Today’s political climate is contentious and extremely polarized. It’s all too easy to get into debates with strangers on Facebook. It’s even easier to get mad at family members or friends over differing opinions. But, difference of opinions is nothing new. What is different now is the importance of information and facts in shaping these opinions.
As a disclaimer, I don’t like Trump and I didn’t vote for him. I don’t feel I need to explain why, but I want to explain why I think political satire is so important in a time like this.
Living in the time of contested politics and social media is something. It’s something that we have people like Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer and Donald Trump getting the spotlight. It’s something that the phrases “alternative facts” and “fake news” are just thrown around, and it’s wild that news organizations still have to cover this with some sense of journalistic legitimacy.
This is a problem, because it makes us stupid. Spending 20 minutes covering a Trump tweet, or hosting a multi-person debate panel (thanks, CNN), is just not productive. It makes us complacent, and it doesn’t actually encourage us to think about the issues at hand or help us think about the validity behind claims.
Author of “Is Satire Saving Our Nation?” Sophia A. McClennen, says that political satire like The Onion, The Daily Show, And The Colbert Report, exposed the core issues involved and, unlike the mainstream media’s dumbing-down of politics, they presented the public with information that was fun, intelligent, and committed to encouraging critical thinking”. The problem with mainstream media sources like CNN is that they take false claims seriously. Just look at any one of Trump’s claims. The claim that former President Obama had “wiretapped” the Oval Office was taken seriously and analyzed for hours on end by CNN panelists. There was never any evidence for this claim, and this conspiracy theory shouldn’t have been taken seriously in the first place. But political satirists such as Seth Meyers, John Oliver, and Stephen Colbert flat out said that these claims were supported by no evidence.
Calling out false claims is necessary to promote truth in politics and in media. Political satire increases skepticism, and “increases knowledge of current events, leads to further information-seeking on related topics, and increases viewer interest in and attention paid to politics and news”, according to a Columbia Journalism Review article by Dannagal G. Young.
Additionally, an article in The Harvard Crimson by Anthony Thai says that “political humor at least molds a more informed public and at best increases political involvement and excitement”. Thai does note that critics argue that political satire can lead to narrow-mindedness, but that is if that type of media is consumed alone, without outside sources included. Political satire is especially important now, not just because it encourages us to be skeptical of claims made by government officials, but it allows us to think more critically about things like “alternative facts”.
Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and former Secretary of Labor for the Clinton administration writes (and has a video) about the 4 reactions we might have to the new administration. The first reaction is normalization.
The easiest course of action is to do nothing. To block out obscene statements, and to try to make comments that Trump, Bannon, or Conway, to name a few, makes, only works in their favor. The things these people say are not normal. It goes beyond not following governmental norms and protocols - these statements and actions make us look ridiculous and unreliable as a nation.
With normalization, it’s easy to let crazy claims pass by too quickly. Let’s just bring a few back to remind you what I’m talking about.
Trump: “Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything”
You know what he says next. Why was this not the end point? Why was this not the bottom line?
Sean Spicer: “This was the largest audience to witness an inauguration period" (Business Insider).
When Trump claimed his inauguration was the largest, and there was photographic evidence that wasn’t true, he still stood by it.
Then, his surrogates and mouthpieces repeated the same things as him. It wasn’t just crowd size, it was also how he won the election. Salon author Matthew Rozsa points out that in a meeting with Trump and three journalists from Reuters, Trump handed out three maps of the US 2016 election results. It’s been months since the election and he is still on about this. You would think that 100 days there would be more to talk about than election results.
It gets frustrating to continue hearing flat out lies from our president. It seems that every week he says something that contradicts the person he was on the campaign trail. Breaking campaign promises would be frustrating no matter the situation, but the reason his are so outstanding are that he is not like any other president or politician.
He does not follow norms, and he does not follow basic protocols, and his short attention span is just the latest news about him. A Reuters article says that prior to Trump’s first international visits as president, “National Security Council officials have strategically included Trump's name in ‘as many paragraphs as we can because he keeps reading if he's mentioned.’ ” With the things that keep coming out of the White House, is it really a wonder that comedians and satirists keep mentioning Trump?
Personally, I think political satire is a good thing because it allows us to laugh at some of the ridiculous situations at hand. Yes, the situations are often horrible, and difficult to joke about let alone discuss. Like Trump firing James Comey? Or Trump’s comments about women? Or almost anything he says that doesn’t come out in a full sentence are topics to be taken seriously, but people often find themselves overwhelmed at the constant scandal and drama. It’s all too easy to shut out the current political events because it’s too much to handle.
Political satire and comedy is super important because it doesn’t want us to tune out. It wants us to be engaged, and it wants us to be outraged at what’s happening. Paying attention to what’s going on is a little easier if you can laugh about it.
