The Daily Show in an Obama Administration

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Moment of Zen - Credits for the Last Eight Years

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Shortly after Obama won the election, Dan Kois of New York Magazine ran an article speculating what The Daily Show would be like in an Obama administration. Now that an Obama administration is actually in place, we can see what the future of the show might entail.

Any skepticism of TDS’s function in a new administration is legitimate, as the show has served throughout Bush’s eight long years in office as a necessary podium for satirical exorcism of many a frustration with the status quo. It provided a site of relief and mutual understanding between a limited demographic of people when such relief could rarely be found elsewhere. However, the show’s representative young, liberal, or otherwise simply disaffected audience (whether expressing anger or disapproval of the Bush admin through informed logic or simple Bush-joke bandwagoneering) can be argued to be the base for which Obama initially rose in popularity, so one can argue then that the show itself now represents the status quo…Okay, maybe not the status quo, but it’s hard to fit in some good ol’ cynical comedy when your audience won’t stop clapping and cheering at each mention of Obama as the president. As goes with many forms of art, comedy is far less inspired when things are good. TDS feels right now like what Kurt Cobain or Elliot Smith’s music would have sounded like if they one day became optimists.

However, things, quite obviously, still aren’t good. Five days into Obama’s presidency, American banks and businesses continue to tank and we still find ourselves in that quagmire of a country known as Iraq. Guantanamo won’t officially close for another year, and our economy likely won’t start bouncing back for at least twice that amount of time. The major difference, however, is the tangibly drastic change in attitude. As evidenced by the content and rhetoric of his Inauguration speech, Obama as president won't necessarily bring to fruition an immediate change in our surroundings, but rather a change in attitude with respect to our current circumstances, the sign of a simultaneous return to the idealized and constantly reinterpreted values and promises of 1776 and a move forward to accommodate with a world that continues to change instead of expecting the world to accommodate us. The cynics have become the hopeful, and the new cynics of today are few, as it seems like Americans (and much of the western world) on any point of the political barometer want some degree of improvement and progress for this country more than anything else. Only the incessant and excessive ideologues emblematized by Rush Limbaugh outspokenly hope for failure, favoring party loyalty over the greater good of the many.

TDS’s first post-Inauguration episode made as much of the last minutes of the Bush presidency as they could, prepping themselves for the inevitable disappearance of Bush and Cheney from the public eye, as the public doesn’t want to see them anymore than they want to be seen. The following two episodes, however, displayed the potential best and worst of what is to come. With the closing of Guantanamo Bay, Jon Stewart brought back Gitmo, an Elmo-like puppet representing either the ethos behind Guantanamo itself or the supposed perspective of its prisoners. The only real humor of the piece was the (seemingly deliberately bad timing and) transparency of Stewart as both voices in the conversation. However, any fresh humor to be found in the piece quickly died as Stewart’s conversation with Gitmo continually reduced itself to shameless proselytizing of the Obama ethos, sounding more than ever like a voice for the new status quo rather than the source of reactionary comedy or even subversive counter-propaganda that TDS was known for in its best days. Thankfully John Oliver added some punch this last week with his segment at the rally itself, where he satirized the crowd’s impossibly high expectations for Obama. Still, this didn’t sound like a biting criticism cutting to its satirical core as much as it was stating the obvious with a light dose of humor—the excitement over a new president simply continues to drown out the inevitable sober realization that not everything will be fixed within the next four years.

From the writers of Saturday Night Live to Chris Rock, much has been made of the fact that, unlike the imitable persona of Bush, there is little humor to be found in Obama himself. This is not because Obama is a humorless person by any means, or even because of an alleged timidity in poking fun at an ethnic minority, be they in power or not (both TDS and SNL made plenty of jokes about Roland Burris during the Blagojevich senate election scandal). It’s simply hard to make fun of Obama because of his careful control of his media persona, as he has continually proved to understand how the media contextualizes and morphs information and, in turn, makes and breaks political careers, extending to his presence on and affirmation of TDS's importance in the national political process (thank goodness we have the endearing gaffe-magnet that is Joe Biden to balance out Obama). So it goes without question that, unlike Bush, decontextualized soundbites of the current president himself will not likely provide a wealth of humor.

