By Mollie Hemingway
Friday, November 11, 2016
On October 15, 2004, the CNN program “Crossfire” altered
its standard procedure of featuring two guests from different perspectives to
have just one guest: Jon Stewart. The hosts welcomed him and encouraged him to
promote his bestselling book “America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to
Democracy Inaction.”
He immediately tore into the hosts for the way their show
encouraged conflict. He complained that politicians can’t speak more freely
because it’s impossible to survive a media environment where shows with titles
like “Crossfire” or “Hardball” or “I’m Going To Kick Your Ass” will come after
them. He said Crossfire in particular was “bad” and “hurting America.” “Stop.
Stop hurting America” he said.
He called the hosts hacks and dismissed the idea that he
was sucking up to John Kerry when he asked him questions such as “How are you
holding up?” and “Are these attacks fair to you?”
Crossfire was canceled soon thereafter. Most people
credit Stewart for not just killing the show, but bringing forth a new age of
hyper-political, hyper-liberal late-night comedy. The news scene hasn’t changed
altogether much since Stewart’s temper tantrum — except for featuring far less
argument-sharpening debate and civil discourse than we had under “Crossfire”
when Stewart went on his tear. “Crossfire” used to be one of the few places
guests and hosts at least confronted conflicting views, including questions
about perspectives and assumptions. It engaged the viewers, rather than
ambushed or mocked them. It was also one of the few places on TV outside of Fox
News where conservative views were given an audience.
The decline of civil discourse didn’t just happen on
cable news shows, thanks to Stewart. He also helped kill it on late-night
comedy shows as well.
Rise Of ‘The Daily
Show’
Jon Stewart took over “The Daily Show” in 1999, and
during the eight years of the Bush presidency the “fake news” show grew into a
powerhouse. A 2007 Pew Research Center poll named Stewart as America’s fourth
most admired news anchor. The show won dozens of Emmys and multiple Peabody
awards. The New York Times called
Stewart “the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow.”
In a gushing 2008 feature on the show in the New York Times (“Is Jon Stewart the Most
Trusted Man in America?“) Michiko Kakutani called it “both the smartest,
funniest show on television and a provocative and substantive source of news.”
She claimed the show was “animated not by partisanship but by a deep mistrust
of all ideology. A sane voice in a noisy red-blue echo chamber.”
She didn’t list any examples of the show going after
Democrats, instead praising it for its handling of the “cherry-picking of
prewar intelligence, the politicization of the Department of Justice and the
efforts of the Bush White House to augment its executive power.” She quoted
Stewart saying he looked forward to the end of the Bush administration “as a
comedian, as a person, as a citizen, as a mammal.” He said that Bush “conducted
things” with “true viciousness and contempt.” As a sane voice would put it.
The show’s producers said they try to find stories that
“make us angry in a whole new way.” Sometimes, to get the crowd properly
whipped up, they had to slice and dice interviews to make targets seem like they
had said the opposite of what they’d said. Sometimes Stewart just got angry
at conservatives he’d invited on the show, particularly when they showed him up
on his home court, as Clifford
May, John
Yoo, Jonah
Goldberg, and various others did.
Kakutani wrote that Stewart used different comedic approaches,
but that he was “often” reacting to something “so absurd” that he didn’t say
anything, just stared blankly with an expression of dismay. Who can forget the
pencil tapping and the goofy exasperation Stewart perfected?
Liberal Political
Comedy Shows Expand
At the time Stewart went on his “Crossfire” attack, he
was preparing “Colbert Report,” a new “fake news show” that would have even
less viewpoint diversity than his “Daily Show.” Bill Maher had already launched
“Real Time with Bill Maher” a year prior, a weekly, hour-long liberal comedy
show on HBO. “The Colbert Report” satirized conservative pundit shows. It
“eviscerated” and “destroyed” conservatives until 2014, at which point Colbert
was given the coveted “Late Show,” replacing David Letterman.
Liberal “Saturday Night Live” alum Seth Meyers got his
own NBC late-night show in 2014. John Oliver got his “Last Week Tonight” show
on HBO that year, too. Liberal Trevor Noah was given “The Daily Show” slot last
year. Larry Wilmore replaced Colbert, but his show was canceled in August.
