The Role Of Humor In The American Culture Wars

Sanneke Ros

Student ID: 10685766

Email address: [email protected]

Address: Delflandplein 50, Amsterdam

Telephone: 0683969334

Date of Completion: June 29th 2018

Supervisor: Jan Teurlings

Second Reader: Toni Pape

Television and Cross Media Culture University of Amsterdam

1 Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION Pg. 3

CHAPTER 1 Pg. 4

1,1 Culture Wars, Then and Now Pg. 4

1,2 Culture War Origin Pg. 6

1,3 Culture Wars and Media Pg. 9

CHAPTER 2 Pg. 13

2,1 The Daily Show and The Satire News Format Pg. 13

2,2 Conservative Alternative for Satire News Pg. 19

2,3 New Media Landscape Pg. 26

2,4 Potential Of Satire Pg. 28

CHAPTER 3 Pg. 31

3,1 Culture Wars in 2016- Present Pg. 31

3,2 Meme Culture Pg. 34

3,3 Pepe the Frog and Troll Culture Pg. 36

CONCLUSION Pg. 40

BIBLIOGRPHY Pg. 44

TELEVISION REFERENCES Pg. 49

2 Introduction

The culture wars in America has been researched from many paradigms and perspectives. The changes that the culture wars initiated in terrains as diverse as education, culture and religion are significant to how the US as a country has developed, and there a large amount of research dedicated to examining the results and trends of the culture wars (Hunter, Rabkin, Hartman, Sobnosky, to name a few who dove into this topic). This thesis will look at the culture wars as well, but from a viewpoint that has been neglected in the existing literature, namely the role of humor in the culture wars.

Humor, as stated by Taecharungroj is crucial to communication as she says “Humor is an important element in the development of communications across different cultures” and “this concept is rooted in the evolution of human behavior” (Taecharungroj, pg. 289). With the culture wars being so important in the shaping of American politics and culture, it is noticeable that the topic of humor has been relatively absent in research on the culture wars.

This is especially noticeable in the period of the 1990’s to 2000’s considering the amount of talk shows that dedicate a good amount of time in their evening programs towards political discourse, many nowadays taking on a political news satire format. This could of course be attributed to the election of Trump, who as a rather cartoonish character has made himself an easy target of mockery and satire. However political satire has of course been around for a long time and The Daily Show (1999) had already found success in the 1990’s with their biting political satire and critique on televised news programs such as FOX news and CNN.

In today’s times with Trump and his administration calling out every news outlet that critiques him “fake news” and often complaining about the late night shows that mock him we have found ourselves in an new wave in the culture wars. Of course this is also considering the new topics of discussion the Trump election brought up within America, specifically, immigration, populism and white nationalism. With such a “characteristic” American president, humor is an interesting element in today’s culture wars. This is especially the case considering how the president has been absent for all of the White House Correspondents Dinners so far and the outrage that was caused after Michelle Wolf’s monologue. The controversy was based around her “slandering” those within the 3 Trump administration and people argued that her purpose was political and not for entertainment. With liberals and conservatives at each other's throats it seemed as though political humor these days is never seen without an agenda. Democrats call it entertainment, Republicans call it propaganda.

This thesis sets out to fill this gap in research around the culture wars specifically, the role of humor in culture wars. In order to do this The Daily Show will be taken as a primary example of left wing humor and press satire will be analyzed in terms of its humor, role in the culture wars. The question as to why there is no conservative version of The Daily Show will also be taken in to account. Further this thesis will examine what the right wing meme and troll culture and argue that this is a brand of political humor that the left has difficulty accessing. The changing media landscapes will also be examined in relation to the main research point considering that the culture wars span from 1960’s to today and media has changed significantly in these times especially since there is a stark contrast to televised content and internet culture.

CHAPTER 1

Culture Wars, Then and Now

In 1992, socialist James Davison Hunter wrote a book concerning the political changes in the United States at the time. The book was titled Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (1991) and it detailed the change in political climate in terms of morality. His position according to Steven Brint was that “the United States is in the midst of a “culture war” pitting representatives of two distinctive moral visions against one another” (Brint, pg. 438). As Hunter himself said “ America is in the midst of a culture war that has had and will continue to have reverberations not only within public policy but within the lives of ordinary Americans everywhere” (Hunter, pg.34). The culture wars were, as described by Hunter, a split in politics in terms of morality. While previously the main culture battles within the United States were those between faiths, specifically protestants and catholics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the division was now between orthodoxy and progressivism. While the former is “based on absolute principles of moral conduct” the latter is “based on a somewhat looser set of dispositions that nevertheless include such elements as principled tolerance for diversity, a preference for personal choice in matters

4 of morality, and a hatred of bigotry - racial, religious, or otherwise” (Brint, pg. 438). This means that there was a definitive difference in opinion regarding issues such as “abortion, gay rights, family structure, multiculturalism and values in teaching in the schools” (Brint, pg. 438) to name a few. Brint criticizes the war metaphor on two fronts, the first being that it is perhaps an exaggerated one in the sense that Hunter nearing the end of his book reveals that regarding the issues raised in these culture wars that “on any given issue 60% or more of Americans take moderate positions” (Brint, pg. 439). Brint then follows this up with the question: “can one have a proper war when two-thirds of the army are noncombatants?” (Brint, pg. 439). He then answers this by saying that a minority can have a greater impact but that it is also important to examine the “views and influence of the majority” (Brint, pg. 439). His second critique on the metaphor lies within the difference between mass media and other institutions. He finds that mass media “tend to fan controversies” while “other institutions do not”. What he indicates here is that in terms of the culture wars, the mass media feed off the partisan public and try to provoke anger and frustration from the public by perhaps taking a particular perspective on the subject matter. However, this is more a consequence of a prior goal which was to attract as many viewers as possible considering that controversy sells well to the public. Specifically commercial mass media rely on controversy to feed audience ratings.

A year after Hunter wrote about the culture wars, an American politician, Patrick Buchanan stood in front of the public and made a speech about exactly the observations that Hunter highlights but from a very clear conservative/ right perspective. He spoke of the victories of president George Bush and declared that while there was reason to celebrate the achievements of the republican party, that there was a severe danger in the opposition. The opposition stood for change, changes that would break apart the traditions and values that the conservative right held dearly. He mentions the Clintons and their stances on issues like abortion, gay rights and education, saying that the principles they stood for were “not the change America wants” and that “it’s not the kind of change we can abide in a nation we still call “God’s country”” (Buchanan) . Buchanan’s stance regarding these issues was crystal clear in his speech and communicated his opposition for abortion in saying that Roe V Wade “destroyed” 25 million unborn children. He called for the people to stand with Bush “against the amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women” and to stand against “putting our wives and daughters and sisters into combat units of the United States Army”. His speech summed up the division as described by Hunter while taking a clear position within the 5 polarization. The Clintons, he mentions, are on the other side, while Bush is “on our side”. Regarding this division Buchanan said that “this is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself. For this war is for the soul of America”. What this speech indicates is how the division of ideals within politics in presidential elections and the American society as a whole created a very partisan election. One in which the Clintons are expressly placed on the left progressive side and Bush on the right, conservative side. The latter being the side that represented the “people” while the Clintons represented, in Buchanan's words, those who stood for undesired change.

Culture War Origin

Here I would like to examine how the Culture wars of the 1990’s got crystallized around the points that were made by Buchanan while also giving a background in to the history of the culture wars for context. The concept of a “culture war” originated from the term “kulturkampf” first coined by Rdolf Virchow is described by Olaf Blaschke as “in the narrow sense, Kulturkampf (‘culture struggle’) denotes the conflict between Prussia and the Catholic Church between 1871 and 1887; in the broader sense, it denotes the conflicts between church and states” (Blaschke, pg. 1). He expands his explanation of the term in saying that “in an extended sense, it often denotes any conflict between church and state, tradition and modernity” (Blaschke, pg. 1). The term Kulturkampf is often used in a broader sense to describe a desire for cultural change among different communities around the world. Peter O’Brien in his book The Muslim Question in Europe: Political Controversies and Public Philosophies (2016)even uses the term to “connote an ideological battle among liberalism, nationalism, and post-modernism” (O’Brien, pg. 2). As Germany was seeing it’s “bitterest phase” of their Kulturkampf the United States president , Ulysses S. Grant “urged a constitutional amendment prohibiting the teaching of ‘sectarian tenets’ in any school receiving any degree of tax- funded assistance- and requiring that ‘all church property’ be subject to taxation” (Rabkin, pg.7). It was as of then that the political parties in America began to divide significantly on issues regarding religious and cultural matters. However, “culture wars became localized and episodic, rather than a central theme of national party competition” (Rabkin, pg. 8).

Andrew Hartman wrote a book in which he discusses the history of the culture wars in the United States of America and the progression of them since then. He argues that the 6 culture wars truly began in the sixties, in which the majority of Americans were living in heterosexual, mostly Christian families. This was so the norm that Hartman states that “even those Americans barred from normative America by virtue of their race, sexuality, or religion often felt compelled to demonstrate compliance” (Hartman, pg. 5). The sixties marked a period of time that involved president Kennedy’s “New Frontier”, President Johnson’s fight against poverty and inequality and a fight for gay and civil rights. In other words, the sixties marked the decade that a part of America fought against the principles of the United States that Hartman described.

He introduces the concept of the New Left, a left grown out of student activism in response to the civil rights actions . Hartman mentions that this New Left caused friction even within the democratic party itself. Matthew Sobnosky refers to an article written by Barbara Ehrenreich who argued that the “issues facing American society do not divide cleanly along liberal/ conservative lines” (Sobnosky, pg. 309) which led to many Democrats feeling pushed into the Republican party while Republicans in 1992 felt that the social and cultural issues discussed were “taking precedence over traditional concerns about small government and lower taxes” (Sobnosky, pg. 309). Nixon’s Southern Strategy is an example of how Democrats and Republicans moved parties based on their former parties stressing the issues of race and religion.

All of this indicates the tension brewing in American politics and how the culture wars essentially redefined the political landscape within the United States and therefore perhaps, also changed the former ideals of what it was to be “typically” American. Although Hartman believes that although these new leftists failed at changing the political system they “succeeded in reorienting American culture” (Hartman, pg. 12).

The culture wars of America can perhaps be split in to three phases, the 1960’s being the first, the 1990’s the second and the third being 2016- present. Each of these periods in time saw significant changes in the nature of the culture wars and should briefly be discussed so as to create a clear picture of the historical and current context. While the changes during the 1960’s to 1990’s will be highlighted briefly, the culture wars of 2016 will be discussed in the later chapters.

