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Satirized for Your Consumption Author(s): Ben Schwartz Source: The Baffler, No. 27 (2015), pp. 144-156 Published by: {none} Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/43959027 Accessed: 09-03-2017 19:06 UTC

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This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ¿Models

Satirized for Your Consumption cAp Ben Schwartz

We live in an age of satirical excess. If econo- tors joined 's online community with mists were to diagnose it, they might well a stream call of ironic, self-referential . In it a bubble. We currently have six March, late- President Obama appeared on Be- night hosts, all nattily clad, life-of- tween Two Ferns , a faux public-access interview the-party, white-guy topical jokers- ,show hosted by a star of com- Kimmel, Fallon, James Corden, Seth edies,Mey- . Filled with funny, ers, and (come September) Colbert- to rude sum insults from both the president and his up, and send up, our day for us. We have paunchy four foil, Obama's guest spot brought the comedy -commentary shows- Maher, then-troubled Affordable Care Act rollout to , , and (for a thelittle attention of Galifianakis's young, millen- while longer) Stewart- and nialfrom audience, who signed up in large numbers. SNL's , , ClickHole At Christmas,, The Interview , a lowbrow and several lesser lights. Vines, viral Funny foreign-policy or comedy from , Die clips, podcasts, Twitter: each new Sethmedia Rogen, and , presented the platform generates stars of its own, ranging imagined assassination of a sitting foreign from seasoned to everyday leader,office North Korea's Kim Jong-un, as slap- - often, people who have no intention stick offare. But as its premiere approached, seeking careers as professional . the film It provoked a series of improbable, would be easy to sniff in condescending real-lifehigh- plot twists that steered it away from gatekeeper form and talk of the low signal-to- an Apatow buddy comedy and into a geopo- noise ratio of truly funny people to not, litical but owing more to the imagination of with 280 million active users on Twitter a alone,Terry Southern. First came a massive com- that still leaves a pretty big signal. puter hack on the movie's backer, Sony, which And as often happens with bubbles, evolved it into mysterious terroristic threats on burst. Last year, American took one our ofnation's theaters. The then the stranger turns in its long history of accusedmock- North Korea of the hack and threats, ing, ridiculing, and joking about our target-and the Obama instituted a new rich republic. We're used to comedians speak- round of sanctions on the rogue dictatorship. ing truth to power, to cruelly topical comedy In an end-of-the-year press conference, sketches and a steady diet of merciless politi-President Obama scoffed at North Korea for cal cartoons. But in 2014, comedy was overreactingstolen to something as absurd as The from the professional jokesters by their Interview-tradi- Kim Jong-un, he implied, couldn't tional targets and became, unexpectedly, take thea . But given the Obama Administra- new language of power, policy, and politics. tion's own history of comedy-policy, we might That's a bold claim, but consider a wellfew ask: Who did the president think he was representative instances. In June, just kidding? a few It's a serious question. After all, our months before the Senate Select Commit- own government leaders don't exactly laugh tee on Intelligence released its report out on loud when citizens kid about assassinat- CIA-coordinated torture, CIA administra- ing them; we live in a country where writing

144 30» 77* JJaffler [ no. 27}

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms RANDALL ENOS a farce about killing a U.S. president, Correspondents' or even Dinner while a U.S. Navy snickering about it online, could SEAL have team the invaded Pakistan to assassinate NSA hacking your computers, land Osamathe Secret bin Laden in his home. Kim Jong-un Service on your doorstep, and put youmay inhave fed- embarrassed Sony execs and punked eral prison. The Interview's release- but who's to say he If North Korea is guilty as charged didn't by get our the joke? FBI, the biggest punchline of all is that Kim Jong-un may not be so crazy for taking A Greater Ameri- Fool Theory ca's new brand of weapons-grade humor It's a commonso se- complaint that the abundance riously. These days, we have a smirking of porn onlineCIA, has sexualized our culture, or a healthcare overhaul that was sold via vaude- that mean-spirited Internet trolls have coars- ville sketch, a State Department that, as we ened our national conversation. A similar ar- shall see, vetted and approved The Interview, gument can be made about online comedy, and a president whose signature moment is which has humorized our lives. In the 1990s, the night he cracked jokes at a White House seemed cheeky when she pep-

