Welcome to this edition of These Revolutionary Times. On most Sundays, we focus on a small selection of papers, articles, and essays published in various publicly available sources that reflect political change already happening or that we think ought to happen or ought not to happen in 21st Century America. Our goal is usually to spur people to read these pieces with an open-minded but critical focus and engage here in an interchange of ideas about the issues raised in them.
However, today is April Fools Day.
An Appeal to Serious Purpose
Here, we make a pretense of lofty purpose, by citing research and commentary on the potential uses and effectiveness (or not) of humor in advancing progressive goals (after which, we’ll get on to the good stuff, which is examples of recent humor, and your favorites and new discoveries, in the comments).
But first...
The Origin of Political Satire
This is all you need to know: Lysistrata, background and text (just skip the introduction...)
Why we need to think carefully about Political Humor
We’d like to think that sending our conservative relatives videos by John Oliver or Trevor Noah will immediately convince them that they were wrong, and induce an abrupt leap to the left. Or maybe we just wanted an excuse to re-watch the videos ourselves, when we were supposed to be cleaning the bathroom.
But we all know what it feels like to be the butt of a joke. (What? You’ve never been laughed at? Are you not part of any group or demographic that gets mocked? Not sure I believe you...) So maybe we just sent those videos to start a fight, or make ourselves feel superior.
On the positive side, what purposes might we hope political humor could serve?
- Opening doors: Ideally, we want minds changed. But even a little softening of hardened attitudes can cause people to start being aware of alternate ideas.
- Painlessly delivering information: A spoonful of sugar can help the facts slide in.
- Lightening the load: Humor can make us feel better, relieve stress and fear. Shared laughter helps us bond.
- Increasing motivation: It may make politics seem less dreary, and thus draw in the disaffected.
On the negative side, what might we need to be concerned will happen if we deploy humor?
- Getting doors slammed in our faces: If someone feels they, or their friends, or their identity group are the target of the humor, the response will more likely be anger, not laughter.
- Causing people to hold to their fake news more strongly: Challenging a strongly held belief, even with facts and charts and proofs, can cause the target to cling even more firmly to their belief. Changing our minds is uncomfortable. We especially don’t like being made to admit we were wrong.
- Reducing trust in politicians and the political system, decreasing motivation: If we make fun of politicians, including our own when they deserve it, or put on display the foibles of our political system, do we risk disillusionment? Will people feel helpless to effect change?
Should we reserve humor for our own fun and relief, and not expect it to be useful for outreach? Or are there conditions under which some forms of humor may positively influence some particular sets of people? Let’s see what the pundits, practitioners, and professors have to say.
Actual Research (WooHoo!) and Opinion on Political Humor
“Comedians as Activists in the Era of Trump”, Michael Stahl, Splitsider, Jan 20, 2018
Let's start with the experience of the comedians themselves — how did they respond to the shock of Trump?
Though it’s taken comedians some time to gather themselves since the Mike Tyson uppercut that was election night, it appears America’s standups, eager to take action in these turbulent times, are finally becoming mobilized. Just as Donald Trump mounts his throne in Washington, D.C., comics — some with a history of providing humorous political commentary, others, publicly indifferent to politics before, but now vocal about the sad state of the union — are hitting the clubs and theaters in big numbers, looking to gift the country some mindful comedy throughout the coming administration.
This is followed by the experiences of several comedians, coming to terms with their new roles.
“Not just funny: Satirical news has serious political effects”, Jeff Grabmeier, Ohio State News, Jan 23, 2017
This covers work done at Ohio State University. Apologies to them, but I have to use this as a cautionary example, and a recommendation to take all the research here with a lump of salt. Here is the study setup:
The study involved 146 college students who selected news clips to watch concerning climate change, gun control and immigration.
The participants were first presented with an overview page that had eight selections of news videos on just one of the three politically polarizing topics. Four of the clips were serious news clips that were said to be from MSNBC (liberal news) or Fox News (conservative news). Four were said to be from satirical news sources “The Spoof” (liberal) or “Mock the Week” (conservative).
But in fact, all the clips were from C-SPAN. For the serious news, there were two pairs of videos that were identical, with the only difference being the descriptions of the clips on the overview page, which gave a conservative or liberal slant to the available videos, and whether they were reportedly from Fox News or MSNBC.