Of course the culture wars are very complex, embedded in many elements of American politics, media and culture and have had waves of movement and change throughout the 7 years but the period between the 1960’s and 1990’s have seen the most prominent changes. The 1960’s was significant in the sense that this period saw the desegregation of schools and Rabkin states that this was “the spark that ignited the mobilization of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians as a new political force in national politics” (Rabkin, pg. 10). Despite desegregation, the IRS (International Revenue Service) still gave private schools that refused to accept black students a tax exempt status. Rabkin discusses this in saying that “ ‘segregation academies’ were undermining the public policy of school integration by drawing away white students into private havens, and the IRS, it was said, had a duty not to provide a ‘tax subsidy’ for such schools” (Rabkin, pg. 10). The federal courts became involved and the private schools were then required to provide certification that they would not discriminate their admission of students based on race. However, despite this change in policy these “segregation schools” still “drew white students from the public schools in the expectation of avoiding contact with blacks” (Rabkin, pg. 10). Because of this, in 1977 the IRS was forced through another lawsuit to take a step further in tackling these schools and enforced regulations that “required private schools in the South to undertake extensive affirmative action (including outreach advertising and special scholarships for black students) to make themselves more integrated - or risk having their tax-exempt status revoked”(Rabkin, Pg. 10). The upheaval of disagreement caused by the school operators and evangelical ministers (many of these schools were operated by fundamentalist or evangelical churches) caused the IRS and district court to back off and the case was picked up again in 1983. Rabkin states that “by then it was too late, however to shut off the protest momentum triggered by the original IRS regulations” and that “whatever their views about desegregation in the past, conservative pastors did not see the cause of their private Bible schools as anything like the cause of segregated public schools” (Rabkin, pg. 11).

Around the 1980’s the Christian right had established themselves as a political force and moved to include the Catholics in their political reach through their agreement on their views regarding abortion. Regarding this alliance Rabkin says that it was “encouraged by political go-betweens, impressed by the potential strength of such a coalition” (Rabkin, Pg. 12). This time saw the term “moral majority” being raised, first coined by a Jewish republican, Howard Phillips. Philips’s contribution “broke with the long tradition, among southern Baptists and other evangelicals, of disapproval for micing religious ministry with politics” and “broke with a long tradition of hostility and suspicion toward the Catholic Church” ( Rabkin, pg. 12). This time saw Roe vs Wade, an incredibly progressive step 8 towards abortion rights which then led to new laws regarding euthanasia. As Rabkin says “in 1995, the federal appeals court for the 9th Circuit announced a right to physician- assisted suicide” and “the court announced that this right was implied in the precedent of Roe v. Wade” (Rabkin, pg. 16) which was exactly what the “right-to-life movement” was afraid of ever since Roe v. Wade. It seemed to them that the court was acting against and without any consideration of their will, as Rabkin says “beyond the ebb and flow of particular rulings, the rules of the game were stacked against religion” (Rabkin, pg. 18). The court continued to further impose rules and regulations against principles the religious right held dear. Prayer and religious teachings were questioned, refusal to teach evolution was considered unconstitutional and the censoring of material that the right thought offensive was opposed. The religious right saw their values and ideals get crushed by the court which “did not even pretend to be neutral umpire” (Rabkin, pg. 18). In order to fight this power the religious right adapted and broadened its scope, ultimately “generating new groups to focus on different issues with different allies” (Rabkin, pg. 23) which ultimately lead to the religious right being “not at all particular about whether its allies are ‘religious’ or ‘secular’ and eagerly disavows such sharp dichotomies” (Rabkin, pg. 26). This then saw the religious right expanding their reach and opened its arms to any who disagreed with the cultural and social changes being enforced. The religious right continued to fight back against these changes while continually claiming the media was stacked against them, stopping them from mobilizing as a truly effective force.

Culture Wars and Media

Aside from the social and political effects of the culture wars, the media too have been impacted by the changes of the culture wars. Of course the media itself has played a significant role in the culture wars considering that televised news was the terrain on which the culture wars were played out. This is the core of this thesis in that the culture wars will be used to examine what place satire news has in the current media landscape. The primary and possibly most important note on media and the culture wars is there has been a significant shift in the manner in which news gets reported.

Before 1900 politics were not disguised in newspapers and clearly showed the political stance of those who wrote the articles. However, as McChesney said “partisan journalism became problematic when newspapers became increasingly commercial enterprises and when newspaper markets became predominantly monopolistic” (McChesney, pg. 31). He 9 describes how in the Progressive Era, U.S journalism “came under withering attack for being a tool of its capitalist owners to propagate anti-labor propaganda” (pg. 31). Advertisers funding newspapers were concerned by the partisan journalism as it only appealed to a particular group which of course, was bad for profit. Thus non-partisanship was introduced in news, as McChesney says “professional journalism was born from the revolutionary idea that the link between owner and editor could be broken” (McChesney, pg. 31). McChesney states that since then, opinions and politics of the owners and advertisers was restricted to the editorial page and journalists would be “trained to establish their political neutrality”(McChesney, pg. 31). He describes the conservative critique of this professional journalism and finds that conservatives claim that “journalists are political liberals” and that “journalists abuse their power to advance liberal politics- thus breaking the professional code” (McChesney, pg. 31). However he also says that while they claim there is a bias in journalism they “are not actually concerned with defending professional journalism at all but with eliminating it” (McChesney, pg. 33). In further describing the conservative perspective on media McChesney goes to describe the party’s movement against “liberal journalism” which began in the 1970’s. Liberal media was blamed for losing the Vietnam war and for costing businesses the support of the middle- class youth as well as “giving people like Ralph Nader sympathetic exposure” (McChesney, pg. 35). The onslaught on mainstream media was led by the political right who were backed by wealthy donors and “began to devote enormous resources to criticising and changing the news media” (McChesney, pg. 35). Great resources were dedicated to pushing for more conservative news and even moved to “funding the training of conservative and business journalists and universities, creating conservative media to provide a training ground, establishing conservative think tanks to flood journalism with pro-business official sources, and incessantly jawboning any coverage whatsoever that is critical of conservative interests as being reflective of ‘liberal’ bias” (McChesney, pg. 35). It is exactly within this media environment that Fox News was regarded an escape from the liberal bias.

To further identify changes it is important to note the way in which News has developed in terms of cable television. Jonathan S Morris discusses this in “The Fox News Factor” and says that CNN inserting an all day news program opened doors for a different kind of news reporting. He says that “new media, or ‘new news’ sources have emerged that provide news in a fashion that is more convenient and often more entertaining” (Morris, pg. 57) and that cable news has been one of the most significant additions. CNN, was the first 10 cable news network and aired on June 1st, 1980 with the goal to “apply the concept of all- news radio to television” (Morris, pg. 59). During the Gulf War of 1991 CNN offered coverage that was “sophisticated, timely and unprecedented in its dramatics” (Morris, pg. 59). Ratings soared and more cable news programs followed CNN’s example in the mid 1990’s. Today in network news is seemingly “less apt to abandon prime-time entertainment programming to cover issues and events of a political nature” (Morris, pg. 59) and “have relegated much of their responsibility of covering political news to the twenty-four-hour cable stations” (Morris, pg. 59). Without the restraints that network news seems to have, cable news has the freedom to report the way they choose to do so. This has resulted in rather than simply reporting news, media outlets such as FOX News in particular, and later MSNBC, focused on taking a side and reporting from a point of view. As Pilar Garces- Conejos Blitvich states in his research regarding politeness and news reporting, “many of the providers of this “view” are strong and opinionated TV personalities that seek to persuade and ratify their target audience’s beliefs, usually conservative” (Blitvich, pg. 276) and they refer to themselves as “culture warriors” or “defenders of the traditional American Values” (Blitvich, pg. 276). In fact, Morris also states, in talking about Fox News that “ the appeal is primarily to Americans right of center, who have held the opinion for decades that America’s press corps has an affinity for the left” (Morris, pg. 60). Indicating that Fox News speaks from a strong conservative perspective rather than give an unbiased report. Blitvich claims that News outlets such as Fox News do this in retaliation to the “liberal bias of mainstream media” (Blitvich, pg. 276). Fox News is therefore aimed at the American people, those who feel they lost battles in the culture wars due to affirmative action, and later political correctness.

Blitvich research examines the attitudes of the interviewers in news reporting. He says that while objectivity is still highly regarded in media, interviewers have become progressively more aggressive in their interviewing style. Despite this, the desire for objectivity requires interviewers to be careful in their questioning and find a balance in which they can be assertive and portray a particular point of view without being too obviously biased. However, Blitvich states that this balance was completely disregarded in CNN and Fox News both of which explicitly indicate their point of view and rely on opinionated TV personalities to share their thoughts. Blitvich reasoning for this is that these news outlets have changed their approach regarding news in the sense that their aims are no longer to inform so much as to confirm the thoughts a viewer already has about an event. Blitvich says that “in today’s world of 24/7 constant information the audience is already informed 11 when they switch on their TVs in the evening” and that because of this “new” new is there to “reaffirm a given view of the world, usually conservative” (Blitvich, pg. 277). In an era in which an overwhelming amount of people rely on social media for news what Blitvich is saying does not come as much of a surprise. Algorithms that decide what should show up on a person’s Facebook page based on their previous searches and interests result in people receiving news segments and opinion pieces that confirm their already existing ideas rather than challenge them or offer a biased perspective. Rob Kitchin in fact quotes Steiner in saying that “algorithms adjudicate more and more consequential decisions in our lives… Algorithms, driven by vast troves of data, are the new power brokers in society” (Kitchin, pg, 2). As for news reporting that goes by these ideas, Blitvich concludes that this a new form of news and has named it “news as confrontation” (Blitvich, pg. 278) while also referring to The Colbert Show which parodies The O’Reilly Factor (Fox News segment) and uses this to say that the existence of the parody “supports the thesis that the new genre format is established and recognizable” (Blitvich, pg.278).

