Abstract
This chapter analyzes the satirical performances of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, delving into the way their coverage of Iraq War created community through comedy. For a public grappling with “affect fatigue” and powerlessness in the face of wars they didn’t support, these shows opened a space for the public to feel—and yet, I argue that this space was ultimately conservative in nature. Satire skewers but also forecloses the possibility of meaningful action. Satire follows—it comes after events and comments on them—but it does not lead. Looking at language, images, and character in segments from both programs, this chapter posits that while these satiric performances were needed for public healing, they also stymied more active forms of intervention in war.
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Notes
- 1.
Stephen Marche, “The Left Has a Post-Truth Problem Too. It’s Called Comedy,” Los Angeles Times, 6 Jan 2017 http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-marche-left-fake-news-problem-comedy-20170106-story.html?testnws=politicsnow23track%3D_newsletter_politics-now___________20170107 (accessed 31 Oct 2017).
- 2.
Sophia A. McClennen and Remy M. Maisel, Is Satire Saving Our Nation?: Mockery and America Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 6.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Elaine Kamarack, “Has a presidential campaign ever been as negative as this one?” Brookings 18 Oct 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/10/18/the-most-negative-campaign/ (accessed 31 Oct 2017).
- 5.
McClennen and Maisel 6.
- 6.
McClennen and Maisel 7.
- 7.
See Russel B. Nye’s review in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47.4 (1951), 684. The original text is: Bruce Ingham Granger, Political Satire in the American Revolution: 1763–1783 (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1960).
- 8.
Aaron McLean Winters, “The Laughing Doves of 1812 and the Satiric Endowment of Antiwar Rhetoric in the United States,” PMLA 124.5 (2009), 1563.
- 9.
For a clip of the performance, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWPgEvt_Jz8&feature=player_embedded. The playbill of Making a Killing can be found here: http://www.sfmt.org/company/archives/makingakilling/images/program2007.jpg (accessed 26 Mar 2014).
- 10.
See Cloe Veltman, “Guerrillas of Agitprop Fight to Stay Relevant,” The New York Times 26 Dec 2009 www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/theater/27sfculture.html?_r=0 (accessed 26 Mar 2014).
- 11.
Winters 1564.
- 12.
Mark K. McBeth and Randy S. Clemons, “Is Fake News the Real News? The Significance and Stewart and Colbert for Democratic Discourse, Politics, and Policy,” in The Stewart/Colbert Effect: Essays on the Real Impact of Fake News, ed. Amarnath Amarsingam (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2011), 80.
- 13.
Robert C. Elliott, The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 11.
- 14.
Kruez and Roberts, for example, believe satire is defined by its focus on society rather than the individual. If satire is ridicule meant as a corrective, though, it can be applied equally to individuals or society.
- 15.
Fred Norris Robinson, “Satirists and Enchanters in Early Irish Literature (1912),” Satire: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Ronald Paulson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 7.
- 16.
Elliott 15.
- 17.
Robinson 19.
- 18.
Elliott 20.
- 19.
W.H. Auden, “Satire,” in Paulson, 202.
- 20.
Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Malcom Heath (New York: Penguin Classics, 1997), 23.
- 21.
Quoted in John Storey, Critical Theory and Popular Culture 3rd Edition (Essex, England: Prentice Hall, 2001), 109.
- 22.
George Meredith, “An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit,” The Project Gutenberg e-Book 13 May 2005 http://www.livrosgratis.com.br/arquivos_livros/gu001219.pdf (accessed 12 Feb 2014), 2, 7.
- 23.
Roger J. Kruez and Richard Roberts, “On Satire and Parody: The Importance of Being Ironic,” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 8.2 (1993), 97.
- 24.
Linda Hutcheon Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony (New York: Routledge, 1994), 11.
- 25.
Kruez and Roberts 101.
- 26.
Lisa Colletta, “Political Satire and Postmodern Irony in the Age of Stephen Colbert,” Journal of Popular Culture 42.5 (2009), 864.
- 27.
