Political Culture Jamming: The Dissident Humor of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart”

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank George Davis, Margaret Farrar, Chris Russill, and two anonymous reviewers for astute and valuable comments on the manuscript. This research was supported in part by grants from the College of Liberal Arts and the Graduate College at Marshall University.

Notes

See the Dewey-Lippman Debates of the 1920s (Dewey, 1922/1982, 1925/1982, 1927; Lippman, 1922/1934, 1925) for the classic argument on the potential rationality of the public.

To analyzeThe Daily Show,I drewon observations developed from regularly watching the program from 2000 to the present, as well as detailed and systematic reviews of specific video clips available online. Specificexamplesand illustrationsinthetextcome frommytranscriptionofvideo clipsavailableon TheDaily ShowWeb site, aswellasjournalisticaccountsofthe show andinterviews withTheDailyShow writers and comedians. The three jamming techniques were gleaned through an inductive approach.

Although both the Republicans and the Democrats use these types of branding techniques, Douglas Kellner (2001) makes the argument that conservatives have been better than liberals at strategically utilizing emotional rhetorical techniques, what he terms “postmodern sophistry.” He contends that the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election was stopped in large part because of these types of rhetorical tactics employed by Republican operatives. Interestingly, Kellner notes that these emotional rhetorical tactics cut against traditional conservative principles, such as the insistence on “truth”: “For a good philosophical conservative, ‘the ends justify the means’is the height of philosophical relativism and amorality, undermining those core values and principles that conservatives supposedly cherish above all” (p. 142).

For further discussion of the use of humorous political satire by and on individuals in the 18–29 demographic, see Calavita (2004).

Specifically, The Daily Show has won four Emmys for Outstanding Writing (2001, 2003–2005) and three Emmys for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Show (2003–2005). Stewart himself was on the cover of the January 5, 2004, Newsweek. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, written by Stewart and other Daily Show writers (2004), was a New York Times Bestseller.

Colbert is also senior war correspondent, senior religious correspondent, senior UN analyst, senior White House correspondent, senior psychology correspondent, senior “death” correspondent (for stories that report on the death penalty), and senior child molestation expert (for stories on the Catholic Church).

George Test (1991) calls this technique the “irony of misused form” (p. 169). For a detailed discussion of the role of incongruity in humor, see Morreall (1987).

The subversive potential of parody figures prominently in the early works of Judith Butler (1990, pp. 32, 134–141). However, in Bodies That Matter, Butler (1993) focuses more on the ambivalence of parody, in this case the parody of gender involved in drag, arguing that there is not a necessary correlation between parody and subversion (pp. 121–140). See also “Merchants of Cool,” a Frontline episode that first aired on PBS in 2001 (Goodman & Dretzin, 2001). Rather than having subversive potential, “Merchants of Cool” illustrates how advertisers actually consider parody to be a highly effective marketing strategy for young adults.

There are two major exceptionsto this. The first is Stewart's long-standing disdain for conservative pundit, Robert Novak. Routinely referring to him as “evil” and “rotting from the inside out,” Stewart even questioned Novak's injury at a New Yorker breakfast in October 2004: “Novak apparently broke his hip. I think that's not the case. I think his hip tried to escape” (Grove, 2004). The second major exception is Stewart's now famous appearance on CNN's Crossfire. In this instance, Stewart was quite direct (and according to co-host Tucker Carlson, not funny) in his criticism of Crossfire: “You’re hurting America” Stewart told Carlson and his co-host Paul Begala, “… You’re doing theater, when you should be doing debate … What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery” (de Moraes, 2004). Ac-cordingto CNN's President, Jonathan Klein, Stewart'son air comments helped lead to the demise of the 23-year-old show: “I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise” (Carter, 2005).

Geoffrey Baym (2005) takes the argument one step further, arguing that Stewart is actually reinventing political journalism. Despite Stewart's protestations to the contrary, Baym contends that The Daily Show is only “fake” to the extent that other news broadcasts are “real,” a difficult claim to make in today's 24-hour, sensation-driven journalistic universe (p. 261). Although he does not reference Socrates, Baym also argues that Stewart employs humor “to confront political dissembling and misinformation” in the process reviving a “spirit of critical inquiry” largely absent in the “real” media since September 11th (p. 268).

In his book chronicling the “new political television” of comedians Bill Maher, Dennis Miller, and Jon Stewart, Jeffrey Jones (2005) argues that Stewart's persona is like that of the court jester or fool, speaking truth to power without fear of retaliation because he has the ability to make everyone laugh.

“All I know is that I know nothing,” is the famous version of the quotation. The actual quotation, as translated by Benjamin Jowett (1973), is “Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know” (p. 451).