Considering news reporting as seen in Blitvich research has become more partisan, the question then arises whether that could then lead to an increase in votes for more political candidates with more partisan policies? This is a question Markus Prior examines in his research back in 2013. He says that there was a concern regarding “the pernicious impact of feverently populist or ideological rhetoric displayed on cable news, talk radio, and the Internet” (Prior, pg. 102) and worries that “the less knowledgeable Americans are particularly seduced by the seeming simplicity of their populist worldviews” (Prior, pg.102). He explains how the dramatic change since cable television first began evolved into channels of partisan media. Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s television culture was different, there were less channels and a lack of internet to start with. But television was also more of a routine, as Prior states in the “glory days of broadcast television, more people routinely watched television news than in any other period” ( Prior, pg. 107). This then changed after the 1970’s when cable television expanded and the internet offered “an escape for this inadvertent and non ideological audience segment” (Prior, pg. 107). Since then people have had more choice which and more channels have offered news programs catering to more particular audiences who may have more partisan points of view and did not desire the mostly centrist media. Prior addresses this in saying that “technological change has made it economically viable to cater to smaller audience segments” and that because of this there is no surprise in that “some strong partisans turned to more ideologically congruous media formats when they became available” (Prior, pg. 112). With 12 mainstream media being mostly centrist, leaning slightly to the left, the perspective of the conservative right wing people was not being shared as broadly. Prior states that “evening newscasts on the broadcast networks, long the most widely followed news source, are mostly centrist with possibly a minor tilt in the liberal direction” (Prior, pg. 103). Newspapers as well were found to be mostly centrist due to the collection of different reporters, all of whom have different perspectives, “thus introducing variation in slant within papers” (Prior, pg. 104).

Meanwhile, although Prior argues that news broadcasting organizations are not necessarily influencing more partisan votes or thoughts, his research does find that people are more likely to read a story if it is sourced from one of their partisan channels. For example “among republican participants, adding the Fox News logo to a headline increased by about 25 percentage points the chance that participants would want to read the story” while “adding the CNN or NPR logo reduced the probability by close to 10 points” (Prior, pg. 109). This then can mean that while the viewers are not necessarily more partisan, the channels they have become accustomed to watching have developed to be so, and that the viewers continue watching due to habit, or because the issues brought up in the culture wars are reflected in their perspective on these channels to a certain degree. Abortion for example has been a topic of disagreement between Democrats and Republicans for decades and is now also a defining factor of the parties. Democrats typically support the freedom of choice regarding abortion and the many Republicans would rather overturn Roe vs Wade and make abortion illegal. In terms of news, republicans, though not explicitly partisan may find their opinions reflected more accurately in more conservative channels in which abortion is condemned while democrats will find their perspective in mainstream media.

CHAPTER 2

The Daily Show and The Satire News Format

This chapter will focus on the role of humor in the culture wars. Specifically the focus will be on the culture wars of the 1990’s-2000’s and explore how the left employed humor in relation to the media environment. The main example of left humor will be The Daily Show

13 which is why this chapter will examine the show and its format as well as the more general media landscape. The main argument will be that the culture wars of the 1990’s - 2000’s saw the left employing humor much more effectively than the right which had much to do with the media environment of that time.

The Daily Show is a satirical news program that airs on Comedy Central four nights a week. After its premiere on July 22nd, 1996, the then host, Craig Kilborn used the show to parody conventional newscasts while including segments in which interviews with celebrities took place or games were played. The original content of The Daily Show is therefore very similar to the content of Late Night shows. Later in 1999, Kilborn was replaced by Jon Stewart and with the help of Ben Karlin, who formerly worked for the satirical newspaper The Onion, the program became more politically oriented. As said by Donna Marie Smith, “The Daily Show evolved from a fledgling late-night talk show hosted by Craig Kilborn on Comedy Central to a culturally significant political satire and news commentary program under the helm of Jon Stewart” (Smith, pg 102). Stewart has in the past called The Daily Show a “fake news program” ( Brewer and Marquardt, pg. 249) but it more often gets referred to as a “mock news program” (Brewer and Marquardt, pg. 249). Although Jon Stewart has often disregarded the notion that the show could be considered as a legitimate news source The Daily Show does take the news it reports seriously and there is clear passion in the way in which Stewart presents. Aside from tackling news in such a way that it becomes more accessible and understandable, The Daily Show also critiques journalism as a whole, through satire and parody.

In 2004 the program won the Television Critics Award for Outstanding Achievement in News and Information thereby showing that although the show’s former host may not have seen the show as “real” journalism, others have found it to be of worth considering it beat more serious nominees such as 60 Minutes and Frontline. On top of that Jamie Warner notes that Stewart was listed “as the most influential media player in the 2004 election, beating out the likes of Ted Koppel, Sean Hannity, and Tim Russert” (Warner, pg. 23).

Despite these lofty achievements, the core of The Daily Show is, however, still rooted in satirizing traditional news segments. The satirical nature of the show is what gives it humoristic ground with which they solidified their position and role within the culture wars. Warner states that The Daily Show’s effectiveness is not based on stressing just the facts like the traditional news shows that The Daily Show parodies. Instead they use “an 14 aestheticized (and very funny) parodic discourse to combat the aestheticized (and very serious) political branding techniques” (Warner, pg. 17). This he splits into three dimensions of dissent humor, these being, parodic news format, strategic use of video, and interview style. Parodic news format is described by Warner as being a metatechnique that imitates the traditional format of newscasts and defines the entire understanding of the program and the most basic underlying humor. Warner states that “watching the show with the volume turned down might not alert you to the fact that this is anything other than one of the myriad news options now available” (Warner, pg. 24). The consequence of imitating the newscast format is, an effective platform for commentary and critique. This was especially true within times when mass media was dominant. Viewers were well versed in the structure and norms of televised news. This made The Daily Show highly effective in critiquing the actions of journalists and news conventions of televised news. The Daily Show was set up to look, feel and sound very much like regular televised news while Stewart critiqued news media practices. Further, according to Warner, due to the political mission of The Daily Show to comment on the mishaps of journalists, politicians and to debunk partisan news, means that the content is given an “air of legitimacy and respectability” (Warner, pg. 25).

The second dimension Warner mentions is strategic use of video which according to him works within the metatechnique of satire news. He says that by using the screen that is usually present above the host’s shoulder the program is able to “disrupt the dominant political message by presenting various types of “matter out of time” using video clips” (Warner, pg. 26). The Daily Show uses a combination of video clips and comical dialogue that interrupts these clips as a strategic juxtaposition. Parodic videos that made up of, for example, interviews, that have been taken from different times and places are used to prove a point or to made a comedic statement that the host then does not explicitly have to state. Finally, the third dimension is the Socratic interview style. This refers to the Platonic dialogues in which Socrates “routinely adopted an ignorant or tentative tone, asking simple and direct questions to his often dense interlocutors with the seemingly innocent goal of getting to the “truth”” (Warner, pg. 29). This is an approach that exactly defines the way in which The Daily Show is presented and how information is given to the viewer. Stewart and now Noah pinpoint hypocrisies, inconsistencies and deliver critique on the topics at hand by guiding the viewers towards their point, asking, often rhetorical, questions and guiding the viewer towards the “truth”. Warner further goes on to say that “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart “jams” the seamless transmission of the dominant brand 15 messages by parodying the news media’s unproblematic dissemination of the dominant brand, broadcasting dissident political messages that can open up space for questioning and critique” ( Warner, pg. 17). Fundamentally The Daily Show is a platform that Jon Stewart, and now Trevor Noah use to critique not only politicians and their policies but the media itself. Painter and Hodges write about this and say that the program manages to “make traditional news media, particularly broadcast news outlets, accountable to the public”, “remind the public of the ideal standards of journalism” and finally to teach media literacy “showing the public how stories are edited and pulling the curtain to reveal how news gets made” (Painter and Hodges, pg. 259). Essentially Stewart helped people make sense of things within the culture wars during his time as host of The Daily Show. The show’s use of video showed the ridiculous things politicians and journalists said and Stewart exposed this by calling them out on it while also showing the public that he too was as baffled by the actions of these people.

The dimensions that Warner refers to are the core principles found in every parodic news program there is, and define the basic format of parody news and what provides the space for political comedy. Press satire can of course be traced back all the way to the novel, “A Modest Proposal”, written by Jonathan Swift in 1729 and has been followed by political cartoonists and films such as Anchorman (2004). However, ever since The Daily Show with Jon Stewart first aired in 1999 the televised format has arguably become the most successful form of press satire. Even today television does seem like the most successful platform for press satire at this moment with many late night shows including satirical news segments such as “A Closer Look” on Late Night With Seth Meyers and Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update”. John Oliver also has a similar program on HBO wherein he takes a topic of relevance in media today, such as kidney dialysis, for example, and deconstructs the issue so as to address the problems regarding the way in which patients are treated like products. Needless to say the satire news concept is popular and can be seen across different programs. However, the focus of this thesis will primarily be on The Daily Show due to it essentially being the longest running and most well known form as well as the fact that it has existed since 1999 meaning it has seen the change from mass media to internet culture which is something to be discussed later in this thesis.

Geoffrey Baym argues that The Daily Show uses techniques “drawn from genres of news, comedy, and television talk to revive a journalism of critical inquiry and advance a model of deliberative democracy” (Baym, pg. 259). In saying this he clearly puts more weight on the 16 importance of the program than simply parody news. In an age of increasingly partisan news and journalism it could then be implied that The Daily Show, in “reviving a journalism of critical inquiry”, offers a platform in which news and politics are dissected in order to inform rather than to convince. However, Jon Stewart himself has “claimed at various occasions that it would be absurd to take the program too seriously because the show “is comedy, not even pretending to be information” (Cao, pg. 30). Adding to that, the program should not be considered a truly nonpartisan news source because of its underlying liberal ideology. Which is an important aspect to address especially since the many satire news programs that have been born in since The Daily Show hold this position as well, indicating their stance within the culture wars. However the show remains as a potentially useful component to analyze how viewers interact with political satire and how such a popular program may impact its viewers.

When looking at those who study how The Daily Show impacts its viewers there are both those who praise and critique the program. For example, Hart found that “although some scholars have pointed up its constructive impact, others find it a harbinger of cynicism, superficiality, and excessive partisanship” ( Hart, pg. 338). Meanwhile Brewer and Marquardt believe that the program inflicts a positive result on the viewers and has the potential to “educate citizens about politics (including policy issues), draw their attention to events in world affairs, and encourage them to think critically- or perhaps cynically - about traditional news coverage” (Brewer and Marquardt, pg. 250). Cao further says that “exposure to political comedy shows such as The Daily Show was also found to be positively associated with campaign knowledge among young people and those with higher education” (Cao, pg. 30). This indicates that although The Daily Show does define itself as a fake news program, it does appear to inform those who watch with political information. Importantly it appeals to young people which can then encourage more young people to vote or take an interest in politics. At the very least the program may encourage others to look more critically at news. She also states that “encountering information about public issues on The Daily Show may also lead viewers to attend to additional information about the topics, as the gateway hypothesis has suggested” (Cao, pg. 31). Cao further also says that that “jokes made at the expense of political candidates by Jon Stewart lowered ratings of presidential candidates and increased cynicism towards the electoral system among young people” ( Cao, pg. 30). While this confirms the idea that the program induces cynicism it also shows the heavy influence the program has on its viewers and may appear to lead them to think a particular way. Cao also questions the effect of The 17 Daily Show in terms of how it may potentially increase public attentiveness to political issues. She defines attentiveness as “being able to recognize and selectively process information about a topic” (Cao, pg. 30) therefore, in a political sense she defines attentiveness as implying that it “not only possess sufficient information to recognize its existence, but also expose themselves to additional information about it” (Cao, pg. 30). This attentiveness is an element that makes Cao express doubts about viewers actually showing. Especially since many young viewers rely on social media to give them their news. The effect of The Daily Show does indicate something important in that, although claiming to be satirical, there are those who use it as an actual news source. It shows how viewers react to satire and that despite its satirical content and format or perhaps because of this, the humor within The Daily Show is both informative and entertaining regarding its commentary within the culture wars. This is something that we don’t see from the right’s meme culture which often stresses more importance on the mocking of their “opponent”. This meme culture will later be discussed in chapter 3.