The satirical sites also had two pairs of identical videos, but with different text crawls across the bottom of the screen with satirical commentary with a liberal or conservative slant.
After watching two videos on the first topic, participants had the opportunity to select videos on the other two topics.
Later, they suggest:
Results showed that, in general, participants selected the serious news clips more often than the satirical ones. However, those who said they had lower interest in politics were more likely than others to choose the satirical clips.
“These results suggest that satirical news can engage people who otherwise would avoid political news,”
But wait...the subjects weren't given the option to not watch another video. Maybe if they were allowed to say “none of the above”, or presented with a funny cat video as an option, they would not have “shown interest" in the remaining news / satire. That is, there was no real baseline or control case.
That doesn't mean the other conclusions from the research are wrong, and there are some interesting bits, like…
In general, participants selected clips that lined up with their political leanings: Republicans chose conservative clips, while Democrats chose liberal clips.
But there was a difference when it came specifically to the satirical news clips. Republicans tended to choose the conservative satirical clips, but Democratic-leaning participants didn’t have a preference for liberal videos from the satirical sites.
Speculation is that curiosity led the liberals, who may never have seen conservative satire, to want a peek at what it was like.
Theories and Effects of Political Humor: Discounting Cues, Gateways, and the Impact of Incongruities, Dannagal G. Young, Oxford University Press, 2018
This is a review of the research on political humor in the late-night TV shows (Daily Show, Colbert Report, and similar), put into context. Not sure you need to read any of the others, after all. (Kidding, yes, you do.) This is mainly useful for the citations. Which I’m going to remove from the quotes, for readability (go get them from the original). Some points made here:
Humor may slip past unchallenged:
Is political humor an agent of influence or merely a barometer of public opinion? If the audience is complicit in the creation of meaning through humor, could that enhance its persuasive capacity? Intuitively we know that topics treated in a humorous way are often perceived as less offensive than when presented seriously. If humor can playfully present information or argument without eliciting a negative audience reaction, then employing it could be a promising way to incite attitude change. Indeed, research consistently indicates that humor reduces counterargumentation, or argument scrutiny, in response to the premise of that humorous text. However, the mechanism responsible for this phenomenon remains elusive. On the one hand, some scholars suggest that the complex task of reconciling incongruity reduces cognitive resources available to scrutinize message arguments. On the other, some studies suggest that the reduction in argument scrutiny is a result of the listener discounting the message as “just a joke,” a mechanism referred to as a discounting cue. While this debate may seem tedious, the implications are profound. If humor’s ability to suspend argument scrutiny of the listener stems from the listener’s decision to treat the text as “just a joke,” then the potential power of humor depends on the audience’s willingness to play along. If, however, the reduction in counterargumentation is a result of humor’s drain on cognitive resources, then the listener is at the mercy of the humorous text.
Note that one big uncertainty: “If humor can playfully present information or argument without eliciting a negative audience reaction...” Yep, that's the big question, all right, that determines whether we can employ humor for outreach. Looks like this has been left for "future research”.
But, unfortunately, that doesn't mean it leads to conversion based on material facts. Rather, exposure to political comedy primes one's felt response, to make a later change more likely.
In spite of political humor’s documented ability to suspend argument scrutiny, researchers have yet to find strong and consistent evidence of humor’s persuasive capacity. ... Research has also demonstrated that exposure to political humor can increase the salience of certain issues or constructs in the minds of the audience. Here, the focus is not on attitude change per se, but rather on the priming of certain issues, events, or traits that could affect subsequent decision-making processes.
They go on to say it can be a “gateway" to more political involvement. But they caution that what the hearer takes away depends on what they brought.
Since humorous texts are incomplete until reconciled by the audience, the nature of the incongruity helps determine what kind of contribution a listener will make and hence what that text will ultimately come to mean. ... In the case of satirical irony, the incongruity is presented by the gap between what is said and what is meant—or between what reality is and what it ought to be. …
Once an incongruity is presented, the audience takes over in constructing the text’s meaning. The cognitive contribution made by the listener depends on what he or she brings to the table: political knowledge, political beliefs or ideology (selective perception), as well as psychological characteristics and viewing motivations. Viewers’ own orientations toward such programs (Do they consider them straight entertainment, or do they see them as holding some informational content?) shape the extent and nature of mental effort that they will dedicate to processing such programming, hence influencing the outcomes of exposure as well.