The p^afHer [no. 2 ?] «¡14 5

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms eí^íODELS pered her Times pieces with pop-culture gibes. rized for your consumption." Forget stodgy Today, reading her column feels a lot like di- speeches that begin with trite one-liners to aling up with a modem- you can't believe you break the ice. As the traditional targets of sat- ever thought it was fast. News, politics, policy, ire seek to demonstrate their relevance to our and cultural debate now reach us couched in -wired lives, full-on comedic performance jokes. Professional, unfunny journalists fret has become their principal disarming strategy. that young people get more of their informa- Soon after President Obama appeared on Be- tion from than from tradi- tween Two Ferns , bandied talk tional sources, and the only time you heard of a 2016 run at the presidency- on Jon Stew- about NBC's Nightly News anchor Brian Wil- art's show, not on Meet the Press. And when a liams, before he became our first casualty ofrecent blizzard in fizzled out ear- imaginary RPGs, was when he appeared on jo lier than forecast, leaving little snow but many Rock or 's show to slow jam the transit closures, Mayor De Blasio charmed the news. Comedians have so fully mastered the city by reading aloud from the Onion' dysto- language of reporting that when serious peo- pian of his snowmongering. ple get taken in by absurdist Onion stories, no And then, of course, there's the CIA. one is surprised. "Not the Onion " has become When the agency opened its official Twitter inside-the-Beltway shorthand for any offbeat account, it did so with a wry quip about its development in daily politics that seems like own institutional inability to tell the truth: farce but isn't. "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is The comedy culture all around us is also, our first tweet." increasingly, the framework of public debate. Not unpredictably, spy watchdogs and in- Several of the most heated arguments about telligence monitors raised a hue and cry over feminism in recent years have comedy as their the agency's puckish foray into . starting points, first in the long list of never- The CIA, after all, relies on the cover of of- serious Are Women Funny ? think pieces, and ficial secrecy to torture and assassinate, to then in the online firestorm over comedians pay off unscrupulous leaders and bagmen, to telling rape jokes. Arguably, the phrase "rape choreograph coups d'états, and to prop up cli- culture" came to the attention of many people ent states abroad. There's nothing inherently by way of humor, thanks to celebrity come- funny about such activities. More important, dians like (who dislikes rape it was more than a little jarring to see the jokes, and argues that there is a rape culture) CIA lay claim to the language of satire. We and (who tells rape jokes, assume satire is for the truth teller, not the and thus proves there is one). Allegations that truth obscurer. When George Orwell created is a rapist went from impo- the -laden government-speak of Nineteen lite celebrity gossip to a loud national conver- Eighty-Four , his joke pivoted on one key dis- sation only after Hannibal Buress tinction: we as readers, and not the gray and brought them up in his standup routine. earnest administrators of Oceania, recognize When first adopted the tagline its bleak absurdity for what it is. But now the "satirized for your protection," it was an edgy CIA has shown, in our satirized era, that it, brag, not a humble one, meant to convey that too, is in on the joke. his show, , would not allow The strident detractors of the anonymous the news of the day to remain safely spun. smart aleck(s) behind the CIA account had Twenty years later, a better slogan for the hu- a point: when the official spokesmen of the mor of the Information Age would be "sati- national security state greet you with a smirk

146 TAejßaffler { no. 27]

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Satire can be seen as throwing down the gauntlet. That doesn't mean that the other side won't just pick it up and throw it back at you.

and a good one-liner, you'd probably better be micro-films, and serious Internet-backed fi- skeptical of their motives. Dark humor about nancing (e.g., , Amazon, and Yahoo) the CIA is nothing new. But humor from the had arrived, offering alternatives to movie CIA? To mug for us, à la James Bond wise- studios and networks. Comedians cracking as he tosses Generic Foreign- Accent like Louis C.K. and had be- Bond Villain #243 out of an airplane? That's gun to offer their own comedy specials on- something new. line, directly to their fan base, with no net- work or media executives acting as financial A Nation of Class or censoring middlemen. As the CIA proved last summer, it's quite easy To keep up, Chappelle launched his own to co-opt the potentially subversive language Twitter account, and quickly attracted more of satire. In the past, comedians, or their thanstaff 463,000 followers. But like so many ce- writers, appeared to have a rare gift for lebrities wit who sign onto Twitter, he found that and getting laughs; the funniest kid in thereclass was already someone pretending to be always stood out. Now, we are a nation of him,class a fake account, com- clowns. Social media gives us all a platform plete to with original jokes. The Fake Chappelle preach and vent, but also to crack wise hadon aracked up more than 120,000 followers. global stage. And these everyday wits are justThat's incredible for an account clearly la- as sharp and funny as the professionals, with beled as a counterfeit. some, such as Alison Agosti and Tim Seidell, It's easy enough to start a fake celebrity ac- hired off of Twitter to write for the likes count. of Twitter allows you to use any name you and Larry Wilmore. Wit is much like (say, Dave Chappelle), post any picture more than previously thought, as and your avatar (say, Dave Chappelle's), and go what determines a professional , about it pretending to be anyone you want (say, seems, isn't rare comic genius, but mainly Dave the Chappelle). Some do it as a fan's homage, willingness to move to New York or Los some An- do it to mock a hated celebrity and make geles and suffer the entertainment industry. obnoxious statements in his name, and some Take the case of Dave Chappelle, who hopehas to deceive the celebrity's followers, for recently returned to show business proper who af- knows what dishonest purpose. Chap- ter a long absence. Chappelle quit his some- pelle found his fake tweeter was something times brilliant sketch com-else, something quite unexpected. As he told edy show in 2005, after two seasons, and keptJimmy Fallon on , "It turned a comparatively low profile for years. In 2014out, Jimmy, the guy was like, hilarious. ... I was he returned for a stand-up comedy tour, like, be- this guy's funny . . . and then, like a week ginning at Radio City . or two into it, he just turns evil!" Nine years is a long time to be away, and Real Chappelle saw Fake Chappelle start- on Chappelle's return, he found the comedy ing Twitter feuds with an account associated world changed. Social media, podcasting, with , a comedian friend of the

