MONTREAL - The Quebec comedians who punked Sarah Palin basked in the glow of the media spotlight Sunday as U.S. voters, pundits and people the world over buzzed about their crank call to the Republican vice-presidential nominee.
Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel were being courted by U.S. news networks following a phone call that took the Internet by storm, racking up scores of YouTube views and ribald commentary on blogs and news sites.
"We're flying to New York in a couple of hours to do the CBS morning show - oh, my God," said a breathless Audette, one half of the notorious comedy duo known as the Masked Avengers - a radio staple in Quebec.
"I haven't slept much. I did interviews in Europe, China, (and) we have interviews booked in France, Australia, and Israel in the next hours."
The pair somehow managed to get through to the Alaskan governor last week, chatting her up for more than six minutes on the false pretense she was speaking with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Over the course of the call, the faux Sarkozy breaks into song, expresses a shared love for killing animals and compliments Palin, oblivious, on Hustler magazine's "documentary" on her life - a porn movie called "Nailin' Paylin."
The media maelstrom kicked up by the gag has taken the pair by surprise.
"We're doing it for fun - as comedians, that's our job," Audette said. "We had no idea it would have such a big impact in the United States and the rest of the world. It's the same in France and Britain - it's everywhere."
It's all part of the American celebrity culture, which has spilled over into the realm of American politics by virtue of the star power of Palin and Democratic presidential nominee and apparent front-runner Barack Obama, he added.
"The candidates are celebrities. People want to see how they react in a normal conversation," Audette said.
"Everybody did Saturday Night Live, the Colbert Report, they did the Jon Stewart show. By showing they want to be closer to people, politicians are showing they want to be more like us."
People also like to know their politicians have a sense of humour, he added - a point echoed Sunday by Obama himself, who was campaigning in Ohio and took time out to catch, via YouTube, rival John McCain's "Saturday Night Live" appearance.
"John McCain was funny yesterday," Obama told supporters.
"That's part of what our politics should be about - being able to laugh at each other and laugh at ourselves; being able to understand that all of us ... are in this together."
The Canadian-made prank has provided a fitting exclamation point for a U.S. campaign that has been inextricably linked with - and endlessly satirized by - the American comedy circuit.
While lampooning politicians is nothing new, the controversy and unwitting comedy provided over the last eight years by the Bush administration has raised it to a new level, said Henry Jacek, a politics professor at McMaster University in Hamilton.
"People simply don't respect the current president, coupled with the fact (many entertainers) disagree with the substance of his policies," Jacek said.
David Docherty, a politics professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, cited Tina Fey's near-perfect Palin parody on the Saturday night sketch comedy show for creating a comedic tsunami.
"(Palin) made it OK to criticize Sarah Palin's inexperience and her world view," he said.
Docherty also disagreed with the suggestion that the growing role of tongue-in-cheek talk-show hosts like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and the SNL crew in U.S. political discourse is dumbing down the discussion.
"The one thing that humour does, if it's done well, is require a bit more knowledge of the political system from people to get the jokes," he said.
"You would have had to have watch the Sarah Palin (vice-presidential) debate and have picked up on her nuances to appreciate Tina Fey. Humour actually requires people to know about the process and the details of politics and policy."
Jacek, too, characterized comedy on the campaign trail as an overlooked and under-appreciated element of democracy that encourages political participation.
"It's an important device in political discourse," he said. "And if that's what it takes to get people interested in politics, then I think it's good, quite frankly."
The Republicans - Palin in particular - have been repeatedly lambasted by late-night comedians, Jacek said.
"Palin, I feel sorry for her. I mean, she's an embarrassment, but I feel sorry for her because they picked somebody unprepared for this role," he said.
"She's looked at sort of like the female (George W.) Bush."
And Audette? All he knows is people like to know their politicians have a sense of humour - and some of them do, appearances to the contrary, he said.
Former French President Jacques Chirac, who fell victim to the Avengers in 2006, "laughed from his heart," Audette said. "He was presidential and a gentleman."
And Sarkozy, whom the duo contacted last year? Not so much.
"Sarkozy was not a joking-around guy."