As for attracting attention to a topic, humor itself is seen in The Daily Show as a useful tool. As Tsakona and Popa say, “The presence of humour renders political discourse memorable and attractive for the media: journalists often select humorous extracts for reproduction in their news articles, in order to appeal to their readership” (Tsakona and Popa, pg. 7) and that “humour becomes a powerful tool in the hands of the media to simultaneously “criticize” political decisions and figures, and entertain the audience” (Tsakona and Popa, pg. 8). It is of course not hard to imagine that this is the case. Political news is understandably easier to digest when communicated in a less formal, humorous manner. Painter and Hodges do say that “humor could negatively influence the public’s view of the news and degrade the purpose and impact of reporters’ stories and jobs” (Painter and Hodges, pg. 259) but in an era of such clear partisanship in the media it becomes almost necessary to at the very least be critical of the news. They also go on to legitimize The Daily Show’s use of humor for three reasons. The first being that the “comedic approach helps to make traditional news media, particularly broadcast news outlets, accountable to the public”.(Painter and Hodges, pg. 259) Their second reason is that the program “reminds the public of the ideal standards of journalism”(Painter and Hodges, pg. 259) . Finally their third reason is that The Daily Show “teaches media literacy, showing the public how stories are edited and pulling the curtain to reveal how 18 news gets made” (Painter and Hodges, pg. 259). All three of these reasons indicate that The Daily Show is a positive influence and although the comedy used does pose the risk that viewers won't take “proper” journalism seriously anymore, the program has the potential to be a good platform for critique and questioning.

However, Roderick Hart seems to consider that taking politics as lightly as The Daily Show does, is detrimental to the way in which people interact with politics. He says that The Daily Show “encourages us to laugh at our betters” and that it “seeks out simplicity” (Hart, pg. 357). In simplifying politics the way in which Hart Thinks The Daily Show does, he says that “by decrying political nuance, Stewart denounces the essential flexibility needed in a large and diverse nation” (Hart, pg. 357). Hart reinforces this by saying that while some have found The Daily Show to give the impression of being an informative source for politics, this is not necessarily the case. Rather than effectively educating and informing its viewers, he says that viewers of The Daily Show who rely on the program for their political news may have “an over-inflated sense of political intelligence” (Hart, pg. 339). These critics also find that “habitual watching of TDS lowers people’s trust in legacy news organizations and such viewers not only become more cynical as a result of watching Stewart but also become more confident that they understand politics when, in fact, they do not” (Hart, pg. 339).

Conservative Alternative for Satire News

As has been discussed, the 1990’s and 2000’s showed that there were numerous humorous programs all of which leaned to the left. Therefore the question arises, why was there no right-wing satire program like the ones that have been seen from the left?

The comedic elements of The Daily Show and programs similar to it, make the genre a great platform to discuss and make fun of news and politics. While satire does tend to make fun of the powerful, it is important to note that very rarely is it completely neutral in the statement it makes. However, it could be argued that nobody is safe in comedy and that there are always jokes to be found no matter the maker’s personal beliefs in politics. As Alison Dagnes says “Good satire takes no prisoners, even if the satirists generally lean in one ideological direction” (Dagnes, pg. 6). However one of the most noticeable elements of this popular genre is that despite Stewart having often poked fun at Obama and his policies/ hypocrisies, The Daily Show and its similar counterparts are clearly a liberal 19 program. But then how is it that in an era of television in which there is a niche audience for almost everything, there does not exist a conservative alternative to The Daily Show? The lack of conservative satire news is an interesting void. This absence of a satire news program that caters specifically to the conservatives in politics could be investigated from several angles the most prominent being the core of political comedy. Is there something in political comedy that creates a bias towards liberalism? There are those who claim that liberal comedians have an advantage in the comedy world and that there is a bias against conservatives. This being an echo of the original liberal media critique conservatives had regarding media favoring liberals over conservatives. Oliver Morrison, in writing for The Atlantic, tackles the question as to why, despite the success of The Daily Show and it’s genre, there are not any equivalent programs for conservatives. According to several conservative comics Morrison spoke to, there is a liberal bias when it comes to the media which makes it difficult for conservatives to find a platform and rise to success. He also notes that with Obama as president it was understandably difficult for conservative comics to mock than Bush was mostly because the fact that he was the first African American president meaning that “comedians have had to tip-toe around anything with racial connotations” (Morrison, pg. 1). However, Morrison notes that “liberal satirists are certainly having no trouble making light of liberal institutions and societies” (Morrison, pg. 1). He uses Portlandia as an example of a program that pokes fun at liberals who use counterproductive extreme measures such as “eco terrorism” and “militant feminism” (Morrison, pg. 1). Meanwhile he finds that Jon Stewart has critiqued Obama’s policies and “the liberal Clinton was the butt of more jokes on late-night shows of the 1990’s than either George W. Bush or Obama would later be” (Morrison, pg. 1). All of this shows that there does not seem to be an absence of points to make fun of liberals.

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver for example did a segment titled “Scandals” in which he dove into what made Hillary Clinton seem like a “crook” to the public. In this segment he dissected the Email scandal, Benghazi and her allegedly corrupt charity organizations. In regard to her email scandals he said:

John Oliver : She blamed not being technically capable which is a fine excuse for your dad when he accidentally texts you the letter Q ten times. But it’s pretty shitty coming from a secretary of state. And then she capped it off by saying the whole thing is kind of fun, which it definitely isn't unless every single one of her emails was just a jpeg of a dog dressed as Dracula, in which case, yeah, you know what, that is kind of fun. 20 He tackled every major scandal and dove into the details, discussing how Hillary by no means was a perfect politician and ruthlessly points at her mistakes. He also takes the opportunity to dig at Bill Clinton after showing a clip in which Hillary defends her use of a private server saying that it had been in the basement as a leftover from her husband’s administration. Oliver jumps on this saying:

John Oliver: Wait wait. You used a server that Bill Clinton had been using which was in your basement? I hate to tell you this but you just stored government records on a machine that Bill called the porn master 5,000. (Imitating Bill Clinton’s voice) I love that machine Old Faithful.

Oliver clearly did not soften the information regarding the democratic candidate and the segment follows the idea that there definitely does not appear to be a lack of comedy to be found at the expense of liberal politicians. The conclusion of the episode however was still that in regard to the Clinton scandals:

John Oliver: the harder you look the less you actually find. There's not nothing there. What is there is irritating rather than grossly nefarious.

The intention of the episode was indeed to compare the scandals of both Hillary and Trump and the conclusion was:

John Oliver: This campaign has been dominated by scandals. But it is dangerous to think that there is an equal number on both sides and you can be irritated by some of Hillary’s, that is understandable. But you should then be fucking outraged by Trump’s.

In this case, Oliver compared and contrasted the two politicians and found plenty comedy in both. Of course there definitely is an underlying tone that shows that Last Week Tonight lean to the left. Shows such as Last Week Tonight and The Daily Show have very clear positions in terms of the culture wars at the very least as seen in the way in which topics of racism feminism and abortion are discussed on the show. That being said, the fact that he was capable of making fun of both politicians no matter their political standing simply proves the point that conservatives have plenty of material to work with as well.

21 It is not as if conservatives haven't tried to create a satire news program however. Fox News made an attempt to create a conservative counterpart called The ½ Hour News Hour but it was cancelled fifteen episodes in and “has remained the worst-rated show of all time on Metacritic” (Morrison, pg. 1) and was “widely panned by critics who complained that it was trying to be political first and funny second, so the jokes were unsurprisingly flat” (Morrison, pg. 1). Redeye is another mentionable initiative by Fox News to incorporate comedy and politics. The now-cancelled program involved a panel of people reporting on news, and politics and Morrison states that Greg Gutfeld, the host, has the capacity to be funny. However “Gutfeld’s shtick works okay during its 3 a.m time slot, but a recent controversy over sexist jokes about a female fighter pilot highlighted just how far his humor is from working in prime time” (Morrison, pg.1).

The Flipside is another attempt at conservative political satire and involves host Michael Loftus standing in front of his audience discussing politics in a t-shirt and jeans. Loftus attempts to embody the “everyday man” and talks about politics from a conservative perspective. This is possibly the closest conservative comedians have come to creating their own Daily Show. However, unlike The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, The Flipside does not discuss news or examine a bigger political issue. Instead he rants about Bernie Sanders supporters, socialism and the failures of liberals and their politics, these namely being affirmative action, immigration and abortion. Meanwhile his references appear outdated and he seems to appeal only to an older, Fox News type audience. However, the lack of popularity of the program might not be explained by these points but rather by the fact that there are other elements stopping the program from growing. Morrison discusses that its small budget could potentially be a reason for is lack of growth and says that according to The Flipside’s producer, Rodney Lee Connover “he has to work 10 times as hard because his show has 10 times fewer resources than the liberal shows supported by cable networks” (Morrison pg. 1). This indicates that there may indeed be a bias against conservative programs in television. Frank Rich discusses this saying that this is common knowledge among conservative comedians and entertainment industry workers in general and that they are “either blacklisted by Hollywood’s liberal mafia or are in daily danger of being so, thus giving the left a near monopoly on comedy as practiced in the cast cultural swing district of American Television” (Rich, pg. 1). However Loftus himself is quoted in Variety by Ted Johnson saying that “the dearth of conservative comedy probably has more to do with the fact that it is hard to do” and told Variety that “if conservative comedy wasn't working on TV, then it just wasn’t funny” (Johnson, pg. 45). On top of that, 22 there are conservative comedians who have managed to be successful. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour and Jeff Dunham are amongst those who have found success in comedy “despite” being openly conservative. These are of course not comedians who have attempted to be the next Jon Stewart or who brand their comedy specifically as political comedy. Dennis Miller, Nick DiPaolo and P.J. O’Rourke however, do but they are among a very small group.