T^ßaffler [no. 27] «ÇI47

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ¿tyfoDELS real Dave Chappelle. The Williams account Last season we started the series off with responded unpleasantly, which, Chappelle told this sketch about a [blind] black white Jimmy Fallon, "hurt the real Dave Chappelle's supremacist. Very controversial. Yes, very- it feelings." Only, as Chappelle learned later sparked this whole controversy about the when he ran into Katt Williams and braced appropriateness of the "N-word," the dreaded for an awkward meeting, it turns out that Katt "N-word." And you know- and then when Williams has no Twitter account. Fake Chap- I would travel, people would come up to pelle was feuding with a Fake Katt Williams. me- white people would come up to me, like, Such was the comedy world, circa 2014. You "Man, that sketch you did about them niggers could read it as just another instance of In- that was hila-" [Chappelle does a double ternet celebrity identity theft, or of an Inter- take in shock here.] "Take it easy! I was jok- net upstart forcing a celebrity into a moment ing around!" I started to realize that these of public embarrassment. But the discovery sketches, in the wrong hands, are dangerous. that Fake Chappelle is actually funny? Funny enough to attract 120,000 followers? That, Worse still, Chappelle's name came up in a too, is something new in the comedy bubble. lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore against Wells Fargo for its subprime mortgage loan Who's the Punchline? programs, which, the suit alleges, targeted This rapid-fire Twitter tutorial had to beAfrican par- . In a moment of wince- ticularly unsettling for Chappelle, who's inducing been irony, one employee's complaint de- struggling for some time to rescue his materi- scribed how a Wells Fargo loan officer quoted al from the clutches of bad-faith fans and Chappelle imi- while he pushed black families into tators. His realization that truly evil foreclosure:people were co-opting his humor was a key factor in Dave Zoldak, who succeeded Dave Margeson his decision to quit his show and put his career as my branch manager in 2005, used the word on hold. In much the same seamless-yet-dis- "nigger" at the office. Although Wells Fargo turbing way that the CIA adapted its official knew Mr. Zoldak used racial slurs, it promot- voice to mimic Twitter's wit and snark, some ed him to area manager after I complained of the people Chappelle attacked regularly- about his discriminatory comments. On Oc- racists- had taken to adopting his humor. In tober 21, 2005, 1 complained in my email to a 2006 CNN interview, Chappelle explained Mr. Zoldak directly about his use of the word that he once was filming a skit for his show in "nigger" and speaking about how African and noticed a white person nearby Americans lived in "hoods" and "slums." Mr. laughing uncontrollably. But, as he recalled, Zoldak replied that he had used the slurs in a it didn't seem that the onlooker was laugh- humorous way, just as the African-American ing with him. "The way he laughed, it made comedian Dave Chapelle did on television me feel like this guy's laughing for the wrong and thought that I would find the use of these reasons - It stirred up something in me that terms humorous. was like, I don't want to subject anyone else to." After his show became a hit, Chappelle It's hard to picture a more grim co-opting discovered that some of his white fans were of Chappelle's comedy at the height of his grievously misunderstanding- or more likely, show's popularity- the Wells Fargo incident intentionally distorting- his satirical intent. occurred in 2005, the same year Chappelle Early on in the second season of his show, he walked away. But the co-opting of satire, and offered this anecdote: specifically, the racist misapplication of comic

