going to bars and getting into political talk. Jones has written previously about talk radio and letters to the editor.

He got the idea for the book, he writes in the preface, after flipping on Maher's "Politically Incorrect" one night to find "a comedian with a mullet discussing politics with the guy who played Batman on television when I was a kid. Say what?"

He focuses on the comic trio of Maher, Stewart and Miller, dissecting their styles and effects. Jones calls Maher "the Shadow President," defending Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky mess with arguments and salty language the president could never employ.

Maher is "a jerk who knows he's a jerk, "while Stewart comes off as more of a gentleman, Jones says. "If he throws softballs to Kerry, he certainly throws them to Karen Hughes," Bush's longtime adviser.

But Stewart, now the hottest of the three, is no pushover. In the guise of a news show, "he simply asserts a smirking disbelief by using a smile, a raised eyebrow and his antagonists' own words to ridicule and question through quips and video clips," Jones writes.

Stewart's primary target, though, is not Bush but the media, Jones says. Stewart's view is: "You are the Fourth Estate," Jones says. "You're supposed to monitor people in power, and you're doing a bad job of it."

So it shouldn't' have surprised anyone that Stewart blasted the CNN show "Crossfire" when he was on it earlier this month. "For Jon Stewart to go on a news show and get serious is another way of delivering the type of critique he delivers every night," Jones says. "It's called 'Crossfire.' It's called 'Hardball.' Can't you guys take it?"

Jones labels Dennis Miller "the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves," prone to deliver a "rant ... that views are invited to take or leave."

Miller, Jones says, has lost much of his appeal since his days on HBO's "Dennis Miller Live" in the mid-90s. Regardless, all three comics deserve to be taken seriously, Jones says.

"I hope that, instead of being consistently denigrated, people realize that these shows have some cultural value to them."

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Information from: The Virginian-Pilot

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