However, there is nothing about splitting the subjects into groups and testing for a different effect on people who start from some agreement with the liberal point of view, and people who come with an oppositional attitude. (And that lack is why you should look at other research.)
“How Does Political Satire Influence Political Participation? Examining the Role of Counter- and Pro-Attitudinal Exposure, Anger, and Personal Issue Importance”, Hsuan-Ting Chen, Chen Gan, Ping Sun, International Journal of Communication (University of Southern California), Vol 11 (2017)
This sounds like it might be closer to what we want to find out… It's also of interest because it's not US-based — the subjects were in Hong Kong, and the medium was satirical cartoons rather than TV shows.
As a type of entertainment-oriented political content that aims to criticize politics and reveal violations of social norms in an implicit and playful way, political satire has drawn scholarly attention in terms of whether it could play a significant role in facilitating a more engaged public. Much academic research has examined the potential impact of exposure to political satire on behavioral engagement. However, there are inconsistent results regarding the influence of political satire on political participation.
… we argue that whether the satirical content supports or challenges one’s political views should matter in influencing emotional arousal given that political satire is less entertaining when it disagrees with one’s views or criticizes a public figure one supports. In addition, the literature on selective exposure has demonstrated that counterattitudinal content is likely to produce dissonance that makes people uncomfortable. Studies of political discussion have also found that opposition in one’s communication network may exacerbate rather than offset a state of anger. Thus, to build on the line of research on political satire and negative emotions, we examine exposure to pro- or counterattitudinal political satire and propose that counterattitudinal satirical content is more likely than proattitudinal content to evoke anger.
But their results are what we might expect, rather than what we want to hear — people get riled up, and not in a happy way, by satire they don't agree with...and they get more politically active as a result.
This study advances the understanding of how exposure to political satire contributes to participatory democracy by examining three important factors: different types of exposure to political satire (i.e., exposure to pro- or counterattitudinal political views), anger, and personal issue importance. Focusing on the issue of universal suffrage in the 2017 Chief Executive Election in Hong Kong, results from this study suggest that exposure to counterattitudinal political satire is more likely than exposure to proattitudinal political satire to elicit viewers’ anger about the issue, which in turn mobilizes political participation. In addition, the moderated mediation analysis revealed that the indirect effect of crosscutting exposure on political participation via the negative emotion of anger operates when individuals consider the issue personally important on an average level or higher.
So, that says, don't send those snarky liberal videos to your conservative relative. Dagnabbit.
“Stephen Colbert and the Pitfalls of Modern Political Satire", Sophie Culpepper, Brown Political Review, Nov 4, 2017
Remember how we thought that viewers of liberal news satire were more informed? Turns out there's a leeetle issue there as well.
Carlos Maza of Vox argued this year that “political satire makes us smarter news consumers.” Indeed, other analyses have suggested that late-night not only competes with the news, but sometimes surpasses it in quality and range of coverage. In November 2014 the University of Delaware conducted a study that seemed to back this up. Of the surveyed individuals who reported using mainstream media sources “sometimes” or “regularly,” only 7% to 12% had heard “a lot” about the subject of the study – net neutrality rules proposed at the time. On the other hand, 22% of Daily Show viewers, 23% of Colbert Report viewers and 29% who watched the John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight had “heard a lot.”
However (emphasis added by me)…
These statistics do not necessarily indicate thorough coverage by late-night hosts; perhaps the viewers of late-night political satire are a self-selected group of politically engaged consumers, which would imply they are already politically informed from reading more mainstream news. Then, if the late-night comedy medium can succeed in being both informative and entertaining, perhaps mainstream news outlets should take a page out of late-night playbooks—developing a more synthesized style of fact presentation, infused with humor to increase interest and understanding.
Such an aspiration is not only unrealistic, but would perpetuate the post-truth news culture; giving less attention to the accuracy of so-called dry or boring details means gradually losing understanding of the inner workings of complex systems, especially political and economic ones, and could mean a further erosion of accountability for those in power.