148 ç** The'Q affler [ no. 27}

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms RANDALL ENOS material, has long been a problem in Is Americanshining in deir eyes. humor. In 1832 the first minstrel star, And ifThomas de blacks should get free, D. Rice, of , went onstage I guess withdey'll see some bigger, black makeup on his face and took An the I shall name consider it, of a folk character, "Jim Crow." NoA bold modern stroke for de nigger. audience would tolerate his performance: I'm for freedom, the casually offered racial slurs, the An ugly for Union ste- altogether, reotyping, the racist imagery. But thereAlthough was Fm a ablack man, twist to Rice's humor. He interpolated De white anti-is call'd my broder. slavery lyrics into the music he appropriated from : In a barbaric era of American history, during which the very humanity of African Should dey get to fighting, Americans and Native Americans was dis- Perhaps de blacks will rise, puted, Rice was, in these early days, an am- For deir wish for freedon, biguous symbol of progressivism. "It's hard to

The J^affler {no. 27] *>§ IĄ <)

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ¿Models know who's speaking here, T. D. Rice administration, or Jim for one, has managed to fuse Crow," writes historian John Strausbaugh wiseguy wit in with policy like no other White his study of race comedy, Black Like House.Tou: Black- And Obama's recent comedy-show face, Whiteface, Insult , and Imitation appearances- in Ameri- including an entertaining visit can . "Maybe both. toThat's The Colbert the Report , to take over Colbert's importance of the blackface mask: "Word" Rice, segment-as a have helped demolish any White man, probably would not have hard-and-fast stood up distinctions between insiders before an audience of Five Points rowdies and and outsiders in the world of satire. openly advocated a violent revolt by ťde nig- With The Interview , state-sponsored satire ger.' But as Jim Crow he could. And the same went next level. Certainly, foreign Bowery boys who put on blackface themselves policy are nothing new. A partial to hurl brickbats at their Black neighbors (and quality-neutral) listing of significant en- cheered the idea of Blacks (in the South any- tries in the genre includes Douglas Fairbanks' way) rising up." His Majesty, The American (1919), Will Rogers' If Rice's ambiguous Jim Crow helped make Ambassador Bill (1931), The Four Marx Broth- minstrelsy a national fad, he could not stop ers' Duck Soup (1933), Wheeler and Woolsey's pro-slavery imitators from going onstage and Diplomaniacs (1933), The Three Stooges' Tou appropriating his own very much appropriat- Nazty Spy ! (1940), Chaplin's The Great Dictator ed act. They turned his plea for freedom into (1940), Kubrick and Southern's Dr : Strangelove a tool of oppression. And in a further convo- (1964), Woody Allen's Bananas (1971), Falk and lution, Rice's popularization of the Jim Crow Arkin's The In-Laws (1979), Ramis and Mur- character went on to supply the name for the ray's Stripes (1981), 's Ishtar (1987), post-Civil War South's century of terrorism Sandler's Tou Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008), against African Americans. and 's The Dictator (2012). As for Chappelle, one can only imagine Some of these movies drew political ire in what he must have thought upon learning that their day, but nothing close to The Interview's his humor about race was serving as an alibi of notoriety. Yes, isolationists called Chaplin a first resort for a Wells Fargo manager seeking warmonger in the highly charged days before to couch a business model of displacing Afri- World War II. But when Will Rogers praised can American families from their homes in the Mussolini by name in 1931's Ambassador Bill, it language of a Comedy Central sketch. Small was ignored- he was a cowboy comedian, after wonder Chappelle walked away to rethink his all, not a real ambassador. Duck Soup , produced career. Satire can be seen as throwing down the by Herman Mankiewicz, a serious satirist, is a gauntlet. That doesn't mean that the other side burlesque of World War I that posits that the won't just pick it up and throw it back at you. war was fought for bankers and millionaires (a In Chappelle's imitators, one can see evi- cynical bit of common wisdom in the Depres- dence of a larger trend in : sion). Mankiewicz later cowrote Citizen Kane , increasingly, the established culture seeks to in which he and Orson Welles argue that their inoculate itself from the complaints of the Hearstian title character started the Spanish- satirist by appropriating the satirist's voice. American War to sell newspapers. But unlike Comedians have always traded on the role of the controversial Citizen Kane , Duck Soup was the prototypical outsider- a role often cov- seen as light, silly fare. There's no record to eted by savvy politicians, who hope to dis- suggest that the Marx Brothers farce netted tance themselves from establishment Wash- so much as a single outraged letter from ag- ington in the minds of voters. The Obama grieved Wilsonians or veterans groups. Ku-

150 ^ TAe J^affler [ no. 27]

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Try and find thirteen minutes on the vagaries of net-neutrality policymaking on any "serious" network news broadcast.

