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By Andrew Downie in São Paulo

If you didn’t laugh at Brazil’s politics, you’d cry.

As John-Paul Rathbone pointed out on FT.com earlier this week, the oft-repeated phrase ‘Brazil is not a serious country’ could have been coined precisely for its politicians, almost half of whom have been found guilty of one corruption-related crime or another, according to anti-graft NGO Transparency Brasil.

Laughing was the preferable option until congress enacted a ban ahead of the October elections on anything in the broadcast media that “degraded or ridiculed the candidates, parties or coalitions.” (Hear FT correspondent Jonathan Wheatley discuss the ban here.)

Now, in the face of widespread condemnation, the Supreme Court has accepted an appeal filed by the Brazilian Association of Radio and TV stations and partially overturned the ban.

“It is precisely during the electoral period that civil society in general and the electorate in particular most need a free press,” said Ayres Britto, the vice president of the Supreme Court who authored the decision.

The ruling will come as a relief to Brazil’s television comedians, many of whom have based entire programs around taking the mickey out of politicians (not that that’s hard).

Brazilian humor revolves largely around slapstick, impersonations and ridicule and as such, politicians were an easy target. In one classis spot on the successful CQC show, a reporter went to Brasilia and asked a host of clueless deputies just what some of the laws they passed were actually about.

Those comics cried foul over the ban, and even paraded along Rio’s Copacabana beachfront on Sunday in protest. Today’s ruling means they are once again free to do what they do best. (Although Britto did recognize the original spirit of the law in upholding the ban on any examples of humor used to “clearly favour one of the parties in a race.”)

Roll on next Monday and the next edition of CQC. It should be laugh a minute. Unless you’re a politician.