**This post is part of our series, Mediating the Past, which focuses on how history is produced, constructed, distributed, branded and received through various media.

In a 2009 episode, Family Guy joked about a world in which JFK had never been shot. This was not an earnest exploration of historical causality however, but a setup to a gruesome site gag replacing JFK’s assassination with Mayor McCheese’s. To make matters worse, after the parody’s eerily accurate recreation of the event, Jacqueline Kennedy climbs onto the back of the car not to flee, but to eat the McViscera. Of course, offensive humor is Family Guy‘s stock in trade and a spin around the young-skewing dial from FOX to Comedy Central to Adult Swim reveals a host of gags about collective traumas from the assassinations of the 1960s to the catastrophes of 9/11 and Katrina in the 2000s. Even more recent events like the Penn State scandal and the Aurora shootings have comics laughingly asking, “Too soon?”

Joking on these topics offends because they are sacred moments in popular culture’s understanding of its own history. Reportage defines these events using a combination of extreme seriousness and emotion, marking them as sacred in the senses of their importance, uniqueness, and as common touchstones for popular memory. Indeed, the two most archetypal “national traumas” remain the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. The cliche stating that everyone recalls where they were when they first heard about either highlights their importance to both individual and national history. The rules governing humor in bad taste highlight the complex and often ambiguous conflicts of different values in culture. In these instances for example, solemnity regarding the events runs against the respect for free expression tested by sick jokes.

More practically for television, this humor represents an attempt to corner valuable young demographics, but risks public, advertiser, and regulatory flak. So while this humor is governed by the time elapsed since the initial event and decorum of the period, its appearance on television gives particular insight into the growth of narrowcasting and sick humor in the last half century. As the archetypal national trauma of the television era, the JFK assassination not only demonstrates this growth, but the ways in which television comedy has come to play with these events, in a sense rejecting the sacred framework.

In 1983, Eddie Murphy grew tired of his signature SNL character and decided to kill Buckwheat. While obviously in dialogue with the recent shootings of John Lennon and the pope, the bit alluded most directly to the recent Reagan shooting. Certainly, Reagan’s survival helped make this event available for SNL‘s humor, but while Buckwheat’s assassin was a composite of Reagan’s and Lennon’s mentally ill shooters, Buckwheat’s assassin, John David Stutts (also played by Murphy), was killed while being led down a hallway in handcuffs. SNL thus played it relatively safe by limiting its most direct references to Oswald’s death and not JFK’s. Nevertheless, this is one of the first (possibly the very first) example of a comedy show parodying the assassination in any way and it occurred notably on a late-night show known, even as late as 1983, for its edginess.

When the cultural zeitgeist of the early 1990s turned towards conspiracy theorist’s view of history, JFK’s death figured heavily. Along with The X-Files, Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK was arguably conspiracy culture’s central text. Television’s growing penchant for parody in the 1990s meant shows like The Simpsons, The Critic, and The Ben Stiller Show would reference the film. But a 1992 episode of Seinfeld left the greatest mark on pop culture. In explaining why they “despise” Keith Hernandez, Kramer and Newman convey the story of having been spat on, launching into an extended stylistic parody of JFK.

Although airing during prime time, Seinfeld skewed young, urban, and liberal–especially in 1992 when it had yet to dominate the ratings. During the season in question, the program aired at 9:30 Eastern in between the risque, if juvenile, humor of Night Court and Quantum Leap, a show often about working through historical trauma. More importantly, though playing with the imagery of the assassination, Seinfeld acts more as a parody of Stone’s stylistic excess rather than a joke about Kennedy’s death.

Despite its apparent edginess, the magic loogie bit would pale in comparison to the ways in which parodists like self-consciously sick Family Guy played with this imagery later. Despite rocky beginnings this program has surpassed The Simpsons as the crown jewel in FOX’s valuably young-skewing Sunday night lineup and acts as the centerpiece to a growing cadre of Seth MacFarlane productions. In 1999, but since cut from reruns, a young boy holds up his “JFK Pez Dispenser” just as a stray bullet shatters its head. Ominously, the child consoles himself with his Bobby Kennedy dispenser.

Like the 2009 Mayor McCheese gag, this joke plays on juxtapositions between sacred politicians and childhood trifles. But they also elicit “I-can’t-believe-they-just-did-that” laughter. They stack uncomfortable humor on top of the fundamental joke. Even by Family Guy‘s standards though, the 1999 gag was edgy. But the shattered plastic of 1999 is downright tame compared to Jackie Kennedy eating Mayor McCheese’s head.