brick and Southern tacked on a disclaimer once the DVD leaks into the North (which it from the military that the events depicted in almost certainly will). So from a personal per- Dr. Strangelove could never happen- but that spective, I would personally prefer to leave only makes the movie seem more subversive. the ending alone." The military never seriously tried to ban the And as reported, Bennett wasn't movie from commercial release. alone in this view. Yet The Interview was taken to be a true The leaks reveal that on the same day Ben- reflection of American foreign policy, both nett wrote his review, a top Sony official by our foreign policy professionals and (ac- emailed Bennett to say a U.S. government cording to the FBI) by North Korea's. Rogen, official supported Bennett's assessment. Franco, and Apatow- the marquee comic Sony CEO Michael Lynton wrote back, talent of the film- wound up sidelined as the "Bruce- Spoke to someone very senior in least interesting aspect of the whole debacle. State (confidentially) . . . He agreed with Consider The Interview from Kim Jong-un's everything you have been saying. Everything. point of view. He sees the ongoing conver- I will fill you in when we speak. gence of U.S. power and comedy, the CIA on Twitter, and Obama performing stand-up Yes, if you came from a dynasty as violent comedy after ordering the Bin Laden assas- and paranoid as Kim Jong-un's, where all sination. He can scarcely fail to notice that culture is state controlled, and if you had an comedy is now the means by which people adversary like our comedian president, you in the upper circles of U.S. power communi- might take The Interview seriously too. cate with the public. He duly notes that the Odd Comics Out movie's corporate coparents are based in Ja- pan and the USA- North Korea's two chief Rogen, Franco, Chappelle: in 2014, it's the historical enemies. Then, he learns, via Sony's comedians who lost ground in this comedy hacked emails, that CEO Michael Lynton bubble. Their work quickly moved out of their and other executives behind The Interview control and became something they never in- consulted with former and current State De- tended. We often hear talk of satire's devastat- partment officials, who vetted and encour- ing impact on its targets. But this age of humor- aged this regime-change comedy. As The ous excess has shown that satire, even when Daily Beast reported, a North Korean defense delivered in the sharpest and most unforgiving analyst for the RAND Corporation, Bruce forms, hardly makes a dent. The proliferation Bennett, heartily approved of the horribly of satirists has multiplied the amount of funny violent death of Kim Jong-un in the movie's material out there. But it has diminished the finale. Bennett wrote, "I believe that a story belief that satire, political or otherwise, can that talks about the removal of the Kim fam- serve any real purpose beyond amusing us. ily regime and the creation of a new govern- This, too, is a new consequence of the ment by the North Korean people (well, at comedy bubble. We once had all day to ab- least the elites) will start some real thinking sorb the news, and the political parries and in South Korea and, I believe, in the North counterparties arising from the news, before

The~Q affler{ no. 27]

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms GÍ^ÍODELS late-night comics went on to turn it all into but while they are always ready to mount jokes. By that time, TV satirists could pro- a charm offensive to influence the work of voke that cathartic (if clichéd) response from prime-time network journalists and Times op- their viewers: "Finally, somebody said it." To- ed columnists, they don't expend much energy day, by 11:30 p.m., when the late-night shows pushing back against late-night comics. go on, millions of us online have already said For one thing, the fallout from satirical at- it, sometimes hilariously. Now the late-night tacks is far more easily managed. Nixon found comedian's job is not to speak for us, but to this out during his 1968 appearance on Laugh- top us. Some shows have hired writers from In , arranged by the show's arch right-wing Twitter, and others crowd-source jokes online head writer and Nixon friend, Paul Keyes. By (@midnight) or feature "tweet of the week" then, Nixon's awkward public personality was segments {Ellen). old news to comedians and cartoonists. Since once had this field all to the appearance of being able to take a joke himself. As wrote of Car- greatly benefits a politician, Keyes took advan- son when he died in 2005: tage of Nixon's greatest television negative, his Tin Woodsman stiffness, by showing the ul- His credibility with the American public tra-square Nixon struggling mightily with the was such that his monologues were carefully show's then-hip punchline, "Sock it to me!" monitored by politicians mindful that no Nixon's halting efforts- "Sock it to me?"- are one who became a frequent target of Johnny still funny to see, nearly five decades later. Carson could long survive in public life. It The larger lesson here is that presidents didn't help Richard Nixon when Mr. Carson's don't fear comedians. They go on these shows monologue produced some of the funniest to take advantage of their big audiences, and Watergate jokes around. Nor did it help when get points in the process for being a good Mr. Carson trained his sights on former Sena- sport. The confrontations always end up cute. tor Gary Hart, a Democrat from Colorado "Nixon said . . . that appearing on Laugh-In is who found allure both in the presidency and what got him elected- and I believe that. And in women he didn't happen to be married to. I've had to live with that," the show's produc- Mr. Carson's jokes about Mr. Hart's extra- er, George Schlatter, has humble-bragged. marital activities were surely not the only Schlatter might rest a little easier at night reason his political fortunes evaporated in knowing that the cultural and political tide 1988, but they were repeated often enough to that brought Nixon back to power was far have played some part. bigger than Laugh-In- just as the New York "Survive in public life?" It's doubtful Car- Times obituary desk would do well to recall son had the impact the Times describes; the that far larger historical forces than a series creepy behavior and considerable hubris of of Carson monologues brought down Nixon's Messrs. Nixon and Hart were far more instru- presidency. mental in their undoing than any late-night Presidents score points for being good monologues lampooning their excesses. It sports, but no one pauses to ask, What about could also be said that the cautious Mr. Car- the comedians ? For the most part, these en- son rarely got out ahead of the public, prefer- counters between the ruling class and the fun- ring to wait until the Nixons and Harts were ny caste deflate the fiction that jesters speak already punchlines before speaking up. Presi- uncomfortable truth to power. After the cer- dents and their communications offices moni- emonial presidential visit to a comedy set, a tor every major show that comments on them, once "devastating" satirist is then revealed to