Samantha Bee, frustrated by the snub over at Comedy Central, launched her own
political show on TBS. She and Oliver are the comedians most likely to be
praised for “destroying” things.
Thanks to Stewart, late-night shows are liberal political
shows, with very few exceptions, and nearly all of the hosts are alums of “The
Daily Show” or otherwise inspired by his faux-news mockery.
Wilmore is enjoying success with his smart and funny new
show “Insecure” on HBO. That’s good, since the comment the New York Times made of his canceled show was: “any one episode of
‘The Nightly Show’ could occasionally go for prolonged stretches without a
single joke, something that intrigued some critics but failed to attract a
broader audience.” He also bombed his White House Correspondents Dinner
performance.
But I’m not sure that is something to be ashamed of.
Let’s remember back to 2011, when Meyers hosted it and spent much of the
evening mocking Donald Trump.
Obama and Meyers didn’t bomb. Far from it. But their
cruel and dismissive mockery, which they both maintained through the bitter end
of this election, doesn’t look so hot in retrospect.
Absurdity is at the heart of comedy. Mockery can be a way
to show that something or someone defies logic or is otherwise absurd. At its
best, and at the beginning, prior to 2004, “The Daily Show” excelled at using
mockery as part of its repertoire of comedy tricks. But different views than the elites’ aren’t
automatically absurd. When the majority of opposing arguments are treated as
absurd, the schtick wears thin.
Unfortunately, mocking opponents and hyperbolic extremism
are the only thing many comics can deploy. Early in “The Daily Show’s” run,
Stewart invited conservatives on his show, debated them, and showed respect to
a few of them. By the end, such treatment was rarer. The shows he spawned,
particularly Bee’s and Oliver’s, are not about dialogue or debate. They lack
the talent to engage opposing viewpoints even at the paltry level that Stewart
did.
Seriously, Where’s
the Humor?
The social justice televangelists dominating late night
have trouble being funny. But even actual funny people have trouble being funny
when politics get in the way. Stewart always put his clown nose on when
confronted about his bias in handling the news. “I’m just a comedian!” he would
cry. That worked better so long as he was being funny. As my better half wrote
eight years ago in a piece headlined, “Memo to the Daily Show host: You’re a
comedian!”
As George W. Bush’s presidency
wound down, it became obvious that a comedy crisis was looming. As you might
recall, there was much media thumb-sucking over what America’s gag writers
would do when they no longer had the tongue-tied Texan to kick around. To make
matters worse for the comedy scribes, Bush’s eventual replacement was a
well-spoken, walking civil-rights triumph who largely shared the entertainment
industry’s liberal politics.
In a New York Times article last year somewhat incredulously titled
‘Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke,’ the most influential
political comedian in America admitted he was at a loss.
‘We’re carrion birds,’ Daily Show
host Jon Stewart told the Times. ‘We’re sitting up there saying ‘Does he seem
weak? Is he dehydrated yet? Let’s attack.’
He never found it. Neither did his writers. Simply
nothing compared to the unrelenting attacks he made night after night during
the Bush administration. It was a bit sad, particularly after “The Daily Show,”
“Saturday Night Live,” and a host of other comedy venues were able to find the
humor in the Bush presidency.
Sarah Silverman was widely praised for her attempt to
bring Bernie Sanders supporters into the fold at the Democratic National
Convention. She gave a speech that got interrupted by said supporters. She told
them they were “being ridiculous.” Hillary supportive media loved it. They
thought it was expertly delivered and perfectly deployed for the maximum
effect. And maybe it was. But Dave Itzkoff had an article about it that
included this interesting tidbit:
Was there anything you wanted to do in your speech that the Democratic
National Committee wouldn’t allow?
At the very beginning, when Al
said, ‘I’m Al Franken, and this past year I’ve been hashtag-I’m With Her,’ and
I was going to say, ‘And I’m Sarah Silverman, and this past year I’ve been with
the possibly agnostic Jew.’ Because you know the Right is going to use these
emails to try to separate them. It’s what they want so badly. I just felt like,
let the comedian defuse it and just address the elephant in the room. But they
were like, no. And they are right. They’re right. But I get so indignant. At
least I’m aware, and awareness brings change, so maybe I’ll be less obnoxious.