Since the early 80s then, this type of sacrilegious humor has not only grown more extreme, but has moved from fringe programming hours into prime time. To some extent, general social factors like generational shift, the time elapsed since 1963, and broadly-labeled “permissiveness” account for these examples’ increasingly flippant attitude towards sacred history. More pointedly, the network tendency towards ever-more-specific demographics has allayed standards & practices, network, and FCC fears with the assumption that easily offended audiences would not be watching. For a particular demographic, often one too young to remember the moment directly, moments of common historical importance are increasingly being inflected with the flippant attitude of sick humor.

Rarely has there been a reality contestant as polarizing as Palin, whose lineage has created both fervent fandom and intense ridicule during her surprisingly long tenure on Dancing with the Stars. On tonight’s finale she was labeled as “the shy girl next door who has transformed into a dancer and become a surprise contender,” but in truth she’s a weak dancer who beat out stronger competitors thanks to substantial voter support. That support have been broadly labeled a right-wing conspiracy (without much “real” data available to justify this), while her detractors have taken to shooting their televisions in protest.

However, this sort of controversy is a regular occurrence on shows like Dancing with the Stars or American Idol. In fact, the very first season of Dancing with the Stars in 2005 created a similar controversy when Kelly Monaco, an ABC soap star, defeated John O’Hurley despite many viewers feeling he was the superior dancer (as would be natural in any close vote). ABC, of course, capitalized on this fairly innocuous controversy by airing a special “Dance-Off” for charity, which O’Hurley won. American Idol, meanwhile, has had numerous contestants who “went home too early,” including eventual Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson and eventual multi-platinum recording artist Chris Daughtry.

These controversies are natural, I would argue, considering reality television’s tenuous relationship with the basic principles of democracy. Ryan Seacrest refers to the winner of American Idol as “Your American Idol” to suggest a sense of ownership, while So You Think You Can Dance? crowns “America’s Favorite Dancer,” as opposed to its best dancer, in each of its seasons. Both shows suggest that they are turning over a life-altering decision to the American public, as agency over the future of a young singer or dancer is transferred to the voters’ telephones (and their parent’s texting plan).

And yet this agency is seen as problematic when mixed with larger questions of credibility. If the process of voting has viewers exercising their democratic rights, then the existence of judges is meant to introduce some level of meritocratic consideration of talent. While shows like American Idol wholly turn the vote over to the people, shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars give judges considerable power over the outcomes – in the case of Dancing with the Stars, 50% of the power – because dancing is considered to be technical enough to require an expert’s opinion (whereas singing is something we all think we can judge, even when we are actually tone deaf).

This all seems particularly silly for Dancing with the Stars, as we’re talking about democratic engagement and legitimacy in a series about C-List (at best) celebrities competing to win the mirrorball trophy (which is exactly what it sounds like). However, we can’t deny that this particular season became a legitimate national media event, with Palin’s supporters emphasizing their democratic right to support their candidate while her detractors argued that her inability to actually dance makes her continued presence a detriment to the series’ “integrity.”

Of course, this is no different from the original concerns over Monaco’s victory on some level, but the political overtones are exaggerating this controversy. It is the overlaying of real democracy over fake democracy, a microcosm of national political tensions within a dancing competition featuring a daughter of a politician (Palin), an actress (Jennifer Grey) best known for a movie released over twenty years ago (however timeless it may be), and an actor (Kyle Massey) best known for his stint on That’s So Raven who the media has completely forgotten about (or, more likely, didn’t notice in the first place).

The stakes for tonight’s results show were non-existent, in reality: the series has too little legitimacy for an “undeserved” Bristol Palin victory to substantially alter its future prospects, and a Bristol Palin victory is not going to be a sudden turn in the tide of popular opinion surrounding her mother (or have any real democratic meaning, as James Poniewozik argues).

But the show, already a bizarre mix of hyper-seriousness and campy excess, was forced to address allegations of voter fraud and attacks on its legitimacy; the show even opened with an explanation of how the voting process worked, explaining the 50/50 model as if they were 24-hour newscasters discussing why Florida meant everything in 2000. For two long hours filled with novelty dance routines and advertising disguised as musical performance, the audience’s faith in democracy depended on the envelope in the hands of Tom Bergeron.

And then, in a single moment, it all fell away. Bristol was revealed to be the competition’s Ralph Nader, a spoiler rather than a contender, finishing in third place and denying ABC the final moments of tension which would have divided the nation along partisan lines. Instead, Jennifer Grey steps out of the corner to take the mirrorball trophy, a victory for dancing and for the series’ own twisted meritocratic democracy.

Bristol, meanwhile, steps back from the political edge: while she told the camera early in the episode that her victory would be a middle finger to those who hate her mother, her loss becomes a personal tale of the shy girl next door coming out of her shell. Like many politicians, she weathered apparent death threats and substantial critics to prove to the world that anyone can run for office or, in this case, put on colorful costumes and compete for a shiny disco ball on a stick.

And isn’t that what democracy is all about?