I52 5®* TheJ^ affler [ no. 27]

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms us as merely a professional entertainer. These him. "We know that polls are just a collection visits are now an accepted part of our electoral of statistics that reflect what people are think- vetting process; every four years, every serious ing in reality. And reality has a well-known party nominee stops in to chat with the late- liberal bias." night talk show hosts who mock them. Whether the unnerved audience in the As the politicians show us that they can room laughed or sat aghast as Colbert built take a joke, they also reveal that the whole momentum has been a subject of some debate, thing is only a joke. We often describe our great but either way, it was a great moment of awk- political satirists as "devastating" or "eviscer- wardly pointed satire. Colbert's performance ating" their targets, and call them "brave" for made people uncomfortable because he was speaking out. But more often than not, our saying all this directly to Bush's face- what comedians are ignored by the nation's rich more dramatic instance could there be of a co- and powerful, who may dislike them, but who median speaking truth to power? never really suffer much for what they say. Has But then . . . what? After all, Colbert wasn't there ever been a time when our newspapers at the dinner to topple the administration. He and media haven't been full of sharp political was there to entertain it. Bush watched him, cartoons or gibes? A time without a Frank- chuckled politely, and, somehow resisting the lin, a Washington Irving, a Twain, a Nash, a devastating power of Colbert's monologue, Mr. Dooley, a Mencken, a Mort Sahl, a Garry managed not to resign on the spot. As for Col- Trudeau, ajon Stewart? insists bert, he returned to work, unharmed, by all on answering seemingly each and every insult accounts, by the NSA. hurled at him by nearly anyone on Twitter, but Fans of tend to think that if his is the behavior of an egomaniac who feels only someone dares speak out, something will personally threatened by public ridicule- and change, the powerful will flip out, and, faced is one reason (on a very long list) why Trump with a hilarious and unanswerable exposure will never be president. of their misdeeds, the pols will reverse policy. In some high-profile exceptions, American One need only consult Bush's own perfor- satirists have suffered for their art, if never mance at the 2004 Radio and Television Cor- anything like the Charlie Hedbo crew. Lenny respondents' Dinner to disprove that notion. Bruce got sent to jail and died broke, drug In that monologue, the president turned the addicted, and unable to work. The Smoth- truly scandalous nonexistence of WMDs in ers Brothers lost their CBS show, and after Saddam Hussein's into comedy. Present- 9/11 Bill Maher lost a network- a blessing in ing a jokey White House photo album, Bush disguise, since moving to HBO gave him the showed a picture of himself haplessly search- freedom he needed. ing under his Oval Office desk. "Those weap- What impact does even the boldest satire ons of mass destruction have got to be here have on the powerful? A high-water mark of somewhere," he narrated. If Colbert's shtick contemporary satire is generally acknowl- represented a new level in speaking satirical edged to be 's 2006 perfor- truth to power, so did Bush's performance mance at the White House Correspondents' of co-opting that same satirical mission- by Dinner. There, with President Bush in the au- admitting he was not only wrong about Iraqi dience, Colbert delivered a masterfully ironic WMDs, but utterly incompetent for ever be- faux-conservative tirade in his sublimely lieving they existed. boorish O'Reilly persona, advising the presi- That Colbert said what needed to be said, dent to ignore 's clear disapproval of and Bush admitted what needed to be admit-

