John Stewart is a clever guy. His Daily Show program deserves much of the credit for infusing pop culture and modern politics, and thus engaging many people in important events they otherwise would probably ignore. However, when looked at beyond the surface, it's a flawed engagement. For many, programs like The Daily Show aren't just clever political satire, they are politics. Opinions on complex long-term wars or the ebb-and-flow of economics come as simple as barbs about the President's mangled style of speech.

What the John Stewarts, Bill Mahers, and even Bill O'Riellys of the world have shown us is that people don't want their politics a la carte. They want the package deal.

It wasn't until an otherwise typical night out recently that I realized this first-hand.

It was Saturday afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin and I was standing in line to see political comedian Bill Maher do a show. Though I probably dressed the part just fine, I couldn't help but have the suspicion that I was not supposed to be there; that such an event really wasn't for me. Maybe it was the awkward combination of a politically charged audience in a small-talk environment.

"So what do you think about this weather? Finally warming up, huh?"

"Yeah, it's nice out! Too bad the Republicans are Nazis and want to oppress the lower classes while feeding money to multinational corporations."

All kidding aside, the mindset of nearly every individual at the show- those on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum- had one distinctive characteristic, very different than my own. Politics is not about the complicated cause-and-effect specifics of certain ideas. It's really most about simple inclusion- being counted in.

This "package deal" that is modern politics plays well into the hands of show business. In the early part of this decade, a cultural phenomenon began to take hold: partisan comedy. Humorous sketches were no longer ripped from the headlines, but rather from DNC and GOP talking point memos. As a person who loves observing politics, and rather dislikes cookie-cutter cop dramas, it certainly gave me something to watch on television. I like Bill Maher. I like Jon Stewart. I like Bill O'Reilly (people do realize his is a comedy show, right?). As long as I agree with something near half of what they say, I was a fan. Or so I thought.

At the Maher show, I realized that "agreeing with half" is a very foreign concept. It's really no different than church- you're in it either all or nothing. People don't watch political comedy shows to be enlightened, they watch to be reaffirmed. While certain subsets of our culture surely hold dear to specific sides of some issues for real-life, cause-and-effect reasons- you could take most of the issues and flip them the opposite way, and the whole cultural equation there would still compute. The show would go on.

Bill Maher himself, like all of these pundits, pretends at times to be non-partisan. His attempt to prove it this night was a knock on Lyndon Johnson- a political figure from forty years ago. Maher, Stewart, O'Reilly, and the like do this for a reason. As obvious as it is that the bulk of the cultural political landscape is now pure black-and-white, high-contrast partisanship, individuals in the body politic generally have a slight- even unconscious- guilt about buying anything hook, line, and sinker. This audience was no different- the leftist beliefs of Lyndon Johnson were a cheap expense to calm any fears of the detriments of conformity. Knocking a Hillary Clinton or supporting the long-term benefits of the war in Iraq would have been far too expensive. This was church, in the end.