Political satire serves many purposes, including but not limited to: providing analytical new insights and entertaining the population. One would like to think, that when a comedian sheds light on a lie told by a political candidate, that the exposure would have an influence on voters’ opinions and factual knowledge. However, another unavoidable truth, is that people tend to tune into television shows, and media coverage that agrees with their own views. In turn, this defeats the purpose of “changing viewers’ minds”, because the viewers already agree with comedian’s content to begin with. Nevertheless, media coverage during this election has been particularly aggressive due to the unexpected, polarizing GOP candidate, Donald Trump. Because Trump is unlike any presidential candidate before, his tactics are also different from a typical political campaign and thus people are unsure how to deal with him. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
In previous elections, late night comedy hosts and television shows such as Saturday Night live, would attempt to remain balanced between the coverage of the two political parties. Comedians, such as David Letterman, John Carson, and Jay Leno would make fun of the politicians, particularly highlighting their quirks and imperfections, using exaggeration methods. Late night comedy hosts would attempt to remain nonpartisan despite their own political views. In this election, the “typical” reportage went out the door, and with the republican frontrunner, came many partisan, opinionated comedians.
As mentioned in the video above, eight out of the ten late night shows that habitually cover politics, had new hosts or were new to the schedule. Samantha Bee, the host of “Full Frontal” left “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart are 12 years. She admired Jon’s attempts to remain unbiased, but addressed the importance she found in being honest with her viewers, “It was really hard to be nonpartisan. It was important to him. But for me a fatigue sets in. You just see the same patterns repeating themselves…Now that I have my own show, I get to say what’s in my heart”. In addition to Bee’s inherent need to be more open than her predecessor on her show, it was also important to recognize that the GOP candidate himself was a strong initiator of the strong responses from the late night comedians, such as Bee. The craziness of this election elicited a big change in political satire.
Popular hosts today like, Trevor Noah, John Oliver, Seth Myers, and Jimmy Kimmel, were extremely opinionated, one-sided and passionate. It’s as if they dehumanized their idea of Trump and in turn they were less likely to consider his feelings and were less incentivized to hold back.
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Seth Meyers reflected, “It probably took me a year or a year and a half of doing this show before I felt comfortable sharing that point of view. And I think this election served as the catalyst”. What started out as a “gift” to the comedians, became an all too scary reality. “Trump has galvanized the late-night crowd, prompting a new sense of urgency, outrage, even panic” (Zoglin). And with Trump headed straight towards the white house, the “rules” of proper comedy-show etiquette completely changed. Trevor Noah exclaimed, “I think the press has gotten to a place where there are realizing that it’s about truth and not neutrality”.
Late night television shows and their hosts were doing everything in their power to expose the lies Trump was behind. At first, no one took his campaigning seriously, but the closer he approached The White House, the more alarmed the television networks became. Seth Meyers explained how the mainstream network, NBC, was not only supportive of his transparent political standpoint, but they “pushed the show to be what it is now”. So why is it with all this enragement and backing, that Trump still won? Did the late-night shows not have an impact on the voters?
Well, extensive research has shown that not only have the number of viewers gone down, but “the audience is getting younger” and it is “not necessarily more diverse” (Zoglin). At the end of the day, people are going to watch what they enjoy and what makes them feel better. Personally, when I was frustrated about the events transpiring in the past election, the only thing that could ease my pain was going onto YouTube and watching clips from the hosts mentioned on this page. Trevor Noah noticed that the satire may give fans “a false sense of activism, because people experience a catharsis and they go, ‘Yeah, we’ve done our job, we’ve retweeted that clip.’ Like Obama said, ‘Don’t boo, vote’”. I, for one, am definitely guilty of this “false sense”. If the late night comedy had an impact on the voters, then there would be a woman president living in the white house right now.
What’s important to recognize about this past election, is the shift that emerged in political satire. And as Samantha Bee gracefully acknowledged, “God willing, we’ve done something good for the nation. Maybe it will come back and haunt us. But as long as we speak from our heart here, we’ll be fine”. May we not stay bitter that the insightful coverage from the late night comedy did not have an impact on changing voter’s minds and convincing them of the truth. May we appreciate the purpose they each served to educate us on the truth, alleviate our frustrations and relieve the pain this past election caused.
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