Since comedy overall does not seem to be of an issue with conservative comedians who do not specialise in political comedy, it is political satire specifically where exclusivity towards the conservatives seems to lie. Chris Powell discusses the difference in how humor can be received by analyzing Chaplin’s Modern Times and says that the actions of the Tramp can be seen as amusing from both a left- wing and right-wing perspective. Under a marxist interpretation “Chaplin’s antics in an American factory of the 1920’s is to see Chaplin acting legitimately as both film-maker and character by exposing the dehumanizing working conditions inherent under capitalism” (Powell, pg. 54). Meanwhile from a right-wing perspective may see Chaplin “portraying the factory situation as representative of a legitimate normality and Chaplin the Tramp a deviant” (Powell, pg. 54). While both groups are able to find comedy in the film and scenario, their laughter is based on different perspectives as to the intention of the film-maker. Once this changes and it were to be known that Chaplin is a socialist then “a different interpretation might have to be found, in this case from the right wing viewer” (Powell, pg. 54). Meanwhile Kane et al refer to an investigation done in which subjects were either conservative or liberal women and either glared or laughed at jokes about anti-women’s liberation” (Kane et al, pg. 15). This indicates that what constitutes as comedy is mostly based on perspective and context. Which in terms of political comedy could very simply mean, what is funny to a conservative may not be funny to a liberal. Tsakona and Popa, further add that “if at the heart of what we call ‘politics; is the attempt to get others to: share a common view about what is useful-harmful, good-evil, just- unjust, humor can be called ‘political’ not only because it refers to politics, but also because it achieves that goal” (Tsakona and Popa, pg. 9). The goal here being of course to convince others to share a particular political opinion. If this is considered to be at the heart of political humor then the aim of political satire as seen by The Daily Show and similar programs is to share leftist ideology, thus playing their part in the culture wars. If this is the case it is understandable that conservatives may not consider The Daily Show amusing, and liberals may not consider a

23 conservative alternative humoristic. What all of this ultimately shows is that humor in general in the 1990’s-2000’s was a liberal tool.

While this could be the reason behind a significant lack of conservative political comedians, it can also perhaps be argued that there is simply an inherent “bias” in political humor in which the favor leans more to the left. In fact, Hart states that “Satire calls attention to powerful but unspeakable truths and then deliciously upsets the applecart, removing the powerful and unprincipled from their lofty perch” (Hart, pg. 339). Kane et al reinforce this saying that “satire may have the purpose of showing the absurdity of certain mannerisms, class privilege, professional pretensions, institutional rules, etcetera” (Kane et al, pg. 15). Conservatives of course stand in defense of the institutions and the powerful. They fight to preserve while liberals push for change. This is exactly what Dagnes says: “conservatives want to maintain the status quo and liberals want to change it” and “satire aims at questioning the power structure- so why would conservatives want to do that?” (Dagnes, pg. 14). On top of that Dagnes notes that the very nature of conservatism goes against the requirements for satire in that “the nature of conservatism does not meet the conditions necessary for political satire to flourish: conservatism is harmonized and slow to criticize people in power, and it originates from a place that repudiates humor because it is absolute” (Dagnes, pg. 5)

Furthermore, the way in which The Daily Show shares and discusses the news should be taken into consideration when asking why there is no conservative alternative. There are a few elements in Stewart’s performance in particular that have not been adopted by the few conservative attempts at recreating The Daily Show’s success. The third dimension, the one that Warner described as a Socratic interview style. While the other two dimensions, parodic news format and strategic use of video have been adopted by the conservative programs, ½ Hour News Hour, Redeye and Flipside, the Socratic interview style has not. While it may seem like the least important in terms of creating a satire news program its effect should not be underestimated. The Socratic interview style ensures that the viewer does not get preached to and that the viewer can have a feeling of participation while not actually doing so. As Rich says “anger is a mighty source of humor, but it takes talent to refine a crude gusher of rage into comic fuel” (Rich, pg. 1). Stewart was often angry about politics and happenings in the news but rather than vent he would question the topic and mock it. This Socratic interview style is also talked about by Mintz in a way. He brings up the concept of the wise fool , an idea/ character that has been found in the “Old Testament, 24 mediaeval, Shakespearean, and even primitive, tribal traditions” (Mintz, pg. 18). The character is according to Mintz “essentially a negative figure, exposing folly through his reflection of it in his thoughts and action” (Mintz, pg. 18). Interestingly Mintz discusses that this character has found to have undergone three phases in the nineteenth century the second of which shows the character transforming into a “naif, the innocent” who then “exposes folly by his simple, honest, matter-of-fact purity and good nature” (Mintz, pg. 18). The third stage is the one Mintz says is most important to nineteenth century American Humour and is the stage in which “he becomes the positive model - the commonsense philosopher” (Mintz, pg. 18). He also states that this form of the wise fool is “the vehicle by which the norms, values, opinions and attitudes toward democracy, progress, and social goals can be expressed; an archetypal hero articulating the core of America’s self- definition” (Mintz, pg. 18). Stewart falls very nicely into the description of the more modern wise fool, the commonsense philosopher and the result of this is exactly as Mint described. Taking on the character of the wise fool while implementing the Socratic interview style allowed Stewart to tell his stories without the viewers feeling like they were only listening to his opinion. What the concept of the wise fool and the Socratic interview style then allow, aside from the aforementioned effects, is to give room for the comic’s story. The comic story as said by Schutz “begins with a present situation about which the teller wishes to make a point” and “the teller recounts a story about some past event or fictional experience with a crucial similarity to the target situation” (Schutz, pg. 68). The comic story also relies on group participation which both the wise fool and Socratic interview style encourage. Schutz says that “the group contributes its emotional set, common knowledge, stereotypes and perceptions, and the ‘natural’ logic of analogical reasoning” (Schutz, pg. 68). The comic story therefore relies on the viewer to be capable of understanding format, context and give the viewer space to come to the conclusion as said by Schutz “the basis of the humour lies in the story, but the conclusion concerning the present must be drawn by transference by the audience” (Schutz, pg. 68). Stewart does this by using analogy, metaphors and comparisons while getting to his point and this is exactly what Schutz says is key to the comic story by saying “the logic of the comic story is also economical, being analogical and utilizing metaphors and emotions to short circuit the reasoning to the desired conclusion” (Schutz, pg. 68). Finally he says that “The basic structure of almost all political humour is the comic agon- a competition between two or more contestants in which one is perceived as the antagonist and the other, the ironist who retaliates humorously” (Schutz, pg. 68), the ironist being the position that Stewart and his fellow liberal political satirists take. So while Stewart, Noah and Oliver to name a few, implement 25 the Socratic interview style, wise fool and comic story, their conservative counterparts failed to do so. Both ½ Hour News Hour and Redeye were too focused on their satire “news format” that they came across too authoritative. The closest comparison would have to be the Flipside where Michael Loftus stands casually in front of his audience and where he could very easily try to embody the conservative version of the character that his liberal counterparts play. But instead Loftus focuses on delivering quick punchlines and jokes and does not ask the audience to think with him. The result of this is that Loftus is explicitly giving his viewers the conclusion on a topic he is tackling while The Daily Show for example does this implicitly.

One of the last major issues perhaps with the concept of a conservative Daily Show is the fact that conservatism is rooted in fear. Conservative ideology has worked off of the fear of immigration, gay marriage, gender neutral bathrooms and other such issues. The seriousness that is rooted in the conservative party almost sets the bias against them when it comes to political comedy because to those who believe in that ideology there is much to be afraid of. It is then understandable that conservatives may be less likely to mock a conservative leader or politician because so much trust placed in the leader to resolve these issues and address their fears that by ridiculing them, they seem less like the heroes they need to fix their America. As said by Rich, what bothers people like Gutfield and many conservatives “is that this country insists on perpetually re-creating itself, progressively whittling down old white men’s monopoly on power” (Rich, pg. 1). Mintz appears to reinforce this in saying that humor has evolved over the years and that “since the mid-1960’s there has been something of a renaissance (in terms of both quantity and quality) of American humour, and the trend towards a social satire ridiculing the norm rather than the aberration has continued” (Mintz, pg. 20).

New Media Landscape

The most important factor to take in to account in how the media landscape has changed over the past twenty years is the rise of the Internet. In the 1990’s televisions were hugely important in every household. In terms of news Morris quotes Iyengar and Kinder’s findings saying that “television news has significant agenda- setting power, illustrating that ‘television news powerfully influences which problems viewers regard as the nation’s most serious’” (Morris, pg. 57). He follows this up by stressing the significance of the effect that television has by saying that “reading the news facilitates more cognitive responses, which 26 are relatively stable and often confirmatory of preexisting attitudes” and that “the drama and imagery of televised news has the greatest potential to stir our emotions-sympathy, envy, empathy, dislike, and even disgust” (Morris, pg. 58). The fact that televised drama affects us more also means that the impressions that people get from what they watch will stay longer. Morris states this in saying “these emotional impressions can often stay with people for extended periods of time and therefore color impressions of political issues” (Morris, pg. 58).

The Daily Show’s stance within the culture wars, as briefly mentioned earlier was not partisan nor did Stewart ever claim to be otherwise. But aside from The Daily Show’s critique on the culture wars and politics in general Stewart was well known for critiquing mass media. The Daily Show often offered commentary on mass media output and the media strategies of political parties as well as critique on how mass media covered particular topic. In fact Jason Holt in The Daily Show and Philosophy: Moments of ZEN in the Art of Fake News (2007) says that The Daily Show is “more than just a “fake news” program, The Daily Show offers a rare brand of humor that requires its audience to recognize a deeper, more philosophical criticism of contemporary television news” and “hidden within many of Jon Stewart’s funniest jokes are implicit critiques of the way television tends to report its news and host its public discussions of important issues” (Holt, pg. 5). Stewart, as partisan as he may have been did not hold back from critiquing CNN in his ever socratic style. He even appeared on CNN’s Crossfire in 2004 and as Holt says “Stewart begged his hosts to “stop hurting America” with their substitution of entertaining pseudo-journalism for serious reporting and debate” (Holt. pg. 5).

For this brand of humor to work, it requires mass media. Mass media essentially being a technology through which media reaches a large audience. John B. Thompson clarifies the term somewhat in his book The Media And Modernity- A Social Theory Of The Media (1995). He states that “if the term ‘mass’ is to be used, it should not be construed in narrowly quantitative terms” and “the important point about mass communication is not that a given number of individuals (or a specifiable proportion of the population) receives the products, but rather that the products are available in principle to a plurality of recipients” ( Thompson, pg. 24). He goes on to also stress that those who are on the receiving end of mass media are not “ a vast sea of passive, undifferentiated individuals” (Thompson, pg. 24). Mass media to him is “the institutionalized production and

27 generalized diffusion of symbolic goods via the fixation and transmission of information or symbolic content” (Thompson, pg. 24).

