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Cynic Comedy in the “Rally for Sanity And/Or Fear”

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Cynic Comedy in the “Rally for Sanity And/Or Fear” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, Vol. 1, No.1, 2011, pp. 10-21. Interrupting the Machine: Cynic Comedy in the “Rally for Sanity and/or Fear” Ronald A. Placone Michael Tumolo Political communication in the United States leaves a great deal to be desired in terms of compromise, ra- tionality, and humility. Rather than lessening the difficulties, the era of 24-hour news makes matters worse by offering punditry in place of commentary while highlighting the issues that divide us rather than those that bring us together. Tensions came to a boiling point during the 2010 mid-term elections, which in- cluded overt racist and public violence. In this context, Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert created a satirical public rally, the “Rally for Sanity and/or Fear,” to draw attention to and provoke a meaningful response to the increasingly troubling political arena. To explain how the Stewart/Colbert rally functions as a form of social critique, we draw on the work of the ancient Cynic philosophers and on rhe- torical theorist Kenneth Burke’s approach towards comedy. Keywords: Comedy, Satire, Cynics, Diogenes, Kenneth Burke, Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, Daily Show Contemporary U.S. political discourse is rich in anger, deliberate misunderstanding, and extreme partisanship. Insincerity and incivility is packaged and sold to citizens as if it were news or politics. There are, however, powerful voices working to change the land- scape of U.S. political communication. In this essay we touch on two such voices— comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The political and rhetorical work of their television programs on Comedy Central is well documented.1 Here, we center in on a contemporary political event in its political context, the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear, to Ronald A. Placone is a graduate student in the department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University. He can be reached for comment on this essay at [email protected]. Michael Tumolo (Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University) is Assistant Professor of Communication at Duquesne University. He can be reached for comment on this essay at [email protected] or by phone at 412-396-5078. 1 Recent scholarly approaches to these political satires include: Chad Painter and Louis Hodges, “Mocking the News: How The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Holds Traditional Broadcast News Accounta- ble,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 25 (2010): 257-274; Xiaoxia Cao, “Hearing it From Jon Stewart: The Impact of the Daily Show on Public Attentiveness to Politics,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 22 (2010): 26-46; R. Lance Holbert and Nick Geidner, “The 2008 Election: Highlighting the Need to Explore Additional Communication Subfields to Advance Political Communica- tion.” Communication Studies 60 (2009): 344-358; Jonathan S. Morris, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Audience Attitude Change During the 2004 Party Conventions,” Political Behavior 31 (2009): 79-102; Lauren Feldman and Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, “Late-Night Comedy as a Gateway to Traditional News: An Analysis of Time Trends in News Attention Among Late-Night Comedy Viewers During the 2004 Presidential Primaries,” Political Communication 25 (2008): 401-422; Young Mie Kim and John Vi- shak, “Just Laugh! You Don't Need to Remember: The Effects of Entertainment Media on Political Infor- mation Acquisition and Information Processing in Political Judgment,” Journal of Communication 58 (2008): 338-360. ISSN 2161-539X (online) © 2011 Alabama Communication Association Interrupting the Machine 11 explain the powerful cultural and political work that comedy may accomplish. We enter into this discussion by explaining rhetorical dimensions of the ancient Cynic philoso- phers‟ comic interruptions. Their thought and practices offer a useful explanatory lens for understanding and appreciating the political work enacted by Stewart and Colbert‟s event. We conclude the essay by reflecting on how Kenneth Burke‟s approach to come- dy, satire, and the comic corrective can combine with an understanding of Cynic philoso- phy to explain the rhetoric of the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear. Cynics’ Comic Interruptions: Spectacle as Social Protest We readily recognize the concept of “democracy” as a gift handed down from the ancient Greeks. They proceeded, as have we, with great difficulties through their democratic ex- periment. The pride and pageantry of political life produced the same sorts of impasses that are all too familiar today. In the Greek context, the Cynic philosophers offered a po- werful corrective. The life and public performances of Diogenes of Sinope characterize Cynic philosophy and help us better understand the present. Diogenes of Sinope remains the most famous Cynic philosopher. Early in his life, Diogenes was forced to leave his hometown of Sinope when he was caught defacing