Bill Maher, Politically Incorrect, Sept 17, 2001. For a video of his remarks, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNMhNJDRnhU
- 28.
See Celestine Bohlen, “THINK TANK: In New War on Terrorism, Words are Weapons, Too,” The New York Times 29 Sept 2001 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/29/arts/think-tank-in-new-war-on-terrorism-words-are-weapons-too.html (accessed 18 Feb 2014).
- 29.
Ari Fleischer, White House Press Briefing, 26 Sept 2001 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/fleischertext_092601.html (accessed 30 Jan 2014).
- 30.
W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), xi.
- 31.
David Dadge, The War in Iraq and Why The Media Failed Us (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), 10.
- 32.
Dadge 21.
- 33.
See Jeremy Gillick and Nonna Gorilovskaya, “The Most Trusted Man in America?” Patheos, 29 June 2010 http://www.patheos.com/resources/additional-resources/2010/06/most-trusted-man-in-america (accessed 18 Feb 2014).
- 34.
“Factor and Commander,” The Daily Show 29 Sept 2004 http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/uyxnhg/factor-and-commander (accessed 6 Apr 2014).
- 35.
Stacey L. Pelika, “Mesopotamia or Mess O’Potamia? Comparing ‘Mainstream’ and Daily Show Coverage of the Buildup to the Iraq War,” presented at APSA Political Communication Pre-Conference (Sept 2009), 4.
- 36.
Pelika 4.
- 37.
Jeffrey P. Jones, Entertaining Politics: New Political Television and Civic Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 113.
- 38.
Geoffrey Baym, “Representation and the Politics of Play: Stephen Colbert’s Better Know A District,” Political Communication 24:4 (2007), 362.
- 39.
Don J. Waisanen, “A Citizen’s Guides to Democracy Inaction: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Comic Rhetorical Criticism,” Southern Communication Journal 74.1 (Apr-Jun 2009), 122.
- 40.
For an account of the Bush’s avoidance of the media, see John Dean, Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Little Brown and Company, 2010).
- 41.
Quoted in Jones 137.
- 42.
Waisanen 126.
- 43.
Geoffrey Baym, From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2010), 4.
- 44.
Fox News Channel’s slogan is “Fair and Balanced.” CNN’s is “The Most Trusted Name in News,” and MSNBC’s is “Lean Forward.”
- 45.
Baym From Cronkite 21.
- 46.
Jeanne Colleran, Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 30.
- 47.
Baym, From Cronkite 22.
- 48.
Quoted in Baym, From Cronkite 2.
- 49.
See Jon Stewart’s biography on The Daily Show’s website: http://www.thedailyshow.com/news-team/jon-stewart (accessed 19 Feb 2014).
- 50.
See Michiko Kakutani, “Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?” 15 Aug 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/arts/television/17kaku.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed 12 Mar 2012).
- 51.
See http://www.timepolls.com/hppolls/archive/poll_results_417.html (accessed 11 Feb 14). For commentary, see also http://www.timepolls.com/hppolls/archive/poll_results_417.html (accessed 11 Feb 14).
- 52.
See, for example, http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/jon-stewart-drawing-more-viewers-than-fox-news-channel/ and http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/05/daily-show-ratings-soar-fox-slumps-in-may-numbers/ (both accessed Feb 12, 2014).
- 53.
For analysis on whether The Daily Show is liberal or not, see Bruce A. Williams and Michael X. Delli Carpini’s “Ethical Concerns and Fake News: The Daily Show and the Challenge of the New Media Environment” in Amarnath Amarasingam, ed., The Stewart/Colbert Effect: Essays on the Real Impacts of Fake News (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011).
- 54.
Dadge 22.
- 55.
Dadge 22.
- 56.
“The First Five Years,” The Daily Show, 20 Mar 2008 http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-20-2008/iraq--the-first-5-years (accessed 22 Feb 2014).
- 57.
Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 31.
- 58.
Adam Sternbergh, “Stephen Colbert has America by the Ballots,” New York Magazine 15 Oct 2007 http://nymag.com/news/politics/22322/ (accessed 12 Feb 2014).
- 59.
