America/Conor O'Clery: On Monday, with one teeth-baring, finger-pointing cry of "Yeaaahhhhhhghhhh!" in the Val Air ballroom in Des Moines, as he vowed to fight on after his Iowa defeat, Howard Dean turned himself into a figure of fun for that powerful social dynamic - late-night television.
One day someone will write a treatise on the role of comic-satirists in shaping America's political destiny. TV comedy shows provide political news to growing numbers of people, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. One-fifth of young adults say they regularly learn about the current presidential campaign from such programmes.
Dean's howler (pun intended) reverberated all week on television and the Internet. NBC's Jay Leno said on Monday evening: "I think it's a bad sign when your speech ends with your aides shooting you with a tranquiliser gun." Next night he quipped: "Now I hear the cows in Iowa are afraid of getting mad-Dean disease."
On CBS, David Letterman doctored the Des Moines footage to make Dean's head explode at the end of the speech. "Did you see Howard Dean ranting and raving?" Letterman asked. "Here's a little tip, Howard: cut back on the Red Bull."
He followed up next night by asking: "You folks see President Bush's State of the Union address last night? How about that surprise announcement ... that Howard Dean has been captured and he's in the hands of interrogators, amazing."
It took rival Al Sharpton, a thorn in Dean's side in many debates, to give the unhappy Democratic candidate a break. At a New Hampshire debate on Thursday evening he turned to the former Vermont governor and said: "Don't be too hard on yourself for hootin' an' hollerin'. If I got 18 per cent in Iowa, I'd still be there hootin' an' hollerin'!"
One way of coping with an avalanche of ridicule of course is to turn the joke on oneself. Dean showed up on David Letterman on Thursday evening and listed the top 10 ways to turn his campaign around. Samples: "Switch to decaf", and "Start working out and speaking with an Austrian accent."
And speaking of Arnold Schwarzenegger... When campaigning with John Kerry on Sunday, Sen Edward Kennedy told a rally that he'd asked his fellow Massachusetts senator: "Did you imagine when you were a young man that you would grow up to be a war hero, elected to the US Senate and be a candidate for president?"
Kerry, he said, replied: "No, but aren't I lucky."
Then, said Kennedy, "John asked: 'When you were a young man, did you ever imagine that one day you'd be the uncle-in-law of an Austrian bodybuilder who would become the Republican governor of California?' and I said, 'No, but aren't I lucky'."
President George Bush himself took some late-night hits over his speech to the joint houses of the US Congress on Tuesday. Jay Leno noted: "In last year's State of the Union address, Bush said there was no doubt Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Last night, Bush said they had weapons of mass destruction-related programme activity. What's he going to say next year? 'Iraq had weaponishy thingamajig watchmacallits. You know, those weapony things'."
Some Democrats watching the address found it hilarious when Mr Bush solemnly criticised judges who "insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people". He wasn't of course referring to the Supreme Court judges who arbitrarily handed him the 2000 election, but to the prospect of a court in some states approving gay and lesbian marriages.
This is a big issue in the culture wars that will be fought during the presidential election. "Activist judges," said Bush, with an eye to his conservative base, "have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives ... Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage."
His main targets were Howard Dean, who as governor signed a law in Vermont authorising gay unions, and Sen John Kerry, whose home state of Massachusetts may allow gay couples to legally marry following a decision by "activist judges".
The issue splits the electorate. In a poll this month, 46 per cent of Americans thought homosexual couples should be allowed to form legally recognised civil unions, giving them the legal rights of married couples in areas such as health insurance, inheritance and pension coverage, but 51 per cent insisted they should not be allowed.
A bigger majority opposes marriage. If Mr Bush backs a constitutional amendment to take away the right to decide this issue from the states, he will be at odds with Vice President Dick Cheney, whose daughter is a lesbian. Mr Cheney argued during the 2000 campaign that "people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want" and the issue should be left to states to decide.
With John Kerry's emergence as Democratic front-runner, some might think from his surname that another Irish American president is in the making. The Massachusetts senator has, however, no Irish blood in his veins.
His grandfather, according to the Boston Globe, was a Czech Jew named Fritz Kohn who changed his name to Frederick Kerry to escape anti-Semitic persecution.
A family member told the Globe that Kohn and his siblings randomly dropped a pencil on a map of Europe. It pointed to Co Kerry, and they adopted the name.
Just think. John Kerry could just as easily have ended up as Sen Cork or Sen Limerick if the pencil had been a centimetre off either way.