James Anderson and Amie D. Kincaid in their research talk about how there are a handful of media companies who essentially own all that we call “mass media”. As they state in their research “the consolidated media monopoly complex has contributed to (or exacerbated) the crisis of journalism by fostering a relationship of dependency” and “with official sources and a climate of decontextualized, insular, propagandistic reporting that generates consent for aggressive state militarism and downplays widening wealth disparities inside the US” (Anderson and Kincaid, pg. 175 & pg. 176). Mass media then showed that there were problems in reporting and Stewart took it upon himself to point out these flaws to the public. However, when the public is no longer reliant on mass media, they look for information elsewhere. Since the Internet was introduced it has expanded enormously and mass media is no longer a primary source of information. With the introduction of the internet mass media has been undercut by the emergence of internet and online culture. This change in the media landscape slowly came with a new phase of the culture wars and the meaning of satire news has changed with it. It has arguably become more respectful and at the same time, less funny.

Potential Of Satire

To give an example of the new “respectful” tone The Daily Show has adopted, it is most significant to use Trevor Noah’s interview with Tomi Lahren as an example. Trevor Noah as the new host of The Daily Show has offered a new turn in the program and shows that there is room for listening to the “opposition” without conflict. Lindsay Rowena writes about a particular episode in which Noah sits down with Tomi Lahren, conservative ex-host of “Final Thoughts With Tomi Lahren” on The Blaze. She says that they “achieved something that many Americans appear reluctant to do in the wake of the contentious 2016 presidential election - they talked to each other from opposing political viewpoints, civilly” (Lindsay, pg 1). The episode was of course filled with jokes but the conversation touched on many controversial topics that the two disagreed about. Despite the disagreement both Trevor and Lahren stayed civil and expressed their opinions without conflict. Both hosts also asked their audiences before and after the episode not to post hate towards the host that did not share their beliefs. Lindsay further goes to say that this 28 was “an attempt to take viewers beyond their ‘news bubbles’” (Lindsay, pg. 1) which for her is ”a term used to describe consumers self-selecting news sources based upon whether they align with their personal viewpoints”(Lindsay, pg. 1). Cupp and Tuggle quote Ted Koppel on this matter saying that “We are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we’re now a million or more clusters of consumers,harvesting information from like-minded providers” (Cupp and Tuggle, pg. 71).

Overall, The Daily Show and segments/ programs similar to it are clearly a success and do have an impact on the viewers as well as political culture in general. As Cao says in reference to Baum (2003) soft news programs may increase their viewers knowledge about politics by “piggybacking political information on top of their entertainment content” an effort that means that “even apolitical viewers can receive some exposure to political information” (Cao, pg. 31). Although there are certainly concerns regarding the influence that these satirical news programs have the comedic elements of The Daily Show make it a great news platform for those who do not care for the dryness of politics and do not want to put the effort into gathering all the information themselves by watching full presidential debates or watching a variety of news sources. Adding to that, the fact that Tomi Lahren and Trevor Noah were capable of using the platform to have a discussion regarding controversial topics in which they disagreed without either disrespecting the other for their views. While this “peace” could be pinned on the two people themselves it is interesting to take into consideration how harsh Tomi was regarding liberals and liberal ideology on her segments at The Blaze. Because she was known for being angry it was surprising for many to see such a “civilized” conversation. It can then perhaps be said that the satire format and platform allows for such opportunity considering the low expectations for seriousness. It seems as though the fact that this happened on a “fake news” program, both Noah and Lahren were able to share their views without lashing out at the other. Perhaps the satirical news format in this current media landscape can offer a safe space for contrasting opinions.

It even seems as though the debate held between Noah and Lahren on The Daily Show is an evolved version of the relationship former host Stewart had with Bill O’Reilly from the O’Reilly Factor on Fox News during the 1990’s-2000’s. Stewart and O’Reilly made several appearances together, on each other’s shows but also in a hour and a half long televised debate. When appearing on O’Reilly’s program, Stewart maintained his humorous demeanor while O’Reilly took the reins in questioning Stewart in his beliefs. In turn, when 29 appearing on Stewart’s program, O’Reilly answers Stewarts questions and jokes around more than he does on The Factor. O’Reilly’s appearance on The Daily Show was met with Stewart pronouncing that he only had one goal for this interview saying:

Stewart - Here’s all I want from you today. This is it. This is all we got to do in this conversation. Just one, I have one simple goal. I want you to admit that there is such a thing as white privilege. That's all I want.

The entirety of the interview consists of the two men discussing white privilege in an almost light hearted “friendly” discussion. The two also poke at each other with well mannered teases and O’Reilly even gets his own jokes in saying that:

O’Reilly - You and I are lucky guys. We made it, we worked hard. It’s not because we’re white! (audience reacts) Oh you think I’m sitting here because I’m white? What are you a moron? I’m sitting here because I’m obnoxious, not because I’m white.

The interview ends with the two men shaking hands and almost seeming as though they could be friends which is quite a significant difference to the exchange between Lahren and Noah who both took a more formal approach. What was also quite noticeable in the entire “debate” between the Stewart and O’Reilly was that Stewart came out funnier than Bill O’Reilly. The Socratic attitude that Stewart put made it hard for O’Reilly to come across as funny.

However, it seems as though in recent years The Daily Show doesn’t seem to be making the same impact. It can be argued that due to changes in the media and political landscapes that this genre of political satire, while still effective, has lost its cultural relevance. This is not to say that The Daily Show isn’t still popular or enjoyable, just that the comedy the show employs is perhaps not as great of a tool in the culture wars as it was a few years back. In this chapter the new phase of the culture wars will be discussed with Trump at it’s helm and as will the changes in the media landscape that have changed the way in which comedy is employed in the culture wars.

30 CHAPTER 3

Culture Wars in 2016- Present

Although previously the major focus on the culture wars was previously in the 60’s and 90s-2000s, it can be argued that in the recent American political climate, the culture wars have come to attention once again. As previously mentioned, the intensity of the culture wars ebb and flow over the years with significant political changes causing for political discontent and partisanship in American voters. After eight years of democratic leadership under the Obama Administration the United States was faced with an election in which the two main choices were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Trumps campaign and eventual victory has in many ways shocked the nation and the rest of the world. Democrats who believed politics to be on their side were thrown into a tumult when discovering the immense number of supporters of the seemingly extreme opposition. It can be argued that even in this political landscape the culture wars as described by Hunter and Buchanan are still very much relevant. Abortion and gay marriage are still very much a primary concern in the presidential campaigns and with Trump as president many feel as though the progress made by the left has taken a major step back for better or for worse. To add to that, in recent years issues like immigration, isolationism and nationalism have made their way into political discourse and are seen as topics of high importance to conservatives. These added points signify a new phase of the culture wars where in we see conservatives and liberals still tackling similar topics as in previous years while also finding themselves on new ideological battle grounds. For the traditional right who have been fighting for their traditional concepts of sexuality, family and religion Trump’s victory was a win. Milo Yiannopoulos, a significant right wing media personality and Trump supporter even stated that “he loved “Daddy” (Donald Trump) because he was “the first truly cultural candidate since Pat Buchanan” (Nagle, pg. 54).

In the years since the culture wars began they saw the old ideals around sexuality change, the entertainment industry being more free in content and in the eight years of the Obama presidency they saw the legalization of gay marriage. However, it can also be said that these issues, while still relevant and being protested and fought, are not the core of the current culture war. Instead the focus appears to be primarily on populism and nationalism and economic protectionism. With Trump leading his campaign with his “make America

31 great again” slogan and anti muslim immigration policies, Trump has shown how the right has come together in order to protest the leftist ideals that have slowly developed since the 60s. In saying this it should also be noted that many on the right were opposed to Trump and do not endorse his ideas. Trump’s campaign is seemingly primarily based on trying to bring back the “essence” or “soul” of America that many may think it has lost since the 1960’s. Trump’s campaign almost incited a sort of nostalgia among those who supported him, all of whom were told repeatedly that things were better in the good old days. The very slogan “make America great again” is vague enough to not specify anything but implies steps will be made to revert America back to when things were “better”.

It can even be argued that Trump’s campaign was a divisive one that refocused, very dramatically, the way in which the conservative party focused on certain topics. His “extreme” opinions and statements have created a movement within the Republican party in which those with perhaps more extreme conservative opinions felt they could finally come out and express those. This of course did create a divide within the republican party and brought forth a group of more extreme conservatives now referred to as the alt-right. Conservatives who disagree with Trump’s policies and actions are seen as “cuckservatives” by those in the alt-right. Cuckservative being “the passive cuckolding husband to the rapacious non-white foreign enemy at the gate” (Nagle, pg. 59). Further, the alt-right also to an extent blames the religious conservatives who formed the conservative stance in the culture wars during the 60’s and 90’s. Nagle explains this in saying that “the neocon and old-fashioned Christian right is hated in this way by the alt- right for, in one way or another, failing to protect the nation aggressively enough, by playing too nicely and thus not being up to the job of defeating feminism, Islamification, mass immigration and so on” (Nagle, pg. 59).

Despite initially taking advantage of Trump’s absurdity early in the campaign period, the media began changing their tone when he became the republican candidate and more mainstream news sources like CNN began to explicitly support Hillary Clinton during the campaign while Fox appeared to be the only channel praising Trump. Even late night television took an explicit side as said by Andrew Walenstein at the time “after handling Obama with kid gloves, late night TV hosts are breaking out brass knuckles for Trump” (Walenstein, pg. 10). Despite the great shifts in media coverage the Trump campaign has experienced, journalism has evolved immensely on its own in recent years. Cupp and Tuggle discuss this in saying that although most journalists of today provide 32 factual information they also “interpret the events of the day through a liberal prism at MSNBC, a conservative one at Fox, and a satirical one at Comedy Central” (Cupp and Tuggle, Pg. 71).

This does not take away from effects of Trump campaign. In fact, Trump’s campaign appears to confirm the fears Markus Prior had expressed regarding particularly partisan candidates have come to be true with the election of Trump. Although Prior feared partisan news would lead to viewers choosing partisan leaders, this is an element this thesis will not focus on. Instead the focus will be on how Trump’s election polarized the news, with news broadcasting stations like CNN suddenly taking a very significant step to the Democratic side of politics, a sharp difference with the past since Prior found the “CNN campaign coverage to be mostly centrist in 1992 and 1996” (Prior, pg. 103). Aside from affecting news broadcasting, usually unbiased magazines and papers ended up taking a “side” this election and endorsed Trump’s opposition, Hillary Clinton. This being the reason Trump began to brand media as “fake news”, using his twitter account to tackle all those who mocked or criticized them. The accessibility of his Twitter then ensured that his defence was seen by a large audience thereby bypassing mainstream media.