See Marc Peyser “The Truthiness Teller,” Newsweek 12 Feb 2006 http://www.newsweek.com/truthiness-teller-112951 (accessed 19 Feb 2014).
- 60.
Matthew Norton, “A Structural Hermeneutics of The O’Reilly Factor” Theory and Society 40 (2011), 315.
- 61.
Norton 321.
- 62.
“First Show,” The Colbert Report, 17 Nov 2005 http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/w9dr6d/first-show (accessed 18 Feb 2014).
- 63.
Norton 326.
- 64.
Quoted on The Colbert Report, 18 July 2007.
- 65.
“The Word: Yellow Smiley Faces,” The Colbert Report, 18 July 2007 http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/183142/july-18-2007/the-word---smiley-face (accessed 22 Feb 2014).
- 66.
Nicholas Mirzoeff Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture (New York: Routledge, 2005), 67.
- 67.
Peggy Phelan, “Afterward: ‘In the Valley of the Shadow of Death’: The Photographs of Abu Ghraib,” Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict, eds. Patrick Anderson and Jisha Menon (New York: Routledge, 2009), 374.
- 68.
“Unresolved Issues,” The O’Reilly Factor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0cCOs4XTTI (accessed Mar 28, 2014).
- 69.
Michael Seidel, “Crisis Rhetoric and Satiric Power,” New Literary History 20.1 (Autumn 1988), 165.
- 70.
Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush” New York Times Oct 17, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?_r=0 (accessed Sept 17, 2011).
- 71.
Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2006), 35.
- 72.
Sara Brady, Performance, Politics, and the War on Terror: “Whatever it Takes” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 109.
- 73.
See Merriam-Webster, “Word of the Year: 2006,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/06words.htm (accessed Feb 18, 2014).
- 74.
Sean Aday, “Analysis of 2005 Iraq and Afghanistan War Coverage on NBC and Fox News Channel,” Journal of Communication 60 (2010), 145.
- 75.
Heather L. LaMarre, Kristen D. Landreville, and Michael A. Beam, “The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See what You Want to See in The Colbert Report” The International Journal of Press/Politics 14 (2009), 213.
- 76.
LaMarre et al. 215.
- 77.
LaMarre et al. 217.
- 78.
McClennen and Maisel 64.
- 79.
“The Word: Re-Run,” The Colbert Report Sept 12, 2007 http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/102593/september-12-2007/the-word---re-run (accessed Feb 24, 2014).
- 80.
See Chap. 1. The “smoking gun” that could become a “mushroom cloud” first made its appearance when Condoleezza Rice gave an interview with Wolf Blitzer, September 8, 2002. The transcript can be found here: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0209/08/le.00.html (accessed July 22, 2013).
- 81.
Hutcheon traces these critics and their differences in Irony’s Edge 29–30.
- 82.
Meredith 7.
- 83.
Hutcheon 52.
- 84.
Bush made these comments on April 18, 2006. See “Bush: ‘I’m the Decider on Rumsfeld,’” CNN 18 Apr 2006 http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/18/rumsfeld/ (accessed 12 Feb 2014).
- 85.
Baym From Cronkite 110.
- 86.
See “Rally to Restore Sanity Attendance Estimated in Hundreds of Thousands,” Huffington Post 31 Oct 2010 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/30/rally-to-restore-sanity-attendance_n_776547.html (accessed 14 Apr 2014).
- 87.
See Timothy Noah, “Stay Home! The Case Against the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” Slate 19 Oct 2010 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2010/10/stay_home.html (accessed 14 Apr 2014).
- 88.
See Matt Stopera, “The 100 Best Signs at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” Buzzfeed 30 Oct 2010 http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-100-best-signs-at-the-rally-to-restore-sanity (accessed 14 Apr 2014).
- 89.
Bill Maher, “Bill Maher on the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfHD36sWQBo (accessed Apr 14, 2014).
- 90.
Maher “Rally.”
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Mantoan, L. (2018). Ideologically Liberal and Formally Conservative: Satire, News, and Truthiness. In: War as Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94367-1_5
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