However, TDS has proved throughout these last eight years—especially in this past election cycle—that there is no greater source of humor than turning the camera onto the media itself, and it is in this respect that the show remains strong, lampooning the absurdly meticulous coverage of Sasha and Melia’s first day in school to its lambasting of right-wing cynicism on Fox News that will no doubt continue to remain potent throughout the Obama presidency.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Inauguration Media Coverage

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Fox News Fear Imbalance

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

TDS, at its very best, can be a vessel for counter-propaganda when it aims to deconstruct common methodologies for information dissemination not by politicians but by the news media itself, regularly highlighting contradictions or hypocrisies in both information delivery and punditry while enforcing tactics (largely through careful and inventive justaposition of news segments and/or soundbites of politicians and pundits) that arguably help train its audiences to approach news media with an analytic eye. Entertaining Politics author Jeffrey P. Jones argues that TDS “skewers” classical punditry and the partisan, performative spectacle of news media discourse attempting to pass as objectivity, which in itself requires a certain knowledge of news media or news events in order to “get the joke.” While it is certainly arguable that one does not need to actually watch the news to understand the humor in TDS or even “get the joke” (as I’m sure there are many conservative or apolitical viewers of the show who watch it simply because they enjoy comedy), as seen by TDS’s covering of “legitimate” news sources covering the Obama transition to the presidency, TDS’s joke about news is, and often has been, that news rarely features any news at all.

As Jones argues, TDS has functioned best as a court jester: not by rendering reality absurd, but pointing out the absurdity of reality. In this respect, it can be argued that this brand of satire is intrinsic to the public role of the Bush administration and its endless laundry list of absurdities (not to mention overall indifference and dysfunction), and TDS may not find as functional or influential a role in news media within the next four years. Anybody can go back and look at clips from the 2004 election and see a clear difference in the show’s utility as a oh-so necessary counterpunch to an often otherwise devastating political and social reality not so long ago. However, as long as ideologues like Limbaugh continue to persist (and they will, holding desperately onto the remnants of their former status as spokespersons for the political mainstream), and as long as the news media continues its circus act, TDS will continue to be a necessary outlet for the frustrations of a certain demographic. Hopefully Stewart and co. will further embrace the lampooning of news media, like the two segments above, rather than attempting humor through proselytizing or poking holes in Obamathusiasm, as TDS has proved itself to be at its best when it reveals the illegitimacy of legitimate news.

However, despite that its cult seems to have reached its glass ceiling, The Colbert Report may prove to be the better-enabled venue for satire than TDS. Colbert’s carefully constructed persona has represented different aspects of mediated American political society each year since the show’s debut. When his show was first launched in 2005 around the time of Hurricane Katrina, Colbert embodied the absurdity, ignorance, and dysfunction of a then-still powerful ideological base whose grip on power and influence was finally beginning to lessen. In the next few years he seemed only to be a caricature of the pundits of Fox News, etc., a cartoon of an ideology that already seemed cartoonish by that point. But now Colbert has been rendered a minority, representing those frustrated few in conservative news media that scrounge for qualitative disapproval and continue to propagate a xenophobic fear of Obama and, according to Limbaugh, have yet to “drink the punch.” Instead of pretending to like Bush, Colbert only now has to pretend to dislike Obama, and thus lampoon the scrambling criticisms of the far right. After all, as The Daily Show displayed, this brand of comedy seems to work best for the political minority.

Manufacturing Consent Continued: Gay Marriage

I’m sure I’m not the only one to say this, so I’ll keep it brief. This was a pretty astounding moment at last week’s Vice Presidential debate. Compared to the droning repetition of economic and foreign policy talking points and sound bites in the first two of three Obama/McCain debates (what exactly was the difference between the first and second debate besides the setting?), we got to hear talking points and sound bites regarding just about every election-deciding issue from Biden and Palin. While this is definitely a result in part of the McCain campaign’s attempt to deliver a gaffe-free Palin by instituting a strict debate format (notice her disdain for "nuance" as articulated in this clip), both Biden and Palin came prepared to talk about all issues briefly and, in terms of political language, thoroughly. These are still televised soundbites, which as I argued before prevents progressive discourse in recorded media. But where the relative freedom offered in the Obama-McCain debate style resulted only in time-wasting compliments to the opponent or thank-yous to the questioner and a clearly flustered Tom Brokaw, Biden and Palin very quickly delivered their stump rhetoric. They even had time to talk about Darfur! (Biden, in one of the debate’s greatest moments, was even able to challenge the dominant opposing rhetoric, calling out McCain’s self-ordained maverick status.)