J^affler [no. 27} «0$

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ¿tyfoDELS

The White House Show ted, did nothing to derail the next four disas- trous years of the official U.S. occupation of Starring Iraq. Instead, the expectant moments merely This key limitation of political satire is one dissipated, as intended, into memorable en- reason President Obama could safely appear tertainment. Colbert made that point with on Between Two Ferns , an often hilarious paro- unmistakable clarity in 2014 during the dy of community cable-access shows. We have farewell edition of . For always appreciated quip-ready presidents like his final show, he filled his soundstage with Kennedy and Reagan, but selling policy in celebrities and political figures, including insult-comedy sketches- well, this too was , Katrina vanden Heuvel, Toby something else. Sitting face to face with Presi- Keith, and . As a group they dent Obama, Zach Galifianakis, playing his sang "We'll Meet Again," the World War part as the vacuous stoner host of the show, II-era song used to ironic effect in the clos- asks him, "What is it like to be the last black ing credits of Dr. Strangelove as the film's president?" It's a funny, pessimistic joke about superpowers enter a nuclear holocaust. But American and its current miserable the spectacle lacked anything like Kubrick state, one that cruelly deflates the loose pun- and Southern's bite. By appearing on stage dit talk of a new "post-racial" America. with icons of the far right and left, Colbert When Galifianakis asks what Obama let his audience know that he never really would think of a third term, Obama replies, meant it. His mugging faux-O'Reilly persona "It would sort of be like making a third Hang- turned out to be shtick wrapped inside more over movie. It didn't work out too well, did shtick. The star-studded ensemble also made it?" Throughout the interview, Obama and it quite clear that CBS hasn't hired a lefty Galifianakis loft rude and funny jokes at each demagogue, as right-wing detractors had other. From Galifianakis's side, he gets some loudly insisted when the news broke that the distinctly biting and mean laughs, which helps Comedy Central host was ascending to the to burst the dignity bubble that envelops the Letterman chair. In the new Colbert era, Dr. American presidency. As with the 2006 en- Kissinger, a cold warrior only one small step counter between Colbert and Bush, the ex- removed from Peter Sellers's Strangelove, change at first triggers shock: Is this mum- will occupy the same celebrity cultural real bling schlub really saying that to the president? estate as George Lucas. But once Obama proves he can take it, and hits In other words, it was always just a joke. back hard, he comes across as cool enough to Eight years after publicly eviscerating Presi- pitch the ACA to Galifianakis's hip, twenty- dent Bush and calling out the biggest for- something fans, a demographic that had thus eign-policy blunder in a generation, Colbert far failed to register for coverage under the law backed away from any truly subversive satiri- in significant numbers. cal intent. And President Bush? He was in the The performance was rightly hailed as a news late last year, too, to unapologetically masterful Oval Office manipulation of youth reaffirm his support for perhaps the ugliest culture. Thanks in part to Between Two Ferns , aspect of his administration- his torture the ACA was satirized for our consumption, policy. He even refused the usual presidential and millions reportedly consumed. In seeking luxury of deniability and enthusiastically re- out Galifianakis and his cult show, the White endorsed the policy and those who executed House grasped something essential about the it. In 2014 it was Colbert who was distancing conduct of political satire in our day: it feeds himself from his legacy, not Bush. on the audience's expectation that real conse-

154 ?o»T^ßaffler{ no. 27]

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Dark humor about the CIA is nothing new. But humor from the CIA? That's something new.