No! She was right! It was a funny line and having a
Jewish comedienne make the joke would have worked well. But putting politics
about comedy at the expense of both is a great way to describe the last eight
years.
Earlier this year, late-night host Jimmy Fallon had Trump
on his show for a pleasant chat. The Samantha Bee crowd flipped out. Her rant
against Fallon treating Trump like a human being instead of mocking and
disdaining him as the rest of the “comedy” crowd did on their late-night shows
went viral. The elite publications such as the New York Times wrote up many stories on the matter. It was a big
to-do.
As my colleague Mary Katharine Ham said, “In 2008 and
’12, liberal comedians couldn’t be funny because Obama was too good— impervious
to ridicule. In 2016, they can’t be funny because Donald Trump is too bad—
inappropriate to ridicule. Makes one wonder when they can be funny.”
Ross Douthat wrote presciently that Clinton had a
Samantha Bee problem:
On late-night television, it was
once understood that David Letterman was beloved by coastal liberals and Jay
Leno more of a Middle American taste. But neither man was prone to delivering
hectoring monologues in the style of the ‘Daily Show’ alums who now dominate
late night. Fallon’s apolitical shtick increasingly makes him an outlier among
his peers, many of whom are less comics than propagandists — liberal
“explanatory journalists” with laugh lines.
Some of them have better lines than
others, and some joke more or hector less. But to flip from Stephen Colbert’s
winsome liberalism to Seth Meyers’s class-clown liberalism to Bee’s
bluestocking feminism to John Oliver’s and Trevor Noah’s lectures on American
benightedness is to enter an echo chamber from which the imagination struggles
to escape.
Watch Bee “explain” why she’s “voting for Hillary G-dd-mn
brilliant badass queen Beyonce Rodham” and tell me who in the world it’s
designed to speak to other than political ideologues committed to the rightness
of their cause but needing a desperate bolster.
Liberals very much like their comedians and their
mocking. For others, the Bee sketch is painful. It will make you question your
belief that whatever else you want to say about them, Canadians are a funny
people.
Even Attack Humor
Requires Understanding
As late-night comics have dropped comedy for advocacy,
critics have widely praised the move. Itzkoff was extremely defensive of Bee
when she got mad at Fallon for treating Trump civilly. Alison Herman wrote at
The Ringer of shows such as Bee’s:
There’s no line between the shows’
comedy and their advocacy; they’re one and the same. In a sense, they’ve moved
past parodying the talking heads who have so warped our public discourse, in
the vein of Stewart and Colbert, and fashioned themselves as an alternative to
them. In September, Ross Douthat attempted to lay the blame for our polarized
media landscape at Bee and Oliver’s feet. The truth is that things had
fractured long before Bee and Oliver claimed their small pieces of the pie. They’ve simply given up on countering
bad-faith partisanship with even-tempered civility and given a voice to a niche
of their own.
In other words, the faux-civility of faux-news Stewart
wasn’t even something he could pull off. Why bother pretending it was real?
Herman said of Colbert, “He also managed to use his new format to do what a
rigidly maintained persona could not: wear his anger on his sleeve, weaponizing
the sincerity previously hidden behind his character’s mask.”
Of Meyers, she wrote, “[T]he big shift was in the openly
appalled tone Meyers took toward the election, and in his willingness to branch
out from an endless stream of coy one-liners into the openly prescriptive. (On
Trump’s attempt to blame Hillary for birtherism: ‘You don’t get to peddle
racist rhetoric for five years and decide when it’s over,’ he said. No punch
line necessary.)”
Except that punch lines are necessary for comedy! Comedy
is effective, even as political action, because it reveals truths, not
force-feeds them. You lead the horse to water, you don’t shove his head into
the lake and drown him. Effective comedians help people make connections in
their own minds. People are persuaded when they are able to come to their own
conclusion, not when they’re told by some shrill harpy or hectoring preacher
that they’re a shitbag for voting for Trump.
