Thoughts on Political Comedy

Norms, not power

I will return to the non-identity series in a week or two. Those articles are exhausting to write, so I will publish other articles between entries.

I hesitated to write this article. I claim that I want to stay away from culture war issues, yet I’ve written about abortion, free speech, colonialism, and feminism. Am I a hypocrite? Maybe. When I write about these topics, I attempt to do so in a non-culture-war-type way. I write in a manner befitting my blog’s tagline: “concise discussions of obfuscated topics.” I try to boil complex topics down to straightforward, plain-language arguments. You won’t find angsty, haughty, or preachy rhetoric here, because I aim for a relaxed, conversational tone. My abortion article, for example, doesn’t read like any popular discourse on the issue. Instead, it should feel a lot more like my writing on the less-heated non-identity problem. With that in mind, I will write about liberal comedy, but I will attempt to do so in a way that codes my blog as neither “woke” nor “anti-woke.”

During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high - Kurt Vonnegut

Lately, some claim that they no longer find humor in liberal comedians like John Oliver or Jon Stewart. One may dislike a particular comedian for a variety of reasons, but one explanation underlies the criticism of this genre: it no longer feels transgressive. In antiquity (i.e., 10 years ago), these comedians seemed to speak truth to power. Today, they sound like your company’s Vice President of Human Resources.

There’s an obvious counterargument to this: liberalism isn’t that much more powerful today than it was ten years ago. The court, including the Supreme Court, moved right, and the Republicans tend to dominate state legislatures. Corporations may adopt rainbow logos, but these still serve the conservative goal of maximizing profits. After all, Amazon would fly an ISIS flag if doing so were profitable.

I think this counterargument is true, but it misses the point. I agree that cultural liberalism doesn’t dominate the main power structures of our society, even if its influence has risen in non-profits and universities. However, I don’t think good comedy ever undermined the real centers of power. See the Kurt Vonnegut quote above. Comedians (and other artists) have long since ridiculed American militarism and capitalism. Despite their efforts, the Vietnam War persisted, as did the War On Terror a few decades later. Decades of left-leaning comedy also haven’t done much to undermine capitalism. Bill Hicks and George Carlin didn’t cause a communist revolution. Good comedy is less about serious challenges to power and more about transgressions of social, cultural, and conversational norms.

Let me start with an example of a joke that I consider transgressive. Hold onto your seats, readers. I don’t know if you will survive this.

I don’t get camping. “Hey, want to burn a couple of vacation days sleeping on the ground outside? Chances are you’ll wake up freezing and covered in a rash?” No, thanks. If camping is so great, why are the bugs always trying to get in your house? My parents never took me camping, and I think it was because they loved me. - Jim Gaffigan

Future history textbooks will probably not refer to Jim Gaffigan as America’s Vladimir Lenin. Still, this joke works and transgresses social norms. I’ve noticed that when I meet people for the first time, they often emphasize their adventurousness. It’s often not until later in the conversation that I learn about their TV and video game habits. In other words, there’s a social norm to present oneself as fond of activities like camping. People would find it rude if you dismissed their camping trip as a stupid waste of time. Thus, when Gaffigan does just that, we find it funny. It’s something you don’t hear, and it’s something you’re not supposed to say.

When I lived in Germany, my American classmates and I laughed about the local’s directness. Germans seemed to say things in casual conversation that you wouldn’t hear in the US. For example, we learned that the American accent sounds like the Dutch one. No American students inquired about their own accents, but many Germans would either ask if we were Dutch or tell us that we sounded Dutch. This amused us because we don’t converse that way in the US. I’ve never told a stranger that he sounds Mexican. Late in the semester, the school set us up with German-speaking email conversation partners. After changing every “y” to a “z,” I sent her a bland introduction message about my interests and hobbies. She responded by asking for my thoughts on the Tea Party movement. My American classmates and I found this funny since we (back then, at least) didn’t discuss politics with people we barely knew.

Again, these instances amused us because they violated our social and conversational norms. No system of power fell under threat because someone inquired about our accent. Meanwhile, Germans probably wouldn’t find these stories funny since each one aligns with their social norms. Maybe, instead, they tell jokes about indirect and obsequious speech patterns they heard in North America.

Returning to the point, I’ll summarize my perception of liberal and left-leaning comedy. During the Daily Show’s peak, we lived in a much more conservative culture. Gay people were more likely to stay in the closet, and few publicly identified as feminists or socialists. You were more likely to see unapologetic love-it-or-leave-it patriotism and less likely to hear someone describe the US as imperialist or institutionally racist. The mainstream culture was vaguely Christian, with many calling for the censorship of violence and sex in movies, music, and video games.

In such a culture, liberal and left-leaning statements felt transgressive. No, they didn’t challenge actual power. George W. Bush and the financial industry survived The Daily Show. Yet, like Gaffigan’s description of camping or a German’s thoughts on our accents, these liberal jokes felt like things you’re not supposed to say. Today, we see versions of these ideas in universities, social media platforms, nominally non-partisan media outlets, and corporate PR statements. As a result, Stewart no longer sounds transgressive. He sounds like he’s saying the things you are supposed to say. Again, I agree with those who say that Harvard and Amazon use these ideas in bad faith. That still doesn’t change the fact that Harvard and Amazon suck the cultural transgressive-ness from them.

I’m not debating the politics here. Maybe Stewart’s views remain correct. Maybe they were always wrong. To return to Gaffigan, it’s as if we live in a world where everyone claims to hate camping. In such a world, no one would laugh at Gaffigan’s camping jokes. These jokes wouldn’t become more or less accurate, but they would sound like 1) the same thing everybody else was saying and 2) the thing you’re supposed to say. Combine those two and you end up with the anthesis of comedy.