cur- rency. He resettled in bustling Athens where he became influenced by Antisthenes, stu- dent of Socrates and founder of the Cynic philosophy. Diogenes adopted increasingly as- cetic practices, living a life of naked necessity as a philosopher, beggar, and public scourge. Cynic philosophy is characterized by witticisms and performances that buck social norms. Throughout his daily affairs, Diogenes was known to have walked the streets in the daytime holding a lamp announcing to anyone within ear shot that he was looking for a wise man. He ate in the marketplace, which, at the time was considered a forbidden practice, and when he was caught masturbating in public he responded that he wished that it “were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly.”2 Historian Diogenes Laertius tells of a reported meeting between Diogenes and Alexander the Great. Diogenes was sunning himself when “Alexander came and stood over him and said, „Ask of me any boon you like.‟ To which he replied, „Stand out of my light.‟”3 Plutarch reports that Al- exander “admired so much the haughtiness and grandeur of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers, who were laughing and jesting about the phi- losopher as they went away, „But verily, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.‟”4 In addition to publicly insulting one of the most powerful leaders of his time, Diogenes took aim at the most famous philosopher. In response to Plato offering a definition of man as “a featherless biped,” Diogenes reportedly visited Plato‟s Academy where he plucked a chicken, interrupted Plato, and declared “behold, Plato‟s man.”5 Plato reported that such performances led people to consider Diogenes “a Socrates gone mad.”6 2 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 71. 3 Laertius, Lives, 38. 4 Plutarch and Bernadotte Perrin (trans.), Plutarch Lives, VII, Demosthenes and Cicero. Alexander and Caesar (Loeb Classical Library), (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919), 259. 5 Luis Navia, Diogenes of Sinope: The Man in the Tub (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 56. 6 Laertius, Lives, 55. 12 Placone & Tumolo Rather than the ravings of a madman or exhibitionist, Diogenes‟s performances were part of a program of social criticism founded in a rhetorically astute, ethical philosophy. Diogenes‟s Cynic performances, Philip Bosman explains, “do not simply constitute the arbitrary choice of a comically gifted person. Rather, they are intimately related to Cynic philosophy and its programme of social criticism.”7 By defying norms of appropriate be- havior, Diogenes invited audiences to reflect on the separation of nature and convention while questioning the ethics, or lack thereof, upon which their norms and conventions were founded. Scholar of rhetoric Theodore Windt summarized Diogenes‟s way of life, “To live by men‟s conventions is to embrace the death of person: to defy society is to embrace life. One can have no truck with customs regardless of the disguises they wear: laws, civil author, political institutions, social mores.”8 Windt maintains that this foundation led the Cynics to “devote their whole attention to Ethics” and that in Cynic thought and practice, “every question is an ethical question.”9 Their “bizarre acts,” he continues, “served symbolic purposes” by making their critical beliefs concrete while ex- plicitly rejecting direct political power.10 Taken this way, their performances allowed them to point out societal problems and suggest solutions without being seen as a threat to either rules or rulers. That Diogenes and the Cynics were involved in a program of social criticism implies that their performances had purpose. Windt convincingly argues that their main purpose was to shock, which served three connected rhetorical functions. The first function was to create a rhetorical situation. Since their goal was to counteract accepted norms, the shocking spectacle “gathers an audience when orthodox speeches will not.”11 Second, the shocking spectacle “functions as the first step towards rearranging perspectives. People seldom become concerned about problems until they are shocked.”12 The real shock of Cynic spectacle would then come as audience members would begin reflecting on the ways in which their lived practices and thoughts diverge from their ideal norms. Third, the Cynic‟s shocking spectacle “parodied the rhetorical situation.”13 By advocating stronger commitments to both public ethics and personal freedoms, they were able to demonstrate the comical trappings of both. Bosman explains that the evidence does not suggest that Diogenes was trying to convert his audiences to a radical form of cynicism. Rather than imitating the Cynic‟s behaviors, their audiences “would typically have re- sponded the way audiences of political satire in repressive societies normally do: they returned to society, albeit with a wider perspective on themselves and a measure of irony towards their world, and feeling more in equilibrium because of it.”14 It is in this way that Diogenes and the Cynics of Greek Antiquity employed their antics as a means of social protest, consequently shifting the argumentative ground on which political deliberation would be founded.
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