But the same-sex marriage moment was so revealing, because it really illustrated the emptiness of campaign rhetoric. Each candidate revealed what was ultimately the exact same position on the issue, but with rhetoric characteristic to each of their alleged political viewpoints. Biden delivered a clearly-articulated a common-sense stance on same-sex marriage that certainly appeals to voters who consider themselves progressive, while Palin played to the homophobia of her conservative base while balancing an appeal to voters who might take a more moderate stance (she seems to think that “tolerance” is a more progressive word than it sounds), but their rhetoric lost all its worth as soon as they realized their concurrence on the issue. This illuminates the very important role that rhetoric and spin play in this election (especially with an arguably moderate Democratic ticket), where politicians remain astute in delivering campaign talking points that may sound like a breath of fresh air, but, out of fear of upsetting the status quo (i.e., more voters), are probably not so different from current policies.

Notice how frequently in the debates the candidates have stumbled over their words, almost saying other obvious words. They aren't thinking about the issue when they answer a question, they're thinking about finishing their sentence in the best way possible. Notice how quickly Obama's once-inspiring rhetoric has gotten so tired. This is why the years-long presidential campaign process can hardly contain radical vessels of proposed change (byebye, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich), because anything signifying drastic change gets normalized and reconstituted into the political mainstream in order for the candidate to have any hope of becoming elected. And this ridiculously long process can't help but cause any unique, elevated language to eventually resonate as empty rhetoric.

The words you have seen so far, and will once again see on Wednesday night, have been thoroughly prepared and cleansed for unthreatening television viewing. So sit back, enjoy, and watch the democratic process at work.

Manufacturing Consent

Party conventions are a funny thing. Where they used to serve the practical function of actually voting for and nominating their candidate, because of the growing importance of primary elections, the conventions of modern elections have been reduced to a party for the parties. And unlike the primaries or the post-convention debates, the DNC and RNC seem to be the only places where the respective parties can converge to deliver their talking points uncontested (and as Palin’s speech during the RNC displayed, this allows for the delivery of empirically false information and convoluted interpretations of policy without dispute). That protesters at the RNC were silenced, even jailed, so quickly displays the dearth of equitable discourse at these conventions.

The outright lies, partisan interpretations, and exhibitions of uninhibited party devotion at the RNC gives Americans a glimpse of what their nation would be like if they adopted a one-party totalitarian platform. (Not to say that the DNC was less one-sided, but at least they didn’t make chanting “USA” at the first sign of dissent sound like an Orwellian angry mob, and the Republicans have had a history in the last eight years of being the party that thrives on unquestioning support.) The lack of fair grounds for discourse at either debate altogether seems quite antithetical to the idea of a democratic nation. And the media, whose role many would think would be to dissect the content of conventions and provide a healthy ideological counterbalance against each respective platform, seemed too quick to praise the form of the speeches rather than their content, regurgitate the talking points already brought up by the party, or simply comment on the decorations: the pillars during Obama’s speech, or the plethora of balloons after McCain’s. The Daily Show was the only place I saw these past weeks where talking points were challenged rather than regurgitated.

My most recent post discussed a common form of election propaganda, the campaign commercial, but the unabashed, uncontested one-sided rhetoric of both party conventions these last two weeks have displayed the most obvious incarnations of propaganda in the American political system. But now that the candidate love-ins are over, and each party received their expected post-convention boost, I want to focus on a less obvious form of loaded dissemination of partisan ideas that will inevitably take place during the next major election events next month: the debates.