The survey’s results could also be explained by the trend that comedy explains issues less thoroughly, and oversimplifies them to the extent that viewers are given a false impression of their own expertise, and distorted reassurance of the impregnability of their views.
Oooo, ouch, that stings. It worries that satirical news isn't diving deeply enough, so we get a dumbed-down view...but we feel like we are more informed.
Can't we have some upbeat research, that agrees with what we want to hear?
“The science of satire and lies: Watching Colbert can fight right-wing brain rot”, Sophia A. McClennen, Salon, Mar 17, 2018
That sounds better! I suppose we should find out what they mean, though…
Many of us are aware of the fact that Donald Trump is the most-mocked president in U.S. history. But the other side of the story is that this is the first time in our nation's history that comedians have so consistently been under attack across such a broad range of venues and in such a public way.
So, what is it about these comedians that has the right in such a tizzy?
Clearly, they don’t like being ridiculed. But that isn’t the main reason why these comedians feel like a threat. Instead, the real challenge comedians pose is to the right-wing version of the “truth” that is actually grounded in lies, B.S. and faulty logic. And what really makes the right’s antagonistic attitude towards comedians interesting is the fact that the comedians aren’t just challenging right-wing truth claims; they are thwarting the cognitive processes that lead us to accept right-wing falsehoods as true.
And what's the cause of accepting winger lies?
We now have significant evidence that the Trump era has created a cognitive load — a mental exhaustion on the nation — one that is so significant that fake news headlines can be taken as true if repeated enough. ...
Back in early 2017, Maria Konnikova wrote a piece that explained what happens to the brain when it has to incessantly process lies. She cited research that shows that the brain has to first accept a lie as true, only to analyze it, then refute it. Over time, the brain tires of that process and slowly starts to accept the lies as true.
Ah. "Whatever I tell you three times is true.” “The drum keeps poundin’ a rhythm to the brain.” So how does satire help?
What is most interesting is that processing falsehoods and processing certain types of satire appears to follow a very similar cognitive path. In both cases, the brain has to be able to distinguish between what is said and what is true. And in both cases the brain has to reconcile ambiguity, incongruence and the misuse of words. It further has to process tone, context and body language to infer meaning. …
It’s important to note that sarcastic statements are like a true lie. “You’re saying something you don’t literally mean, and the communication works as intended only if your listener gets that you’re insincere,” explains Richard Chin.
So satire is training for handling lies. Unless that's over-simplified and I only think I understand it. :D
Got any more like that?
“In the 21st century, comedy is our greatest tool for progressive change”, Mary O’Hara, Quartz, Aug 24, 2016
This isn't formal research — it's anecdotal. It predates the above research. But the stories are real and positive. We're all in this together, shared laughter says.
So, the take-away may be that liberal satire is for us — for recovery from the political fray, for bonding, for motivation.
And if we want to consider using humor for outreach, we’ll have to take the sharp edges off — it’ll have to be welcoming humor.
Enough of That, How About Some Laffs!
These are a small sampling of various types of humor.
There are far too many potential examples, so I’m (mostly) limiting this to recent humor (after The Event We No Longer Mention happened). I’m trying to include some obscure and unusual items here and there, from other than the Usual Suspects, because you don’t really need me to point out Saturday Night Live or Last Week Tonight. And there’ll only be a few examples of each type.
This is an audience participation show, so you can fill in any “how could you possibly leave out…!” gaps, down in the comments.
(Oh, and, these are also restricted by whether I could find them in a form that doesn’t violate copyright. So there’s nothing from commercial / cable TV unless they’ve posted it publicly. Copyrighted images are especially problematic. Except...I’ve just found a way to show some images without copying them into the DKos library: Tweet them. Twitter will display them from their original location. Then embed the tweet. Presto! Anyhow, that’s why the images are tweets… One can only properly do this with images that the content provider invites us to tweet, such as the lead image in an online article. So it doesn't work for syndicated cartoons. If I can’t find a way to display an image, I’ll just link to it, and you’ll have to risk clicking through.)
Spoofs
I’m using spoof in the sense of fakery, pranking, pretense.
