Make politics more fun with Late-Night Presidential Candidate Bingo

By Joe Blevins | September 29, 2015 | 8:38pm

Aux Features TV

The presidential election is more than a year away, but the campaign is already in full-swing, dominating not only the voracious, 24-hour news cycle but also the late night talk show circuit. Sometimes, it seems that the next 13 politically charged months stretch out like an eternity. What can the average viewer, who may or may not even care all that much who leads the Free World, do to while away the time? Well, thanks to Mashable’s Proma Khosla, you can keep track of which candidates have appeared on which gabfests with Late-Night Presidential Candidate Bingo Cards. Viewers are advised to print these out and keep them handy on those nights when the only cure for insomnia is listening to office-seekers ingratiate themselves to a comedian. According to Kholsa, this little game encourages viewers to adapt a collector’s mindset, “as if the candidates were politically active Pokémon” (the second politics/Pokémon crossover we’ve noted today). Right now, candidate-friendly Jimmy Fallon is unsurprisingly in the lead, having caught more political Pokémon than Stephen Colbert, Seth Myers, or Larry Wilmore.

Of course, a game like this could easily get out of hand, what with the late night and political landscapes more crowded than ever before, but Mashable has chosen to set sensible limits on Late-Night Presidential Candidate Bingo: only “the top 16 candidates and the four shows they’ve appeared on so far.” As of this writing, that field does not include new Daily Show host Trevor Noah, but that will soon change in all likelihood. As for the candidates themselves, their inclusion on these cards is tangible evidence that their respective campaigns for the White House have attracted at least some attention from the media. That’s good news for such non-Trump, non-Fiorina candidates as Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham, who may otherwise have difficulty getting media attention. Meanwhile, viewers who find these cards altogether too generic are invited to make their own, more specific versions. Possible suggestions for squares: “Vaguely Slanderous Remark Casually Passed Off As A Joke,” “Shameless Populist Statement Made To Garner Cheap Applause,” and “Exact Moment When The Host’s Soul Dies A Little.”