Aside from polarizing news sources, Trump undoubtedly was/ is a media sensation. He has inspired many parodies and is a social media phenomenon. Trump himself has claimed, in reference to the way he is being presented in media that: “no politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly” (Donald J. Trump). However, the fact that so many media outlets mocked and critiqued Trump perhaps attributed to how he won his campaign to start with. Hall et al argue that “the success of Trump’s candidacy in the 2016 Republican primary was in part due to its value as comedic entertainment” (Hall et al, pg. 71) and that “Trump’s campaign to become the Republican nominee was successful because it was, in a word, entertaining - not just for the white rural underclass, not just for conservatives, but also for the public at large, even those who strongly oppose his candidacy.” (Hall et al, pg. 72). Trump’s speech and actions were deemed ridiculous. There were those who found Trump funny and those who thought the man was offensive. Either way the man was a spectacle and videos, tweets and stories were seen all over the internet and on televised news which ultimately only helped spread awareness of his campaign. Although his mannerisms, so similar to his “character” on the reality series The Apprentice, helped him insult and attack his

33 opponents while he was running they now ensure that series such as The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight have plenty of material to satirize him.

Meme Culture

However, with the rise of the Internet, people are turning less to their televisions for their news or entertainment. In fact, Gaskin’s and Jennifer stated that “75 percent” ( Gaskin and Jennifer, pg. 191) of American adults go online for their news. The impact of this change should not be ignored, as Davis and Owen discuss “new media are mass communication forms with primarily nonpolitical origins that have acquired political roles” (Richard and Owen pg. 7) thereby saying that new media has a role in the political landscape. They say that the main difference between traditional and new media is “the degree to which they offer political discussion opportunities that attract public officials candidates, citizens, and even members of the mainstream press corps” (Davis and Owen, pg. 7). But most importantly, new media are interactive. Users don’t just view content, they have the chance to actively engage with it. Meaning that when new media becomes political users have the ability to engage with the content differently. As Davis and Owen say: “new media enhance the public’s ability to become actors, rather than merely spectators, in the realm of media politics” (Davis and Owen, pg. 7). While Davis and Owen published their work in 1998, their thoughts on new media are still relevant and applicable to how the internet has developed. We are currently living in a hybrid media environment where the internet has elements of television, radio and news. The difference is that now people have more potential and possibilities to actively engage with the content they come across and more “perceived” freedom in choosing the content they encounter. To imagine people using their power with this media for political change is not an unrealistic idea. An example of people using the internet for political change can of course be seen in the Middle East in 2011 in Arab Spring in which protesters relied on social media to push the protests. As Sharbaugh and Nguyen explain “a new generation of digital natives, fluent in the language of popular culture and the rapidly shifting semiotics of twenty-first-century communication flows, are creating powerful new forms of social activism and ad hoc civil society movements online” (Sharbaugh and Nguyen, pg. 134). They explain that remix culture from the 90’s evolved with the internet into being more than just entertainment and now has the capacity for “influential social and political commentary” (Sharbaugh and Nguyen pg. 134). Notably “their most influential expressions often take the form of humour, satire, bricolage, parody, 34 and pastiche, and are woven into the networked fabric of online pop culture” (Sharbaugh and Nguyen, pg. 135). This effectively describes what has developed as “meme culture”. Memes were first coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976) in which he speaks of the transferring of culture and ideas and relates them to the genes. He says that “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation” (Dawkins, pg. 192). He speaks of the effectiveness of memes in saying “When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell” (Dawkins, pg. 192). The core concept of memes as described by Dawkins can still be seen today. Memes as we know them can be described as images, video snippets or text the meaning of which is often understood through layers of internet language and cultural understanding. Because memes employ internet language and often require cultural understanding they are often humorous in nature and are spread fast and wide across internet platforms. Specific sites like 9gag are built around creating and sharing memes that reflect significant events, popular culture or cultural thought through humor. Sites like 4Chan go further and users create and share memes with much darker humor. Users can therefore navigate the internet for their own niche of meme humor. Regarding memes in today’s day and age, Sharbaugh and Nguyen explain that “like genes, memes are understood to be subject to the evolutionary forces of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance” and “as with genes, only memes well suited to their socio-cultural environment will spread successfully; those not so suited will fail to replicate and become extinct” (Sharbaugh and Nguyen, pg. 140). Therefore, memes that are successful in creating a balance between layers of internet language, pop culture and humor will be spread quickly and efficiently to countless people. This then seems a perfect vehicle by which to transport cultural or political ideology from one to another in a lighthearted/ non preachy manner. This is exactly what we have recently seen the new Alt Right doing regarding politics.

Memes have in the last decade been seen to be involved with/ influence political movements. In 2008 the Obama “Hope” poster, designed by Shepard Fairey went viral and Brad Kim, editor of Know Your Meme said that this “inspired countless parodies and was an early breakthrough that shed light on social media’s potential for crowdsourced campaigning” (Williams, pg. 10). Aside from this Kim talks about how in 2008 campaigns 35 were attempting to connect with younger voters by using social media. He says that this campaign period also saw single-serving sites pop up like Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle that generated random combinations of an Obama picture with a text such as “Barack Obama emailed your dad and told him how great you are” or “Barack Obama lent you his jacket”. The internet seemed to portray Obama as a helpful, relatable man. Kim says “the general message was: Barack Obama is good for you, he is in tune with the social media generation” (Williams, pg. 10). At the same time the positivity social media had towards Obama was not seen with Palin. Palin’s words were turned into soundbites that made her sound dumb and out of touch. Her pictures were turned into memes and Kim says that “in 2008 memes were simply a P.R nightmare for the Republican Party” but that “as far as memes go, 2012 was an even bigger nightmare for the Republican”(Williams, pg. 10). Mitt Romney’s wealth was used against him and he was portrayed as an evil rich white man. Kim says “A lot of memes ended up portraying Mitt Romney as the Sith Lord of America” (Williams, pg. 10). However the last presidential election saw the tides turn and as Kim says “meme culture has outgrown its longstanding, left-leaning edge” (Williams, pg. 10).

Pepe the Frog and Troll Culture

Pepe the Frog is a meme that is supposed to portray a frog-like stoner creature. It was created by Matt Furie in a comic series Boy’s Club and was mostly adopted by 4chan and Reddit users. However, after Pepe found its way into mainstream internet after being posted by one or two celebrities, 4chan and Reddit users attempted to make him less likeable for the mainstream. Rose Friedman says in an interview with Robert Siegel that “Pepe started appearing in hateful memes so that celebrities and others would stop using him”. Anonymous white nationalist @JaredTSwift was interviewed by the Daily Beast and explained the problem reddit and 4chan users have with memes making their way into the mainstream by saying “ Normies are basics—agreeable, mainstream members of society who have no knowingly abhorrent political views or unsavory hobbies” and “when mainstream culture gets in on the joke, in other words, the joke is ruined forever” (Nuzzi, pg. 1). Therefore, in an attempt to avoid Pepe being destroyed by the “normies” he was used to portray memes regarding racism, anti-semitism and white nationalism.

Later in July 2015 a meme of Smug Pepe was submitted onto 4chan. The frog was made to look like Donald Trump and was later retweeted by Trump himself. After that the frog 36 was used in support of Trump’s campaign and of Trump himself. @JaredTSwift says that because of this “in a sense, we’ve managed to push white nationalism into a very mainstream position” and “Trump’s online support has been crucial to his success, I believe, and the fact is that his biggest and most devoted online supporters are white nationalists” (Nuzzi, pg. 1). Pepe has now been declared a hate symbol by the Anti- Defamation League. But the frog remains the figurehead for the online alt-right meme movement.

Trump has indeed solidified his position in meme culture and it has seemed to work in his favor. As mentioned before, Trump has even tweeted memes of himself as Pepe. His online activity has involved cases where Trump retweets questionable memes that flirt with the ideas of the alt-right without him ever taking responsibility for belonging to that group. Nikko Heikkilä talks about this, saying that Andrew Anglin describes this as a “wink-wink- wink strategy, as a kind of subtle recognition of these views on Trump’s part” and that “some alt-right supporters adopted the term ‘glorious leader’ in reference to Trump” (Heikkilä, pg. 12). Heikkilä says that “in accordance with meme and troll culture, one user described Trump as ‘meme-able’ and ‘entertaining’ and said that through Trump, alt-right ideas have gained much greater influence” (Heikkilä, pg. 11).

Troll culture is important to define as it is a big part of the meme and internet culture that the right and alt-right are in. Trolling, as described by David Porter is “named after the fishing technique in which one lets a boat drift while dangling a line with baited hook attached and waits to see what bites” and “In trolling’s Usenet incarnation, the hook is baited with misinformation of a specific kind: if it is at first glance incorrect, and at second or third glance comically incorrect, in a deliberately comic way, it’s probably a good troll” (Porter, pg. 40). What trolling then essentially is, is tricking an unsuspecting person in to thinking that the information you have provided is correct while in fact it is not. In fact within the alt.folklore.urban subculture Porter explains that “trolling is accepted and reinforced” and “it serves the dual purpose of enforcing community standards and of increasing community cohesion by providing a game that all those who know the rules can play against those who do not” (Porter, pg. 40).

While this is how trolling may have initially begun it seems as though trolling and troll culture have developed into something a bit more mean spirited than deception. As Richard Seymour explains “trolls are the self-styled pranksters of the internet, a subculture 37 of wind-up merchants who will say anything they can to provoke unwary victims, then delight in the outrage that follows” (Seymour, pg. 11). Seymour goes on to discuss how the suicide of a 12 year old boy sparked trolls to post messages on his MySpace page in which they “implied that his suicide was a frivolous response to consumerist frustration” and one post even “contained an image of the boy’s gravestone with an iPod resting against it. All because the trolls spotted that the boy had lost his iPod a few days before. To make matters worse, Seymour says that “the more furious and upset the Henderson family became, the funnier the trolls found it” (Seymour, pg.11). This type of trolling is specifically known as RIP trolling and “treats grief as an exploitable state” (Seymour, pg. 11). Unfortunately much of what constitutes as “troll culture” feeds off the distress or frustration of a “victim”. Like Wilson, Fuller and Mccrea say “The Internet’s folk wisdom for trolls says: ‘Do not feed them!’” because “this remedy rests on a belief that acknowledgement and interaction are the barest matters of subsistence in an attention economy” (Wilson, Fuller and Mccrea, pg. 1).

