Satire Briefing Paper V

Jenna DePellegrini and Christina McAlister

This week in satire can be summed up into one joke from Bill Maher’s Real Time with Bill Maher-- “It feels less like an election, and more like a ‘Going Out of Business Sale’, doesn’t it?” Between the first round of presidential debates happening tonight, Trump’s tax scandal, and Amy Coney Barrett filling the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, Americans are certainly losing hope for the future of their country. That being said, what is there to laugh about? Well, political satirists have once again delivered on another week full of twisting horrific headlines with lots of humor. As this election cycle becomes more intense by the hour, Americans are relying on comedians to relieve some of their stresses and even trust them enough to inform them on breaking news.

Stephen Colbert was one such satirist taking headlines and turning them into skits that made audiences laugh. On the remark that the Trump Campaign is actively discussing radical measures to bypass election results, Colbert was able to simultaneously impart the seriousness of this news with sarcasm and irony that made the news more bearable for viewers to hear. According to a Trump campaign advisor, if Trump loses the election, his campaign is considering asking legislators in battleground states where Republicans have a legislative majority to bypass the state’s popular vote, and choose electors loyal to the GOP and the sitting president. Colbert commented on this news saying, “You really don’t want to hear the words ‘radical’ and ‘bypass’ connected to your heart or your democracy.” He went on to suggest that this tactic will be “framed in terms of protecting the people’s will and that is a constitutionally given power to state legislatures,” and that it was mildly suspicious that the Trump Campaign would tell the news media about this strategy; “Are they trying to raise the issue now so that it is less shocking when they bring it up for real?” However, the most poignant point Colbert made was this: “What Trump really wants to do is undermine your faith in this election, so you go ‘Ah, what’s the point of voting?’ Well, the point is, you vote, he goes, regardless of what he tries.”

However, the major headlines of the week can be was summed up in a single opening quote from Seth Meyers: “One of the greatest tax cheats in American history, a criminally negligent sociopath who lost the popular vote and is overseeing the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans is on the verge of putting a third justice on the Supreme Court, and Republicans are full steam ahead.” The breaking news story of Trump’s tax records and the continuing battle between Republicans and Democrats have been on everyone’s mind, with John Oliver commenting that, “There is a whole system that has gotten us to where we are now-- the undemocratic nature of America’s institutions,” and Bill Maher remarking, “[Trump] said, ‘Herd mentality will kill [COVID-19]’. Well, it killed the Republican Party.” We’ve known since the start of election season that the outcome of this election is a pivotal moment in American history, but only recently have media platforms and satirists started to seriously discussing and explaining to their audiences the legacy President Trump will impart on our country for generations to come, no matter the outcome of the election. This notion is further highlighted by the upcoming Presidential Debate tonight, which all of our Late Night Satrisits will cover live. One thing all satirists are agreeing on, however, is that the situation we find ourselves in now, is a result of the imbalanced, winner-take-all approach of our democractic system; John Oliver made this plain by saying, “A Democrat has won the national popular vote in four out of the last five elections, but we’ve spent twelve of the last twenty years with a Republican President. This is a result of the electoral college’s winner-take all approach which distorts the will of the majority, leading to the situation we currently find ourselves in.”

That situation being that our health crisis has become increasingly increasingly political, contributing to the political polarization we see now, and that American’s don’t have “a solid, centralized source of information for updates on the pandemic or political news in general.” Trevor Noah provided an example of this when he showed a clip during his segment “What the Hell Happened This Week” in where a pro-Trump politician tried to get people to wear masks during a rally, and was boo’d off stage by his audience. Trevor concluded from his interview with Dr. Fauci that “people are taking sides, and making political statements by wearing masks or not” and this in part comes from where they get their news media from, and what framing tactics are used by that media source. And these political statements are costing lives as the New York Times reports that, as of Sept. 28th, the global death toll for the pandemic has reached 1 million. The potential upset with the election and the GOP strategy of dragging out elections in swing-states shows how the American system overly relies on “Good Faith.” As Trevor Noah joked, “It’s a dangerous situation. Donald Trump is trying to grab the election by the pussy, and America needs to pull a Melania and slap that tiny hand away.”

While these more liberal-leaning comedians focused their late night shows on how Trump may skew the election or refuse to let go of his power peacefully, conservative-leaning political satirists cracked jokes about how angry Democrats are at Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Adam Yenser, on his show The Cancelled News, joked that “[Amy Coney Barrett] is so conservative that she vowed to never wear one of those slutty lace collars.” He also made the risque choice of making fun of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg by saying “Along with Mitch McConnell, [RBG] showed America that both liberals and conservatives can look like turtles.” In The Babylon Bee’s headlines, they joked about how “Democrats Prepare To Give Republicans Free Ad Footage Of Them Attacking Successful, Religious Mother Of 7.” Both conservative satirists point out how Democrats may lose some undecided voters in this election for attacking a respected and successful woman in politics.

In a study done by the Pew Research Center, it was found that “More people have heard of the Comedy Central show than many other news sources, including NPR (53%), The Economist (34%), and Buzzfeed (31%).” Additionally, other studies have discovered that people actually learn from programs such as The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. As discussed in our previous classes, comedians play a very important part in an election year because of the power they have in shaping public opinion and the ability they have to make people laugh while learning about current events. This role political satirists play in an election cycle indeed makes an impact on how politicians are received by the American public, which can then have an effect on the candidates’ overall message and polling across the country.