Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Redefine Political Satire

4 The Dynamic Duo: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Redefine Political Satire id you ever go to a taping of The Colbert Report? Well, if you had, you would Dhave heard that as an audience member you had a job to do. Many of us who joined the audience over the last years heard that it was our job to cheer Colbert to an Emmy victory. Why? Because The Colbert Report was tired of all of the Emmys going to The Daily Show. The Emmy, which is the television equivalent of an Academy Award, has a number of categories for awards, and programs like The Colbert Report and The Daily Show compete in the category of “Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Series.” From 2003–12 The Daily Show won the Emmy in this category, beating out The Colbert Report, which was nominated from 2006–12. Thus Colbert began a rivalry between the shows as he plugged for The Colbert Report to win the coveted award. Each year that The Daily Show won, Colbert would bemoan Stewart’s success on the Report. But that would all end in 2013 when Colbert turned the tide and his show won two Emmys for “Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Series” and “Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Program,” thereby ending the ten-year winning streak of The Daily Show—the longest winning streak of any program in the award’s history. In typical in-character egotistical fashion, the on-air Colbert boasted about his award. In fact, he began his bit by saying that he had no idea what came over him at the awards ceremony when he thanked his staff—since, of course, he was the only person responsible for the show. He then phoned Stewart to rub in his victory, actually using his award statues to dial the phone. But Stewart wasn’t going to let Colbert call all the shots and he surprised Colbert by answering the phone while popping out in a surprise visit to the show. He then refused to humor Colbert by acting upset, congratulating him instead on an award well deserved. As the two dueled over whether Stewart would demonstrate sadness over Colbert’s win, thereby satisfying Colbert’s desire to see Stewart jealous, Stewart offered the ultimate twist: he is executive producer of Colbert’s show, so, in essence, the award is really his anyway and he has just won for the eleventh time (see Figure 4.1). S. A. McClennen et al., Is Satire Saving Our Nation? © Sophia A. McClennen and Remy M. Maisel 2014 80 IS SATIRE SAVING OUR NATION? Figure 4.1 Stewart celebrates Colbert’s win by pointing out that as Executive Producer he really gets the credit1 All silliness aside, and there has been lots of silliness between these two shows, the story of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report is central to understanding the ways that satire has radically changed our nation’s politics. One telling factoid is that these shows have not only been nominated for and won in the category of “Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Program” for Emmys; they have also been nominated for and won Peabody Awards. Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations, and individuals. Reflecting excellence in quality rather than popularity or commercial success, they are awarded to about 25–35 winners out of a pool of about 1,000 nominees. The Daily Show has won for election coverage twice, in 2000 and 2004. The citation for the 2004 award reads: “Through the momentous weeks of the 2004 Presidential Campaigns, Jon Stewart and cohorts provided the kind of cathartic satire that deflates pomposity on an equal opportunity basis. Somehow this sharp commen- tary made the real issues more important than ever.”2 The Colbert Report also won twice: In 2007 for its excellence in news and entertainment and in 2011 for its Super PAC related coverage. The 2007 citation reads: “What started as a parody of punditry is now its own political platform. Whether serving as a campaign site or ‘merely’ mocking television itself, the result is a program that inspires viewers to laugh, think, and sabotage Wikipedia. Colbert elicits fear from members of Congress, expands our vocabulary, and skewers personality-driven journalism— all while maintaining his composure as an egotistical, but lovable, uber-patriot.”3 As these citations show, both programs have gone well beyond traditional comedy and entertainment; they signal a new era of political satire that is highly entertaining and also highly significant in shaping the way that the public thinks about major new stories. As testament to the degree to which this form of JON STEWART AND STEpHEN COlBERT REDEFINE POlITICAl SATIRE 81 entertainment is performing a public service, Jeffrey Jones, author of Entertaining Politics and a scholar whose work has influenced many of the arguments in this book, became the director of the Peabody Awards in 2013. While the awards are for “excellence” and go to the “best of the best,” meaning that entertainment is not ruled out as a category of evaluation, historically the awards have gone to serious programming that has brought important information to the public; overall, they are considered to be the “most prestigious and selective awards in electronic media.”4 The fact that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have won these awards shows how seriously satire is being taken these days. Spanning Emmy Awards and Peabodys, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report highlight the bizarre world where the most entertaining satirical news can be the most informative, and where programs on Comedy Central do more to inform the citizenry than programs on all-news stations. As we’ve explained thus far, today’s satire emerges at a unique moment in US history where a variety of factors have all converged to challenge the way that the public gets information central to making informed decisions. That said, though, it would be fair to say that it was the com- bined punch of satire’s dynamic duo—Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert—that took the possibilities for satire to a whole new level. As the many other satirical examples we cover in this book show, these two comedians are not alone: there is more public satire today than ever and it is created by both citizen-satirists and professionals. Nevertheless, as this chapter will show, Stewart and Colbert played a specific role in advancing public discourse and democratic possibility through their own unique versions of political satire. This chapter focuses on the dynamic duo of contemporary political satire and shows how their distinctive version of political advocacy and comedy opened the door to an especially potent form of US satire—one which has become a model in other parts of the world. After giving background on the two shows and the comedians behind them, we then discuss the role they have played as media makers, especially vis-à-vis the mainstream news media. We then discuss a paradigmatic Stewart-Colbert collaboration—the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear that took place on the National Mall in 2010. Next we describe differences between the two shows in an effort to highlight their satirical synergy. While The Colbert Report ends in 2014 and The Daily Show will go on without its counterpart, there can be little doubt that the intersection of these two shows played a major role in advancing political satire. A Tale of Two Satire Shows The Daily Show first aired in 1996 with host Craig Kilborn. In those early years the show was shaped as a mockery of entertainment news and early segments included “This Day in Hasselhoff History.” Kilborn’s version of the program was much less politically focused than Stewart’s and it created lots of segments that were aimed at making US citizens look uninformed and stupid. Jeff MacGregor, a reviewer from The New York Times, called the show a “not-quite parody of a not-quite newscast” and criticized it for being cruel and for lacking a central editorial vision or ideology. He described it as “bereft of an ideological or artistic center . precocious but empty.”5 That lack of focus would all change when Stewart took over the show in 1999. 82 IS SATIRE SAVING OUR NATION? Before taking over The Daily Show Stewart had hosted Short Attention Span Theater on Comedy Central and two shows on MTV. His career began with stand- up comedy—a skill he continues to use on his show today. Many of the staff under Kilborn remained with Stewart, including Colbert who had joined the show in 1997 as one of four on-location reporters. Colbert was able to observe firsthand how the show changed when Stewart took over as host. In an interview after Stewart had assumed the host position, Colbert explained the difference between the two hosts: “The field pieces we did were character-driven pieces—like, you know, guys who believe in Bigfoot. Whereas now, everything is issue- and news- driven pieces, and a lot of editorializing at the desk. And a lot of use of the green screen to put us in false locations. We’re more of a news show; we were more of a magazine show then.”6 Colbert noted that one of the most significant shifts was that Stewart wanted to intersect with current headlines: “The first thing I noticed, was that our field pieces were coming out of the news, and not in sort of opposition to them.”7 The show shifted to a more biting and politically motivated form of satire while continuing to work on excellent writing that could pop the entertainment value of the program.

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