Trolls as Seymour states are “distinguished from their predecessors by seeming not to recognise any limits”. Being able to keep their online identities anonymous trolls have a freedom on internet terrain they do not have in real life and seem to therefore cross boundaries that people would not normally do when standing face to face with another person. Online trolls are however, at their core, tricksters and their humor derives from the pleasure of tricking someone into believing something or to just wind them up.

However not all of those on the political right are trolls nor are all trolls on the political right. As Seymour says “if anything unites trolls, cyber-sexists and conspiracy theorists, it is that they are out to derail the conversation, either for laughs, to shut women up, or to impose their own obsessions” (Seymour, pg. 12). Trolls therefore do not only trick but also present their opinions, views or obsessions to those who oppose or disagree in the way they think will most rile up their opponent. This funnily enough is reflected in what some of the right’s politicians and spokespeople are resorting to. Seymour mentions that “Trump himself often gave the impression that he was trying to see what he could get away with saying for the lulz, whether it was claiming that tax avoidance just made him smart, or stating that his plan to profit from foreclosures was ‘the kind of thinking our country needs’, or denouncing the mothers of dead soldiers” (Seymour, pg. 12).

38 It seems as though through memes and troll culture, the alt-right has discovered a new platform on which to exercise political humor. Much like the political left had The Daily Show, the right now has dominance over internet humor. And much like how conservatives could not break through with their own variation of The Daily Show, the left does not appear to be able to rival the alt-right’s power in memes. Tumblr is one of the few internet spaces left where those on the left aren’t challenged by the right but it seems as though the politically correct or “pc culture” practiced there is only working in the right’s favor. The online right is using the left’s vocabulary against them and satirizing them in memes. The phrase “check your privilege” is for example, used almost excessively by the left. However, the right has taken the phrase and used it, as Nargle says, it is “a phrase that became so central to Tumblr-liberal culture that it was often parodied by the right” (Nagle, pg. 74). Liberals started being referred to as “Snowflakes” or “Social Justice Warriors” (SJW’s) and compilations of “triggered” SJWs are plentiful on YouTube. As Nargle says “YouTube vloggers produced an abundance of popular commentary videos and ‘SJW cringe compilations’, while alt-light celebrities like Milo built careers from exposing the absurdities of the kind of Tumblr identity politics that had gone mainstream through listicle sites like Buzzfeed and anti-free speech safe space campus politics” (Nagle, pg. 45). The absurdities of Tumblr identity politics that Nargle refers to are instances in which victim culture and the need for safe spaces interfere with the logic of a political debate. She mentions that the left at the height of power were feared on social media due to their ruthless calling-out of minor transgressions. She goes on to say that “Internet spaces, subcultures and identifications fostered a culture of fragility and victimhood mixed with a vicious culture of group attacks, group shaming, and attempts to destroy the reputations and lives of others within their political milieu, later dubbed ‘cry- bullying’” (Nagle, pg. 75). The intensity of attack from the left again, does not work in their favor against the meme creating alt-right. In terms of satire, the tables appear to have turned in the sense that the alt-right, in recent years, have finally used the left’s “power” position and are currently using it to satirize them through memes.

39 Conclusion

As has been discussed in the previous chapters, the divisiveness between the political left and right in America has had a direct impact on the political humor employed by these parties. This divisiveness is of course a consequence of the political struggle seen within the culture wars.

To briefly summarize, during the 1990-2000s, The Daily Show and others that have followed its highly successful format have relied immensely on satirical humor while the right never was able to find their footing in this televised format. The aspects that made The Daily Show so successful were its satirical format in which the show parodied the well- established traits and characteristics of newscasters and televised news shows in combination with the socratic interview style employed by Stewart. As mentioned earlier, part of The Daily Show’s success was that it begun in a media landscape that revolved around mass media. Media were able to communicate its message to a mass audience who were essentially reliant on the information given by larger media companies due to a lack of other options. It also meant that the viewers knew the structure and norms of televised news thereby making it more effective that The Daily Show went and imitated the format. In this way Stewart had the opportunity to critique the news while mocking it at the same time. The critique Stewart delivered regarding news reporting (mass media) echoed the frustrations many would have had at the time. A huge element of The Daily Show during its “golden age” was that it critiqued mass media and its practices as much as it did politics. Something that the show has seemed to inevitably have lost since Noah took the reins. While Noah does occasionally question the online practices of politicians it does not have the same impact.

Within the context of the culture wars it seems that we can associate the left with news satire and the right with meme culture. In this case it is important to note what these two types of humor are and what sets them apart in order to really see what their role is within the culture wars. This indicates in a very general way how the different sides utilize humor within political discourse. Because I have discussed satire previously at length in chapter two it seems necessary to outline the elements of meme and troll humor briefly as well so that a comparison can be made between the types of humor used by the different opposing sides on the political spectrum. 40 With the emergence of the internet and internet culture, the right, as mentioned in chapter three have made the most of the changing media landscape in order to spread and participate in their own brand of humor. With the emergence of the internet trolls and meme culture the right had a new platform other than their more serious TalkRadio platforms where they could practice their form of political humor with more possibilities. Online meme and troll culture is arguably a very different type of humor than political satire. Meme culture can perhaps be best described as humor that rests on “schadenfreude”. Schadenfreude being the German word referring to the enjoyment derived from the misfortune of another person. Specifically the alt-right meme and troll humor appears to be strongly based on this concept, standing behind their humor that it’s all for the “lulz”. With the great number of SJW (social justice warrior) compilations on YouTube it seems as though the right does derive laughs from the mishaps of others. To be clear, there are a great variety of memes and not all of them are inherently belonging or in any way affiliated with the political or alt-right nor do all memes employ the idea of schadenfreude. On top of that, the main difference between schadenfreude and lulz is that oftentimes the lulz cause the misfortune that the schadenfreude is derived from. As Whitney Phillips says “Like Schadenfreude, lulz emerge from the misfortune of others” and “unlike Schadenfreude, which implies passive enjoyment of random misfortunes, the agent of lulz is either the direct source of the target’s misfortune or at the very least is living vicariously through the responsible party” (Phillips, pg. 495). The difference here from satire is that while both types of humor make fun of or mock another, satire usually only works when mocking those in power. Essentially satire also has a self doubting socratic element to it (as seen very clearly with Stewart) while also making fun of the powerful. It is a self deprecating type of humor. Troll humor on the other hand takes no prisoners and is more free, therefore they are free to mock whoever they please in whatever way they would like. Troll and meme humor do in some way speak truth to power in that trolling in itself is a form of power play although this is vastly different to satirical power play.

One of the other big differences between left wing political satire and the right’s meme culture is of course that meme culture does not require a “big media company” to produce content. Instead, people can view and actively participate in the creation/ sharing of memes thereby spreading the message further and more directly. Meme culture can therefore fit in with participatory culture in that there is not a definitive line that separates creator from consumer. The consumer can interact with the content and choose to create 41 and share as well. Not to mention, a program like The Daily Show requires twenty minutes of thought out content, archival work and a whole team. It is therefore in contrast to meme culture, far more expensive and difficult to reproduce.

Henry Jenkins defines participatory culture as being a “culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices” and “a participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another” (Jenkins, pg. 3). Jenkin’s definition of a participatory culture indicates that there is a sense of community born from the freedom and ability to contribute, share and consume. Due to its accessibility those who interact with the media are more free to view and share the content as well as allowing for a wider range of people to join.

In contrast political satire as used by the left can be defined as more traditional consumer culture in which the consumers rely on the creators to give them content which they can not create or participate with in the way that participatory meme culture allows. This difference alone has an impact on the way humor is employed in the context of the culture wars. On the most basic level, one side (the left) is reliant on receiving political satire while the other side (the right) can actively view, share and create content. In relation to the culture wars, one of the big points being discussed is the right to freedom of speech. With university students protesting speakers such as Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos the right has had reason to argue that the left is trying to censor anyone who does not fall in line with the left’s way of thinking. The reaction appears to be the right using their full freedom online where they (anonymous or not) express their political thoughts/ beliefs through the use of memes. Since the right feel silenced by the left’s reaction at universities, the lack of right leaning television the internet becomes their place of freedom.

With the election of Donald Trump and the partisan discourse that has amplified since analyzing the role of satire and humor in the culture wars can be of importance as to understanding discourse of the culture wars as a whole. Since both parties have been seen to use humor to discuss partisan politics within the framework of the culture wars it can be argued that it is an important part of the culture wars discourse in itself. Especially now that we can see how the right has taken advantage of internet culture and are no

42 longer in a position in which they are forced to deal with an abundance of “left wing satire” there is a change in how the right communicates.

Political satire as discussed in chapter two essentially consists of mocking those in power which is something The Daily Show has been able to use effectively considering how the left has continued to strive for change within the culture wars. However, because of the changes in the media landscape, internet culture is more accessible and gives the right a chance to connect and share much more easily than they ever could in the past. This may indicate the start to a whole new form of political discourse as the right may just unify eventually through these means.

Overall this research aimed to explore the role of humor in the culture wars of America. What it has shown is that while the left has consistently had a strong claim in comedy and political satire in particular, the right has caught up significantly and is now using the full force of the internet to its advantage. Further, the role of humor can be argued to be an indicator of which party is hegemonic in political discourse in America. Formerly, political satire was reserved almost solely for the left based simply on the fact that the conservatives and the right in general stood for big corporations, big money, traditional values and “power”. This can be seen as a little too generalizing so to be more specific: the right’s culture war strategies were strictly business, all serious and very little or no humor. Inherently that gave the right little validity in satire considering satire generally mocks the powerful. However, in recent times the political discourse employed by the democrats and the left has, in the eyes of the right, become increasingly aggressive and at times even oppressive in their unforgivingness towards those who cross politically correct lines, easily calling people racist, sexist, homophobic etc. This is an exaggerated perspective perhaps on call-out culture which on the left has a certain puritan streak which does not offer much room for humorous discourse. These Tumblr politics as Nagle calls them have given the right plenty of material with which to mock them. The right, who have not had this much comedic power before in the culture wars are taking full advantage of the at times “extreme sensitivity” of the left and mocking them relentlessly.

What we seem to have now is a media landscape where the left still stand dominant in satire in mass media (radio excluded) but that the cultural relevance of their programs are diminishing. While their satire news format has yet to be replicated by a conservative, the media landscape has now evolved in favor of the internet and participatory culture. 43 Ultimately what examining satire within the culture wars can do is give a clear timeline of how the discourse of the culture wars has evolved while simultaneously indicating where the political and satirical power lies.

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