Political Satire Is Changing The Way We Look At News

Shows like the Daily Show or the Colbert Report are often said to be liberal-biased. Although they poke fun at both sides of the spectrum, it is the Bush administration that is most often the butt of their jokes, and they do it well. So well in fact, that the fake-news approach is becoming increasingly popular, and attempts are being made to duplicate it. Even Fox News, the infamous Bush propaganda machine, has created its own fake news program titled—in a lame attempt at humor—“The Half-Hour News Hour.” I sat through an episode once, and it was the most painful half-hour hour I have ever experienced. Whereas the Daily Show takes news clips of the days events and give them a satirical twist, the Fox program relies on wholly fabricated events, in an attempt to belittle the left. For example, on a recent episode they brought in a fake climatologist to espouse his theory that all bad things can be traced back to global warming in six-steps, a theory he called “The Six-Degrees of Global Warming”… Are you laughing? Well you’re supposed to. That was,—sadly—the punch line after all. It was followed by a moment of obvious canned laughter. One word can sum up this pathetic attempt at comedy: weak.

So it would seem that although liberals in the States are seen as weak-kneed and bleeding-hearted, they at least do comedy better than the conservatives.

Even though Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert brought political satire into the 21st Century and mainstreamed it, they are hardly pioneers. It was, as David Shimke states in his article “Want to know what’s really going on? Ask a comic" (UTNE Reader, Sept-Oct ’06), Lenny Bruce who was the true pioneer of this style of in-your-face political humor. Bruce made regular appearances on the Steve Allen show in the 60s. Allen, who was no stranger to controversy himself, once commented that every skit on his show managed to offend at least one person. In response Allen said: We’ve decided that once a month, we will book a comedian who will offend everybody… A man who will disturb a great many social groups watching… The comedian on this particular episode was the most shocking comedian of our time, Lenny Bruce. Bruce managed to break television conventions when he joked about children sniffing glue, and Hollywood portrayals of ethnic people which he deemed exploitative.

Bruce’s act was so outrageous at the time that obscenity charges were filed against him in the states of California as well as New York, where he was to be confined on Oct 2, 1965. Bruce appealed the ruling on the basis of his first amendment rights, according to his FBI file, however, since he was unable to perform his act after the charges were brought against him, Bruce became penniless—a pauper. He died in 1966 from a morphine overdose; many people blame his alleged persecutors for his death.

Bruce, it would seem, paid the ultimate price to protect his first amendment rights, and although he died before his dreams could be realized, he paved the way for more biting social satire.

By today’s standards, Bruce’s humor was harmless. Comedians like George Carlin whose most famous skit revolves around the origins of the word “fuck,” and the late Bill Hicks who loved to push the envelope with skits like “Officer Nigger Hater”—which poked fun at the Rodney King saga—and “Jesus is pissed,” go much further than Bruce ever did, but if not for him these great comedians would have never been allowed to set foot on stage. As Caroline Frost wrote for the BBC: Controversial topics and provocative language may be a staple of contemporary comedy, but it is worth remembering that, before he fell off it, it was Lenny Bruce who set the stage.

But Bruce’s brand of political satire, and that of his successors, was rarely seen outside of night clubs until October 11, 1975 when Saturday Night Live first aired, including a skit called Weekend Update. Weekend Update took the format of an evening news cast, with Chevy Chase as its anchor. The skit opened with Chase talking obscenely on the telephone. Later he announces that the US Post Office was issuing a ten-cent stamp commemorating prostitution. But if you want to lick it, Chase jokes, it’s a quarter. A later segment of a reporter live on the scene at the Blaine Hotel following the 37th murder on the property was followed by an ad-spoof for the very hotel where the murders took place. It could be said that this was the beginning of fake-news. Of course it wasn’t until decades later that “fake-news” began replacing real news as a source of information.

In the 90s biting political satire was reborn, and placed on prime time television. Bill Maher’s successful Politically Incorrect featured guests ranging from comedians to serious politicos. It challenged the then current trend towards political correctness with unapologetic jabs at everything from politics to politicians, social norms to social movements, and American prudishness which seemed to be at an all-time high following the Clinton-Lewinsky saga. Maher, who was never afraid to criticize people within the entire political spectrum, was ill-prepared for the with-us-or-against-us attitude following the attacks of 9-11. The show was pulled from the air after Maher commented, referring to American military actions that we have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly. You're right. It seemed that political satire was on its way to becoming taboo once more; if not for the saving grace of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.

The Daily Show, which first aired in 1996, was originally hosted by Craig Kilborn who left the show in 1998. The helm was taken by Jon Stewart shortly afterwards and became more politically-oriented. Because the show airs on cable, which is mostly viewer-funded, it is less subject to the whim of advertisers and is therefore not hampered by the same fears that drove ABC to cancel Maher’s show. By 2005, according to Wired Magazine, the show received 1.4 million viewers per night, a relatively high number for any show on Comedy Central which Stewart referred to as the goofy, juvenile-delinquent network. So powerful is the Daily Show that Ted Koppel—famous political interviewer—was quoted in the Washington Post saying: A lot of television viewers — more, quite frankly, than I'm comfortable with — get their news from the Comedy Channel on a program called The Daily Show. (Washington post, September 24, 2004)

A November, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone named Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert America’s Anchors.

During the interview with Rolling Stone, Maureen Dowd—the article’s author—asked Stewart: Your show has thrived during the Bush administration. Will you miss it? Later she wondered if it would be harder to make fun of a President Obama, to which Stewart and Colbert said in unison His dad was a goat-herder! Stewart said that it wasn’t easy to make jokes about the Bush administration because …it is a comic box lined with sadness.

Although it would seem that more people are getting their news from Stewart and Colbert, Stewart reinforces (daily) that the show is fake news. But the fakeness is merely a tool. It is, as Maureen Dowd states, a fakeness that shows a sense in society that nothing, from reality shows to Bushworld, is real anymore.

And that’s the truth.

Photo by _fluffy

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