You know something is wrong when the faux happenings reported by The Onion seem like they could be true… Here's a scary one:
”Census Adds Question Asking Participants To Identify Any Unpatriotic Neighbor”
I looked through lists of best political spoof sites, and didn’t find anything even close to The Onion. If you know of anything, please post… Lacking a competitor, here’s more Onion work.
Fortunately, there are also live spoofs. Again, we have one major example — the Yes Men. This is a short film about the Yes Men, but has snippets of their work, and shows how they prepare for a stunt.
Parody
Parody mimics and sometimes mocks a real thing. This includes song parodies, that “borrow” the music and swap out the words — no mockery of the original composition is intended. Here’s the Parody Project’s Confounds the Science:
The Capitol Steps (“we put the mock in democracy”) has been delivering snark and musical parody for over 35 years. Since these are stage performances, they are better in person, so I’m not including an example.
Instead (parodying many of the same songs as The Capitol Steps...) we have Randy Rainbow!
Parody also refers to not-so-friendly impersonation. Alec Baldwin’s Trump portrayal was pointed enough to get under Trump’s skin.
“News” Shows
This is the pervasive category whose main exemplar is The Daily Show, now hosted by Trevor Noah.
Plus, there’s Saturday Night Live Weekend Update.
John Oliver has been doing finely snarky coverage of assorted subjects on Last Week Tonight.
The Daily Show begat the Colbert Report, then The Nightly Show, and others on Comedy Central. But it also led to Bassem Youssef’s Al-Bernameg and The B+ Show in Egypt. Youssef became non grata, and literally had to flee the country.
(We miss you, Larry Wilmore and Bassem Youssef and Jon Stewart...come back!)
Sketch comedy
Saturday Night Live is often on top of the sketch comedy hill. Here are “The Grabby Awards”…
There’s an interesting new kid on the block, Happy Ending with Nando Vila. It’s teaching wrapped in sketch, with embedded short interviews. Not intended as laugh-out-loud comedy, but has a gently snarky feel. Here’s the first segment of a series on capitalism:
Stand-up
This is an enormous category, since approximately every aspiring, and many established, comedians do stand-up. Let’s see, there’s Sarah Silverman and Chris Rock and Bill Maher and Amy Schumer and Russell Brand and… One can even include the late night shows here, because most of the political humor occurs during the host’s monologue. So, Steven Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers and...
Unfortunately, I’m no expert on who’s who in stand-up, so I’m going to mostly defer this category to you. I’ll just drop in a few examples, and then other folks’ top-[some number] lists.
Here is a snippet from Roy Wood Jr.:
And, of course, Lewis Black.
For more comedians, check out these lists of favorites — there is, of course, some overlap, so look for the unique entries:
“The 20 Best Stand-up Comedy Specials of 2017” — these are mostly behind paywalls, but segments are available on YouTube.
“13 comedians who lead the way on politics” — hmm, why does the URL say 14 comedians?
“If You Love John Oliver, These 7 Hilarious Political Comedians Are Right In Your Wheelhouse” — they include one right-wing comedian, whom you’re free to ignore.
Podcasts
Well, obviously, Pod Save America.
Here is Player.FM’s list of Political Comedy Podcasts.
I guess there’s not much visual bling for audio performances…
Snark
Here, I’m going to diverge from the expected, in order to highlight an unexpectedly good source...Cracked. They started as a Mad Magazine ripoff, but switched to crowdsourced writing. One can audition to write for them, or participate in contests to find interesting / bizarre topical news. A few recent examples, which I’ll provide without comment, except to say we could stand to pay heed to the ones about arguing with each other...
“Why We Can't Stop Hating the Poor”
“Be Warned: Your Own Trump is Coming”
“4 Things We Should Remember When Arguing About Politics”
“Widespread Stories Legitimate News Sites Got Totally Wrong”
Here’s an even more unexpected source of snark — it’s a technology industry news site, that probably derives most of their revenue from whitepapers with detailed analysis. But...they’ve been known for decades for their jaundiced view and sharp tongue. They’re not shy about taking jabs at people or companies or products. Folks in the tech industry reading this may have guessed who I’m talking about — it’s The Register, tag line “Biting the hand that feeds IT”. The headlines are typically more mean than the actual article text, but they don’t let anyone off the hook.