Colbert hosted an election-night show on Showtime.
According to Itzkoff’s must-read review, it sounds like he forgot to put the
fun in funereal. For instance:
When [journalist Mark] Halperin
said that Mr. Trump was ‘now on the doorstep of 270 electoral votes,’ Mr.
Colbert answered: ‘Wow. That’s a horrifying prospect. I can’t put a happy face
on that, and that’s my job.’ Mr. Halperin added, ‘Outside of the Civil War,
World War II and including 9/11, this may be the most cataclysmic event the
country’s ever seen.’ Mr. Colbert replied: ‘Um. Well. We’ll be right back after
this message from Calgon.’ Few if any laughs were heard.
Laura Benanti bombed her Melania impression and
apologized on Twitter later saying she knew she wasn’t funny and she wouldn’t
have done the show if she’d anticipated the outcome. It got worse:
But a panel discussion that
followed — with Mr. Colbert, Mr. Heilemann, the radio host Charlamagne tha God
and the stand-up comedian Jena Friedman — felt thoroughly uncomfortable.
‘Anything that you want to tell us about how you’re feeling right now?’ Mr.
Colbert asked Ms. Friedman. She answered, ‘I feel as if I’m about to give birth
to a baby that’s already dead.’ Mr. Heilemann said he had nothing to offer that
would make anyone feel better, noting that a New York Times forecast said it
was 95 percent certain that Mr. Trump would win. ‘Wow, no one’s laughing,’ Ms.
Friedman said. ‘This is so sad and scary.’ Mr. Colbert tried to be encouraging,
saying: ‘It’s still America. It’s still a great country.’
Oh dear. It’s funny, but only because it’s so
unintentional. His freakouts spilled out everywhere. You can see him ask “What
the f*ck is happening?” and ask God how he could let this happen. You can also
watch Meyers get emotional.
David Sims at The
Atlantic loved that performance:
He was at once sharply funny and
nakedly emotional. He made an effort to speak to Trump supporters without
seeming entirely condescending. He acknowledged that in his position as a
well-off white guy, his anguish at the electoral result was not the only
perspective required on the night. He told jokes, of course, but with the
awareness that jokes alone won’t be what his audience needs going forward.
Listen, it was the least bad thing I’ve seen from Meyers
in ages. But do people have any idea how it comes off to those outside of a
liberal echo chamber?
Trump Should Be
Good For Comedy. Will He Be?
If comedians couldn’t be funny under Obama but could be
funny under Bush, you’d think they’d love a President Trump. A young comic I
really like tweeted this last month:
If you think Trump is good for
comedy, you haven't been writing jokes about Trump for over a year.
Michelle Wolf
8:54 PM - 13 Oct 2016
Bee, whose preachy moralism is predicated on cartoonish
villains to slay, should know this is the best thing to happen in her life. But
she also said that it’s hard to write jokes about Trump.
Clearly it is, for these women and for everyone else in
comedy. To make jokes about things, you have to understand them a little bit.
As these post-election freakouts confirm the reality that led to the election,
these comedians don’t understand Trump or his voters at all. Until they do, the
comedy will suffer.
Yes, there will long be an audience for elite crowds in
urban centers to have their viewpoints affirmed. There’s plenty of money to be
made in making cultural elites feel morally superior. You don’t have to
understand Trump or his supporters to make money and continue having the right
people tell you that you are awesome. In fact, the less you know about them and
more you mischaracterize them and their views, the better it is for your niche
domination.
At the same time, this echo chamber of smuggery isn’t
helping Americans have shared cultural goals, much less an ability to work
together to achieve them.
Jon Stewart is known for brutally deriding a show that
featured people of differing views civilly discussing issues of the day. He got
that show killed and significantly strengthened the world where cultural elites
engaged in groupthink mockery of those with whom they disagree.
The results include a further erosion of civility, a
decrease in Americans’ ability to understand each other and their concerns,
and, of all things, President-elect Donald Trump. Should late-night political
comedy continue in its path, who knows what the future holds.
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