From my experience, politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being preached at and screeched at - you know, and the soapbox routine. They're much more uneasy knowing they're a target of ridicule.
Carl HiaasenI never laugh or smile when I am writing. When I come home for lunch after writing all morning, my wife says I look like I just came home from a funeral. This is not bragging. This is an illness.
Carl HiaasenThe TV commercials, which are endless and fairly crass, gave birth to Brock, the bad-lawyer character in Razor Girl. In real life you can find even sleazier examples than him.
Carl HiaasenWhen I was writing Razor Girl, I thought it would be fun to have a redneck TV family that was really just a bunch of actors who had to be trained to be rednecks. That's not so farfetched, if you know how Hollywood works.
Carl Hiaasen