<b>Mitali Saran:</b> Send in the clowns

Left field is getting weirder by the day. Comedian Beppe Grillo's improbable bid for the Italian prime ministership turns out not to be nearly as funny as it looked. His Five Star Movement (M5S), a protest party that from the point of view of traditional politics looks like one of his jokes, racked up astonishing popularity. The crazy-haired, loudmouthed Mr Grillo maintains that he won't countenance alliances with other parties, and winning Italy is a matter of complicated coalition-building, so it's not likely that he'll be prime minister - but he's in a position to play kingmaker over the next few days, while Italy flounders around trying to put something together and avoid another set of elections.
 

In Israel, the clean-cut, photogenic television personality Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, turned out to be a major player in the Israeli elections three weeks ago. Mr Lapid is a popular news anchor whose face has been on Israeli television for over 10 years. He plays Beatles songs on his guitar. He's also in a position to determine the formation of the Israeli government.

The wildly funny and razor-sharp Jon Stewart, of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, is routinely cited as someone who might pose a serious potential threat to the usual suspects of American politics, if he were to run for office.

Maybe Italians only appreciate Mr Grillo as a way of flipping off everyone else - the Brooking Institute dismisses his party as one with "incoherent policies and lack of serious answers" - but he did get a quarter of the votes, which is no laughing matter. Maybe Mr Lapid doesn't really have policy chops, but people voted for him in large numbers. Maybe Mr Stewart is too smart to ruin his street cred by testing it.

Political commentators tend to disapprove of both Messrs Grillo and Lapid for being celebrities without substance, for being somehow unserious figures with an unsettling wonk deficit. But maybe electorates are so sick of politics as usual that they're willing to give anything fresh a go. Maybe they're so disenchanted that they're willing to gamble on someone who doesn't really know the ropes - since the ropes are frayed and lousy with corruption. Maybe they just spend a lot of time on the internet, and this is where the Grillos and Lapids of the world play out the bulk of their campaigns. Or, as the song suggests, "When the show's not going well, send in the clowns."

Politics depends on perception, and there's no place as irreverent as the internet. Is it possible that as real-life politics becomes more and more unbearable, people find some solace in supporting candidates who are as upset as themselves, and are able to express it in the same way - as bitter comedic insult, or as cold-eyed journalistic critique? Maybe people are being driven to vote cathartically rather than "responsibly", ie for a candidate who has a realistic shot at power.

I know that I would vote for political candidates with a sense of humour - the self-deprecating kind, not the smarmy kind - and a tolerance for criticism, attributes that go hand in hand and require a certain strength of character. Don't you yearn for political entities that don't spend the bulk of their energy taking umbrage and demanding apologies instead of laughing off or ignoring whatever insult or dissenting opinion came their way? I yearn for politicians who won't detain slash lock up slash shut down people who make fun of them, like a certain person I will identify only as the current chief minister of West Bengal.

Can you imagine the Indian political establishment ever countenancing anything like the White House Correspondents' Dinner, where political reporters get together to roast the leadership, and the leadership takes pains to prepare a funny speech roasting itself? Everyone takes shots at everyone else, good jokes are sportingly borne, sore points are prodded rather than swept under the carpet, and everyone acknowledges their own shortcomings and each other's.

Nah, I don't see it happening in India.

But we need to find a way to speak truth to power. The Shakespearean trope of the king and his fool is instructive: King Lear's delusions are punctured only by the merciless tongue of his jester. Under cover of harmless madness and irrelevance, the fool can say and do things nobody else dares to. It's a powerful place to be.

So why are Italians voting unlikely comedians to the brink of power? Maybe Mr Grillo and a certain bitter-tinged laughter come to the rescue of disillusioned Italians. Maybe everyone needs a jester in their corner, even if he'll never be king. Or, perhaps, especially if he'll never be king.