Young, Irony, and Outrage Prologue
Samantha Bee described President Donald Trump with harsh words on her show Full Frontal.
The show is a liberal satire targeting Republicans and Trump, focusing on women's issues, reproductive rights, and social justice.
After Trump's election, Bee interviewed Glenn Beck, known for his conservative views and conspiracy theories, which was unexpected for her audience.
From 2009-2011, Glenn Beck was known as an entertaining and incendiary pundit/conspiracy theorist on Fox News’s Glenn Beck Program.
Beck criticized progressive groups like ACORN and accused President Obama of hating white people.
After leaving Fox News, Beck regretted his role in political polarization, expressing a desire to be more uniting.
By 2016, Beck had changed his views, supporting Black Lives Matter and praising Michelle Obama.
In a Full Frontal episode, Bee and Beck discussed unity. Beck cautioned Bee against making the same mistakes he did that caused division.
Beck suggested that Bee was adopting his "catastrophe" traits raising that perhaps the country is in danger of falling into a dictatorship because of Trump.
The text posits the question of whether liberal satire and conservative opinion shows like "outrage programming" serve parallel purposes for their audiences.
Journalists have questioned the lack of conservative political satire and the failure of liberal talk radio.
A common argument is that satire tends to critique those in power, aligning with the left's opposition to the status quo; however, the text questions this, especially during Democratic control.
In 2011, Scott Stroud suggested that Glenn Beck's approach could be considered a conservative form of satire, using hyperbole to critique the left.
The text introduces three testable propositions:
Political satire and conservative opinion programming serve similar needs.
They have parallel effects on audiences.
They differ due to the psychological frameworks of liberalism and conservatism.
The text acknowledges that these genres emerged in response to declining public trust in journalism and were enabled by media technology and regulatory changes.
The book will explore the history of political satire and "outrage" and their links to the liberal counterculture and conservative movements of the 1950s-1960s (chapter 1).
The evolution of media is explored, media technologies, regulations, and how political polarization led to a second generation of satire and outrage around 2000 (chapter 2 and 3).
The book will delve into the comprehension and appreciation of satire and irony in the brain, considering audience characteristics (chapters 4 and 5).
The material looks at political psychology and the psychological roots of political ideology, such as "need for cognition" and "tolerance for ambiguity," and connect them to the aesthetic preferences and affinity for satire and outrage (chapters 6, 7, and 8).
The text analyzes why people consume satire and outrage programming and their perceptions, arguing that the functions and outcomes are similar for both audiences (chapter 9).
It will also examine the failed attempts of liberals at outrage radio (Air America) and conservatives at political satire (Fox's ½ Hour News Hour), as well as the evolution of these genres under the Trump presidency (chapter 10).
A normative argument is presented, suggesting how to view these genres and ideologies, and emphasizes that conservative outrage can be exploited for propaganda, while liberal satire facilitates subversive experimentation (chapter 11).
The text concludes that the differing psychological profiles and aesthetic preferences of liberals and conservatives lead to distinct expressions of their political beliefs.
The forerunners of conservative outrage originated from a rejection of liberal values, while liberal satire evolved from radical comedy.
The second generation of irony and outrage emerged in the 1990s as reactions to problems in the political information environment, fueled by polarization and media distrust and made possible by new media technologies.
Outrage programming employs hyperbole, sensationalism, ad hominem attacks, and extreme language to depict political opponents as hypocrites and to affirm viewers' moral superiority.
Technological and regulatory changes, including cable TV, deregulation, media fragmentation, political polarization, and declining trust in news, facilitated the rise of outrage programming.
The repeal of the fairness doctrine in 1987 allowed for the rise of Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated radio show in 1988.
Limbaugh's show rejects liberalism and caters to an older, male, white, Republican, and conservative audience. It uses emotionally charged language, ridicule, and terminology to discredit liberals and journalists, resulting in increased moral outrage, distrust of mainstream media, distorted understanding of politicians, and extreme conservative views.
The success of Limbaugh led Roger Ailes to use the media industry as a platform to spread a political message. He became executive producer of Limbaugh’s show on NBC, and eventually created his own shows.
Ailes developed America's Talking to engage regular people in political discussion, but it ultimately failed before being transformed into MSNBC.
