It was at some point on Tuesday night, as I watched sweatshirt-clad students trickle in and slump into their seats in College Hall, that I thought, “How the hell did I get here?” It was no use cowering behind anything—the placard with my name emblazoned on the front clearly pronounced me as here. Now. Ready (or not) to debate.

Why was I chosen as a panelist to debate the merits of Obama’s legislative record and its relationship to the changing hands of Congress? It might have had something to do with the column you’re currently reading, but as I sat staring out at the sea (more like puddle) of faces before me, I started thinking—why are any of our political pundits in the position they’re in? Sure, I like talking about politics, and I take a healthy interest in what goes on over there in the District of Corruption, but what about the people that appear on our televisions and radios? How did they even get there in the first place?

The force of political pundits is so strong in the charged national discourse that it seems almost anyone can be a voice, from a blogger wearing nothing but his underwear and socks, sitting in his mother’s basement, to a virtually unknown legislator with a shrewd sense of Twitter management. Our generation is a prime example of this mentality. Due to the proliferation of information online, we can choose to absorb ourselves completely in the issues of this country, electing to spout national poll data the way some New Yorkers cite the batting averages of the entire Yankees roster. The only issue is that everyone seems to have an opinion. How do you sort through the good, the bad and the ugly on the platform of the great, democratic equalizer: the Internet? More importantly, how do you stand out from the millions who are trying to figure out the same thing?

In today’s race to appeal to the masses, the most common approach is the use of humor. Satire, humor’s sardonic cousin, was the finely-tuned machine that brought a Republican campaign to its knees with a series of well-timed late-night comedy skits featuring one Ms. Tina Fey and her alter-ego, Sarah Palin. The rise of humor could be a knee-jerk reaction to a very unfunny political landscape: a flailing economy, a grinding war and the rise of partisan extremism are all concerns that have been unfailingly addressed in comedy. It is the blurred line between expert and entertainer, however, that seems to be most interesting.

Just last week, Stephen Colbert testified in Congress with a personal account of a day in the life of a migrant worker. His appearance was deemed everything from “incisive” to “inappropriate” by politicians from both parties as he explained his perspective on migrant workers. “I don’t want a tomato picked by a Mexican,” Colbert said. “I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian.”

Though we may laugh at perhaps the most amusing testimony ever to grace CSPAN-3, Colbert’s presence in a hearing shows a new level in the political circus. Though he satirizes neoconservatives such as Glenn Beck, it is clear that many of these voices aren’t messing around, as evidenced by popularity of Beck’s “Rally to Restore Honor.” Amid all of these hyped, overblown theatrics from both sides of the aisle, it’s become increasingly difficult to determine where hard facts end and spectacle begins. There’s no harm in a sense of humor—most people require it to swallow a modicum of politics, but it has become worrisome that histrionics have replaced intellectual heavyweights as a source of authority.

In an interview with New York Magazine, Jon Stewart said of his role within politics, “The pettiness of it, the strange lack of passion for any kind of moral or editorial authority, always struck me as weird. We felt like, we’re serious people doing an unserious thing, and they’re unserious people doing a very serious thing.”