“Facebook reviews defenses as exec pulls foot from mouth: We didn't really mean growth matters more than human life”
The writing style there is fairly benign, but this next one has its claws unsheathed:
“Donald Trump jumps on anti-tech bandwagon, gets everything wrong: US president guns for Amazon in factually challenged tweet”
Combining his three favorite pastimes – trying to steal the news cycle, getting all his facts wrong, and spreading brain farts on Twitter – Donald Trump went on anti-Amazon tirade on Thursday.
While Facebook continues to be hauled over the coals for its loose relationship with the truth, and Google looks down with its hands stuffed in its pockets hoping no one notices it, it has fallen to the man who became president of the United States to make the case against the ecommerce giant.
They debunk all his claims against Amazon, and then show that his anti-Bezos and anti-Amazon tweets, curiously, all seem to involve the Washington Post. They conclude:
So the real question is: what does Trump have against The Washington Post? And the answer is: journalism.
Ok, ok, just a little more snark. There are many many many liberal political vloggers. Some are professional comedians, so might fit better in another category. Others are political commentators — their styles tend to range from snark through rant, as they likely wouldn’t be doing this if they weren’t upset. I’ll just list a few, and link to their YouTube channels. I’m using the names of their shows / channels.
The Liberal Redneck
Caution, trigger warning — the following are Sanderistas.
Humanist Report
Secular Talk
Rational National
Political Cartoons
For the cartoons, I’ve run into a little problem — I don’t have a good way to display cartoons here. I don’t really want to cheat by trying to tweet them and embed the tweet. Since I can’t show their work here, I’ll just name names and provide links to the cartoonists’ homepages and syndication sites, if available. If they post here, I’ll link to their blog.
In this case, I have the opposite problem as with stand-up. I’ve been a fan of cartoons for ages. But I’m not going to dump everyone I like at all here, only a few favorites.
Ted Rall, cartoons
David Horsey, latest cartoon
Lalo Alcaraz, cartoons, DKos
Jen Sorensen, cartoons, DKos
Matt Bors, DKos
Political Actions
This is the DIY comedy section — it’s what we do ourselves, to spark up our protests. This could include street theater and flash mobs, protest signs, projection art, pranks and trolling…
There were oodles of great protest signs from marches since the Orange Occupation started. Here are signs from the March for Life — these tend to be more pointed and less funny, for obvious reasons.
“Here Are Some of the Best March For Our Lives Signs”
“Betsy DeVos is the only thing that should be fired inside a school.”
"There is no Planet B"
"If you're not part of the SOLUTION, you're part of the PRECIPITATE"
"I'm not a mad scientist, I'm absolutely FURIOUS"
"First they came for the scientists and the National Park Service said 'LOL, no' and went rogue, and we were all like 'I was not expecting the park rangers to lead the resistance. None of the dystopian novels I've read prepared me for this."
"Protest sine" (accompanied by) "Protest cosine"
"So bad, even the introverts are here"
"What do Trump and atoms have in common? They make up everything."
"At the start of every disaster movie, there's a scientist being ignored"
"I've seen smarter cabinets at IKEA"
"All 6 of America's Nobel Prize winners last year were immigrants"
Sign carried by a bearded guy wearing a turban:
"Are you nervous to see me on your flight? (See other side)"
And on the other side…
"Worry not. The software I wrote for this plane is bug free;
Sofware engineer, Boeing 747-400, 777, 767-400"
My overall favorite, which appeared at multiple marches, was:
"What do we want?
Evidence based science!
When do we want it?
After peer review!"
Handing the Mic Over to You!
Got any New Comedic Discoveries? Favorites and classics that we should not forget? Something you just saw that you’re still ROTFL over? Your own work to share?
Action Items
One last thing...here are some actual, non-comedic, upcoming actions.
March for Life town halls, April 7: www.vox.com/…
March for Science 2018, April 14: www.marchforscience.com
If you haven't already, sign up for the mass demonstration in the event Mueller is fired: www.trumpisnotabovethelaw.org/…
But the big ongoing overriding critical all-hands action is the 2018 elections.