Roger Ailes helped create Fox News as a conservative news network in partnership with Rupert Murdoch. Ailes wanted to deliver news with personality and attitude, aiming to tap into a populist spirit by challenging the way contemporary news networks delivered the news.
Ailes believed the media was dominated by liberals and created Fox News as a network for normal people, focusing on a sense of order, security, and understanding of the world for its viewers.
Internal memos detailed that Fox News would concentrate on personality and programming rather than just news.
The network aimed to provide relief from the one-sided reporting of competitors by reporting stories they did not cover, establishing a market position that would appeal to viewers who felt underserved by traditional media outlets.
The "Fair and Balanced" slogan was used with a wink to justify its position on the right because of the left-leaning media.
The network hired charismatic hosts rather than journalists, valuing authenticity over talent.
Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor" used a "No Spin Zone" to rail against the "liberal media," "white privilege," and "the totalitarian left on college campuses."
Sean Hannity's career was built on a firebrand style, leading to a leading role in Fox News. Hannity had previously been fired from his college radio station after insulting a lesbian mother on air, then adding: “anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is just a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed.. . .These disgusting people.”
Glenn Beck's show on Fox News made Obama's policies the center of its ire, branding them as "socialist, Marxist, and Maoist". Beck used his program to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories that were often based on emotionally charged claims.
Tucker Carlson on Tucker Carlson Tonight challenges liberal critiques of "toxic masculinity,” declares the concept of “white privilege” to be racist, and calls liberal feminists “insincere.”
Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle criticizes pro-immigration and progressive efforts, facing backlash for her commentary.
Outrage programming on Fox focuses on defining in- and out-groups, identifying threats, reaffirming a conservative worldview, and selectively reporting events and earning negative scores from fact-checking organizations.
Hosts claim they are not journalists and should not be held to the same standards, but the distinction can be confusing to viewers.
Despite debates around its credibility, Fox's outrage programming is successful, with revenues doubling during the Obama presidency.
Liberal commentary is offered by figures like Bill Maher, whose show Politically Incorrect featured political conversations among B-list celebrities, political personalities and journalists.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart parodied politics and cable news and offered commentary on the state of media and politics itself.
Developments in outrage are interlinked to satire. Both stem from the political and media climate that emerged in the 1990s.
Geoffrey Baym connects the rise of political satire to the news becoming more about profits and less about responsibility.
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report held to the spirit of “high-modern” journalism even more than the so-called news shows of the time that were failing in their journalistic mission.
Both were challenging elite approaches to politics, similar to how the populist philosophy of Fox News operated during its early period.
Satire and Outrage took on new meaning in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Jon Stewart critiqued what he saw as mainstream journalism's symbiotic relationship with politicians and the press offering his own version of the failures of the mainstream media.
Stewart was critical of cable news for being too dramatic and personalized.
From 2003 onward, the Daily Show deconstructed sensationalized cable news from the discovery of Saddam Hussein. From hereon, the show was known to take a more outspoken tone during the lecture season of that time.
Stewart was an outspoken critic of politicians, candidates and parties and the exploitation of the news media from partisan pundits, stating that his purpose was to, “Help. You could create a paradigm of a media organization that is geared towards no bullshit—and do it actively—and stop pretending that we don’t know what’s going on. And stop pretending that it’s a right/left question. I don’t buy that the world is divided into bi-chromatic thought like that.”
The show set out, with Stewart at the helm, to create a template alternative for pushing against information from the White House and for scrutinizing the narratives of the elite.
Throughout the years of the Bush administration The Daily Show and Stewart made sure that they were able to interrogate the truth. By the time Stewart left the show in 2015, it had earned 2 Peabody Awards and won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Series for a record 10 years in a row.
While Stewart has garnered praise for the substantive critiques and failures of Journalism he had not explored the deeper underlying reason for these reasons which can be seen by his lack of taking on aspects such as media ownership. This leads to other performers like John and Samantha to delve into the troubling economics of investigative Journalism.
The Daily Show established a base for how the political satire genre will be seen for following generations and also allowed, through its own creation, a new crop of talent such as Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee to be pushed into stardom.
Stephen Colbert and his show ‘The Colbert Report” offered “An O’Reillyesque take on the news of the day but through a wildly underinformed, arrogant, faux-conservative lens.