Composition Professor Cooney 05

Geoff Geissinger

English 4: Composition

Professor Cooney

05 December 2017

Saving Private Satire

In 2014, renowned satirist Stephen Colbert fell under heavy fire for one of his bits on his satirical news show The Colbert Report. In the segment, Colbert began to mock Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder who had recently founded The Washington Redskins Original

Americans Foundation:

Folks, this move by Dan Snyder inspires me, because my show has frequently

come under attack for having a so-called offensive mascot, my beloved character Ching

Chong Ding Dong. …

Offensive or not — NOT — Ching Chong is part of the unique heritage of the

Colbert Nation that cannot change. But I’m willing to show the Asian community that I

care by introducing the Ching Chong Ding Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals

or Whatever. ... I owe all this sensitivity to Redskins owner Dan Snyder. So Asians, send

your thank-you letters to him, not me. (Majeed).

The show segment was followed up with a tweet: “I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or

Whatever” (Majeed). A social media firestorm quickly began to brew as thousands of people began to lash out against Colbert on Twitter, labeling him as a racist that actively devalues the lives of people of Asian heritage. Quickly, the most trending hashtag on Twitter became #CancelColbert. The #CancelColbert firestorm marked the climax of a much bigger problem than Colbert’s supposed racism: society’s, particularly millennials’, inability to digest satire.

Satire, defined by The Oxford Dictionary as “the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues” (Satire), has been a crucial part of American culture since the nation’s inception. According to researchers at Penn State University, “‘The Founders didn't just enjoy humor -- they believed it was politically important...And so they employed the pen and the sword, using satirical works as 'weapons in a literary and ideological war to decide the future of the new Republic”'" (Swayne). Beloved American figure Benjamin

Franklin was a renowned satirist, and “satirical cartoons -- especially ones that painted King George as a buffoon -- flourished in America before and during the Revolutionary War”

(Swayne). Deeply ingrained into American society, satire remains integral to American culture as some of the most popular media platforms are satirical news outlets: The Onion, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show. Yet even with the history of satire in this nation, social media firestorms like Stephen Colbert’s are all too common, as Bo Burnham said in an interview with

CBS News, “I’ve had jokes that I’ve thought were taken as the very thing they were satirizing.

You know, like were seen as racist when they were meant to be the exact opposite of that.”

The woman behind the #CancelColbert firestorm, a hashtag activist named Suey Park, tweeted this after seeing the @ColbertReport tweet, “‘The Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals has decided to call for #CancelColbert. Trend it’” (Kang). Thousands of her social media followers began to denounce and attack Colbert on Twitter. Park, who later claimed she did not want the show to be canceled, said this about her motives in an interview, “‘Well-intentioned racial humor doesn’t actually do anything to end racism or the Redskins mascot...That sort of racial humor just makes people who hide under the title of progressivism more comfortable’” (Kang). And to be fair, there is some truth to Park’s statement.

Stormfront.org, a popular white nationalist forum, has threads dedicated to Chris Rock’s bit

N*****s vs Blacks. As one member posted on the site, “‘It is just about good enough to be used by us...It’s a lot more pc to be able to quote a racist black man than it is to quote a white man’”

(Cohen). For people that don’t understand or ignore the irony of a satiric piece, it can serve to validate someone’s vile and repulsive views. White nationalists who can’t understand or ignore the irony of Rock’s bit can use it to validate their views, but by doing so, they make a fool out of themselves to the rest of society. In 2015, embattled former FIFA executive Jack Warner attempted to address the corruption charges against him by citing and holding up an Onion article in his defense (Mackey). Warner’s decision to corroborate his statements with an Onion article completely disabused his own argument and made him look like a buffoon. In this sense, although Park’s sentiments are understandable, they represent no real reason to abandon the use of satire, especially since satire has been used to push forward the struggles of minorities and other subjugated groups into the public eye.

Minorities have long used satiric comedy as a way to force society to notice and address its warts. According to Stephen Rosenfield, founder and director of the American Comedy

Institute,

“There’s a pattern in stand-up comedy”...It starts with certain groups or minorities

– immigrants, blacks, women, old people, Jews, Muslims, gays, Arabs, Asians – being

the target of stereotypical jokes. In response, people from the target group will start doing stand-up comedy themselves. When the audience sees one of these new comedians on

stage, talking about themselves with a sense of humor, they begin to recognize how

dimensional the stereotyped group is. “If they know how to make us laugh, there’s a

connection, a cultural cross-over. The original stereotype will start breaking down,

making it harder to perpetuate.” (Cohen).

The list of comedians that followed this pattern is nearly endless: Bert Williams, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Tyler Perry, Kevin Hart, Kumail Nanjiani,

Aziz Ansari, and Gabriel Iglesias. Even popular white comedians make fun of the stereotypes of their heritage; Larry the Cable Guy and Jeff Foxworthy both exemplify the classic redneck on-stage to get laughs. By mocking themselves, these comedians take the power out of the hands of those who would negatively perpetuate the stereotypes and turn the stereotypes into a source of laughter and joy. But even more than that, they force society to examine itself. Richard Pryor is known for just that. While many of his black predecessors pandered to white audiences, “he forced white audiences to follow him into his own experience. Pryor didn’t manipulate his audiences’ white guilt or their black moral outrage. If he played the race card, it was only to show how funny he looked when he tried to shuffle the deck...he made blackness an acknowledged part of the American atmosphere” (Als). He scrutinized society’s treatment of black street people and interracial couples; he forced black pride to become a part of the

