Basic Trope: A fictional, aggressive political talking head.
- Straight:
- Bob is an aggressively conservative talk show host.
- Alice is an aggressively liberal talk show host.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob compares tolerance of homosexuality, religious and ethnic minorities, environmentalism, and Keynesian economics to Communism at least Once per Episode.
- Alice compares gun rights, Chicago economics, people who aren’t vegan, the fossil fuel industries, and internet memes to Nazism at least Once per Episode.
- Every single person in the entire studio is a Pompous Political Pundit.
- Downplayed:
- Although Bob is a card-carrying, dues-paying member of the largest right-leaning political party in Tropeland, he doesn't actually vote for arch-conservative candidates all the time; he's just playing it up for the ratings.
- Although Alice is a card-carrying, dues-paying member of the largest left-leaning political party in Tropeland, she doesn't always agree with the more radical left-leaning candidates; she still despises the other side.
- Justified:
- Bob and Alice’s parents raised them to be as political as they are.
- Bob and Alice are actually pretty moderate or even outright apolitical in private; their on-air persona is really just them acting like a Large Ham and exaggerating their political views in a cynical attempt to create a Cult of Personality off of which they can profit.
- Bob and Alice are a lot more rational in private and public conversation, but the opportunity to broadcast your message to millions of people allows them to go all out. It’s a screen; who’s gonna stop you?
- Inverted: Carol is a down-to-earth anchor who just tells you what's going on without bringing in her own politics.
- Subverted:
- Bob starts out acting like an aggressively conservative talking head, then reveals he was mocking one.
- The entire show is fake; Bob is a liberal playing an over-the-top parody of genuine conservatives and relies heavily on invocations of Poe's Law.
- Double Subverted:
- However, he was merely attacking the presentational styles of his fellow right-wing talking heads. He shares his counterparts' beliefs, but thinks they are making a very bad case for them.
- Eventually, Bob starts Becoming the Mask.
- Parodied:
- Bob is a clear parody of this trope's real-life counterparts.
- The instant any guest on his show shows signs of disagreement with him, Bob rhetorically beats them senseless.
- Zig Zagged: Bob is known to play both sides of the aisle depending on the issue in question.
- Averted: Bob has centrist political beliefs and is not overly aggressive.
- Enforced: Bob's author (or his/her editor) has a rather vitriolic personal agenda.
- Lampshaded:Bob: Geez, I sound like Glenn Beck, don't I?
- Invoked: Political shows are waaaaaaay down in the ratings vis-à-vis other genres, so former collegiate activist Bob, once he gets his political science degree, goes to Trope Broadcasting Inc. with a proposal for a highly confrontational new political show starring himself.
- Exploited: Alice exposes Bob's lack of trustworthiness to a wide audience and offers them the choice of believing him, the nutcase, or her, The Hero.
- Defied: The network bigwigs tell Bob to act like a Pompous Political Pundit, but he refuses and continues to deliver his commentary in a reasoned, balanced, and well-sourced way.
- Discussed: "Have you noticed how similar Bob sounds to Keith Olbermann?"
- Conversed: "Did you know they wrote Bob to lampoon Alex Jones?"
- Implied: Bob's guest Christine, with whom he disagrees, leaves the studio where his show is taped, and announces the next day that she has decided to terminate her affiliation with the organization she founded twenty-eight years ago.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's aggressive conservatism turns off viewers and his show gets cancelled.
- Following a steady diet of Bob's vicious Ad Hominems against his political opponents, Darryl, a mentally unbalanced fan, goes on a killing spree and gets a life sentence for murder.
- Reconstructed:
- Darryl has an epiphany about his misdeeds and volunteers to give a speaking tour about the dangers of overheated political rhetoric.
- While he makes no bones about his strong views, Bob says at the beginning of each episode that he opposes violence against people with whom he disagrees. Bob is also fair-minded and will praise his political opponents on the off chance they do something he agrees with, as well as accurately covering stories where people he normally agrees with commit misdeeds, as an example to his fans of what not to do.
- Played for Laughs: Bob's beliefs are played up as laughably extreme. A rant linking Obama to Hitler is so over-the-top it's hilarious.
- Played for Drama: Bob's latest anti-gay rant causes a teenage boy about to come out to his parents, fans of Bob's show, to feel some major Gayngst and stay in the closet.
- Played For Horror: Bob is the voice of an extremist political party that makes the New Founding Fathers look meek. They don't just advocate, say, increasing toughness on illegal immigrants — they want to round them all up, line them up against the border and machine-gun them all with 30mm ammunition to Make an Example of Them.
- Plotted a Good Waste: Bob was written to show how ordinary people can turn into monsters when given a media soapbox.
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