quences might result from encounters between ic than a network news anchor will the same comedy and power. And like other such fever- night. Try and find thirteen minutes on the ishly hyped dustups, this one drew a crowd- vagaries of net-neutrality policymaking on and ensured that, in the end, the jokes only any "serious" network news broadcast. helped to shore up two high-profile careers. To close his longform piece, Oliver called Still, even as presidents mug their way into on the Internet's legion of utterly horrible, the view of young constituencies, and even as culture-coarsening, snarky trolls and anony- Mayor De Blasio twists the Onion to his will, mous commenters to use their venom for some satirists are punching out of today's good y just this once , and contact the FCC. If comedy bubble, or trying to. In 2014, John Dave Chappelle went into semi-retirement Oliver emerged as one of the few comedians over such people, and if Rogen, Franco, and who maintained his edge while influencing, or Apatow never saw the new policy-comedy as- at least distracting, real-world policymaking. pect of the modern era coming at them, Oliver His net neutrality episode, in particular, re- understands this new comedy world perfectly. vealed that even in today's satire glut, a come- His fans reportedly overloaded the FCC site, dian can inspire an audience to take civic ac- which crashed. It's one of the few instances, tion. Net neutrality, which the FCC is on the it's worth noting, in which political satire has verge of retiring in favor of a dual-tier model had a demonstrable, government-stopping ef- that reserves speedier net access for those who fect. Whipping up Internet rage mobs is easy can pay for the privilege, is not a new issue. (any mention of Gaza, gun control, or Woody And unfortunately, it's a boring, complicated Allen will do the trick). What's hard is helping subject- Kryptonite to the usual comedy de- millions of people understand a critical policy livery systems. But in June, Oliver devoted issue that they perhaps hadn't reckoned with thirteen solid minutes of his show- about half before. Oliver's plea actually took. of it- to net neutrality, advancing a hilariously To say that Oliver's stunt tipped Obama's compelling argument in its favor and turning hand in favor of net neutrality is a bit much. his jokes into a cogent explanation of what is But the Internet-sawy White House, which at stake. Before he could ridicule the FCC's finally came out in favor of neutrality after policy, he had to unpack its missteps in detail. the 2014 midterms, had to have taken notice. Informing the audience, skewering illogic, Oliver's detour into comedy-advocacy showed and building it all into a truly devastating fi- that fans of a satirist can, at least every once in nale the way Oliver did: that's more than just a while, make a very loud agitprop noise, one throwaway jokes on Twitter. After the initial that puts the policymakers on the defense for HBO broadcast of the segment, it went on to the short term and that informs the public for net 7.7 million views on YouTube. the long term. When media watchdogs fret over young Can satire hope to achieve much more than people getting their news from comedy this in today's comedy-Costco world? Most shows like Oliver's and The Daily Show , they of the time, it's enough for us to feel that our forget to mention that these comedians of- cultural, political, or otherwise ideologically ten spend three times more airtime on a top- backward foes have been verbally drubbed

TAe J^affler [no. 27] *55

This content downloaded from 67.115.155.19 on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:06:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ¿^TOBELS before we turn in for the night. How else to tothe man himself. Unlike Bush at the time explain Twitter's legions of quipsters? They're of the Colbert encounter, MacMillan had not certainly not getting paid for their work. Seth yet, until Peter Cook arrived, been seen as a Meyers coined a word for such cathartic joke.mo- After watching Cook's show, a young Eric ments, clapter-i.z ., that rather hollow Idle,and then nineteen, was thunderstruck. "They perfunctory moment when a partisan audi- attacked everything that I had just spent nine- ence is loudly applauding and cheering a teenpo- years being oppressed by," he recalled. litical joke for merely hitting its target, more Royalty, police, authority, teachers, every than actually laughing. Our late-night talk single authority figure was completely pillo- shows give us that much in truckloads: snark ried and destroyed and my life just changed. about Bush's excessive vacation days, say, or . . . The government had been in power thir- imitations of Obama's condescending profes- teen years. And the slogan was "You've Never sorial rhetorical style. Had It So Good." And so when Peter Cook When satire has its greatest impact, it al- did Harold MacMillan on-stage it completely ters our perceptions, or gives us a language to made them a figure of fun and redundant ... it answer and describe what we see going wrong. was no longer possible to take them seriously. In 1964, Britain was in its own satire boom and And I think that satire can, occasionally, do had its own Colbert-Bush moment. Comedian things like that. Peter Cook starred in the Beyond the Fringe , which featured his impression of then Beyond the Fringe's impact on British humor, prime minister Harold MacMillan. Imitat- from that legendary revue on, is incalculable, ing anyone as dull as a PM was a novel idea in from the Pythons up through John Oliver. swinging, early 1960s London, so much so that Fifty-odd years after Idle witnessed Cook's MacMillan himself came in to see Cook do it. MacMillan, in the heart of our own comedy- Cook rose to the occasion, departing from the saturated age, came to a similar script to speak to MacMillan as MacMillan- conclusion about satire while promoting his new (quite serious) drama, Rosewater. When NPR's asked if he considered sat- ire to be a weapon, Stewart replied, "Satire, or what we do on the show, certainly has its limi- tations, but I think we try to utilize it to the best of our ability. ... I don't see it as a weapon as much as I see it as a conversation . . . against

dogma ways a weapon against complacency." In the right moment, in the right place, sat- ire can still alter perception and change the conversation. The difference today is that pol- iticians and policy apparatchiks now under- stand this as well as the comedians. Whether satire is "devastating" or not, whether the pow- erful can survive it or not, perhaps isn't the point. There's no joke or movie that can topple a president. Or maybe there is, and that's why P.S. MUELLER the CIA went on Twitter- to find it. M

156 W* Thejļ affler {no. 27}

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