American artistic atmosphere (Als). Because Pryor did all of this, he goes down in comedic history as one of the most beloved Satirists of his time. Yet someone with Pryor’s satiric talent would likely be ostracized in today’s climate. It begs the question “how did we get to the point where good satire is labeled as offensive and insulting?” In his 2016 comedy special Make Happy, Bo Burnham talks directly to the audience about the climate he grew up in: “I was born in 1990, and I was sort of raised in America when it was a cult of self-expression. And I was just taught, you know, express myself and have things to say, and everyone will care about them. And I think everyone was taught that, and most of us found out no one gives a shit what we think” (“Make”). Burnham grew up during the beginnings of political correctness’s resurgence into American culture. Everywhere from the workplace to

Starbucks’ cups, political correctness has become more and more ingrained into American society. Schools have become beacons of political correctness. As Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt write,

The current movement is largely about emotional well-being...it presumes an

extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of

protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn

campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that

make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish

anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse

vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.

(Lukianoff).

Students from around the U.S. are being told from a young age that anything that makes them uncomfortable should be outlawed. No matter its context, any word, gesture, picture or song that makes someone feel uncomfortable should be forbidden on the spot. In that sense, millennials have been indoctrinated to despise anything that pushes the boundaries of the bubble they grew up in. And since satire’s goal is to push social boundaries, young people have been trained to start social media firestorms like #CancelColbert. Popular comedians have noticed this as Jerry

Seinfeld and Chris Rock have decided to no longer perform at colleges because “‘you can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive’” (Flanagan). Lesser known comics from around the U.S. have begun to pasteurize and censor their material in order to find work on college tours

(Flanagan). And Comedians aren’t the only ones under fire as a Syracuse student was charged with harassment in 2010 for his work in a satirical blog on-campus. A blog that had a disclaimer on its front page that stated, “SUCOLitis is a satirical publication and not a news blog. No actual news stories appear on the site. The views and opinions purportedly expressed should not be attributed to any persons, living or dead, including those with whom they share names and other descriptive details” (Bonilla). Even though the writers of the blog created a clear disclaimer and did not violate the First Amendment, targets of their satire found a way to have some of the students wrongly investigated for harassment. These grim examples paint a foreboding picture of the future of satire in this country unless something is done.

Satire has been a crucial part of American culture since the nation’s founding, yet it is under heavy fire from a generation that has been spoiled and given everything. In turn, this is a generation of people who wish to wear horse blinders that block out any opinion, idea, or belief that is different to their own. The coddling of this generation has had some very adverse side-effects: with satire being so easily discarded as offensive, social change is greatly inhibited.

The Richard Pryors of this generation haven’t been able to spark the change that he was able to spark. Satirists like Stephen Colbert and Bo Burnham that aim to educate and entertain their audience are struggling to find the footholds in the American entertainment landscape. Their messages gain the scorn of millions who struggle to understand and digest their satire. Until there are sweeping changes in the way that society teaches people to think and interact with ideas that aren’t similar to their own, schools, workplaces, and homes will continue to raise young people that will remain coddled and inclined to only respect their own points of view. Maybe the time has come for some satire on society’s treatment of satire.

Works Cited

Als, Hilton. “A Pryor Love.” The New Yorker, Condé Nast, 22 Oct. 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/09/13/a-pryor-love.

Bonilla, Peter. “Syracuse University Law Student Charged with Harassment for Satirical

Website.” FIRE, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 28 Aug. 2013, www.thefire.org/syracuse-university-law-student-charged-with-harassment-for-satiric

al-website/.

CBS News. “Bo Burnham on Political Correctness in Comedy.” YouTube, uploaded CBS News, 17 Sept. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=D52TF1OtgSE.

Cohen, Roger, and Ryan Richards. “When the Truth Hurts, Tell a Joke: Why America

Needs Its Comedians.” Humanity In Action, Humanity In Action Inc., 2006, www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/174-when-the-truth-hurts-tell-a-joke-why

-america-needs-its-comedians.

Flanagan, Caitlin. “That's Not Funny!” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 7 Aug. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/thats-not-funny/399335/.

Kang, Jay Caspian. “The Campaign to ‘Cancel’ Colbert.” The New Yorker, Condé Nast, 18 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-campaign-to-cancel-colbert.

Lukianoff, Greg, and Jonathan Haidt. “The Coddling of the American Mind.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 31 July 2017,

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/

399356/. Mackey, Robert. “Ex-FIFA Official Cites Satirical Article From The Onion in His

Self-Defense.” The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 31 May 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/world/americas/ex-fifa-official-jack-warner-cites-onio

n-article-in-defense.html.

Majeed, Azhar. “Stephen Colbert's Joke, the Limitations of Twitter, and Society's Inability

to Understand Satire.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 28 Mar. 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com/azhar-majeed/cancel-colbert-satire_b_5051810.html.

“Make Happy.” Performance by Bo Burnham, Make Happy, Netflix, Inc., 3 June 2016, www.netflix.com/title/80106124.

“Satire | Definition of Satire in English by Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries | English, Oxford Dictionaries, 2017, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/satire. Swayne, Matt. “Satire Informs during Times of Crisis.” Penn State University, The Pennsylvania State University, 27 Jan. 2015,

news.psu.edu/story/342284/2015/01/27/research/satire-has-history-informing-during-

times-crisis.

Bibliography