Four weeks ago, Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren moderated at his Saddleback megachurch in Southern California the closest thing to the first debate between the parties’ expected nominees. For what would seem like such a major political event, the “debate” was overshadowed by coverage of the Beijing Olympics. Warren, an outspoken pro-life “values” Republican, asked Obama a set of pre-written questions, attempting to have, in his words, an honest, nonpartisan conversation about issues deemed at “values voters,” then had McCain, who supposedly was in a “cone of silence” that did not allow him to witness Obama’s answers, subjected to the exact same questions.

Like with the convention, the media commented merely on what the form of Obama and McCain’s answers rather than their content.



Anybody who has followed Obama’s campaign knows that the Obama seen in interviews has quite a different demeanor than the Obama who gives speeches. Both can articulate complex liberal ideas in an undivisive, approachable manner, but the Obama of interviews seems largely more introspective, often pausing to give thoughtful consideration to questions rather than blurting ready-made answers that would inevitably put him in a corner. Obama has been subject this last year to many out-of-context soundbites that have rendered him unfavorable. By now, Obama understands how the media works, which means understanding how it can very easily work against him, so he chooses to think before he speaks.

Now, despite that Warren’s question was astoundingly reductive, erroneous, and too loaded with distressing implications that reflect Warren’s outspoken worldview to come anywhere close to objectivity, Obama’s answer treated the question with both solemnity and due regard, intricately explicating various interpretations of the word “evil” and respectfully outlining that a reductive definition of such a powerful word can have deplorable results, even in the name of “good.” McCain’s answer, by contrast, gives into the simplicity of the question by giving an even simpler answer in merely two words, as if Warren’s questions were a multiple-choice examination rather than an essay, without regard to the implications of his answer (defeating evil is a pretty lofty goal to set out for one's first term).

And as you can hear, the crowd loved it. And the media, rather than analyzing exactly what each candidate was actually saying, instead followed the direction of the crowd, claiming that McCain was “on his game” simply because he was able to give short answers to what were (albeit loaded) admittedly complex questions. (I also find it interesting that the evangelical crowd considered McCain a more favorable candidate because of his briskly worded ideas on abortion and gay marriage, when Obama was the only one who actually quoted scripture—but my problems with religion in politics in general opens up a whole other bag of issues we won’t go into here…but I will say this: a presidential debate held literally inside a church is an insult to both the necessary secularity of government and the sanctity of places of worship.)

Why McCain’s answers seemed favorable relates to a concept that is anything but new when it comes to political media discourse. Noam Chomsky has been theorizing for most of his career about how television has been manufactured to limit discourse on complex, challenging, or unpopular ideas, commercials being the most obvious example since they literally interrupt opportunities for prolonged attention given to any issue.

(While I love the satire of The Daily Show, it is also subject to this rule, as Jon Stewart seems to struggle to keep any substantive discussion going as most of his interviews rarely stretch pass the five-minute mark. Though The Daily Show might be funnier, Real Time with Bill Maher has shown to be a more productive place for humorous political counterpoint; Maher deliberately tries to avoid Chomsky’s trappings by having discussion take place without commercial interruption, live, and on a network free from censorship, thus (in theory) allowing for a prolonged discussion free from private interest. But being on the premium cable channel of HBO, of course, severely limits his viewership.)

Thus, McCain’s short answers look better on television than Obama’s longer ones. And any pretense of objectivity is shattered by the clear agenda of the audience. Obama’s pauses read as dead air rather than introspection necessary to assess a multilayered question, and McCain’s blurting of (pun intended) “Sunday school answers” read on television to some audiences as confident and decisive rather than a frightening quickness to judge.

From June 2007 to the beginning of the primaries, CNN held several debates among the 8-10 people running for President from each party (the “YouTube debates” perhaps being the best-known), and it was very entertaining to see the network correspondents attempt to juggle their questions for so many nominees, while their audience refused to mute their own opinions to the candidates’ ideas. They never even pretended to achieve objectivity. In this chaotic environment, it was impossible to assess any question with care, and it was the candidates who either made the shortest answers or said the craziest things (these were often one in the same...I'm looking at you, Tancredo) that got the most attention.

By the time the official debates happen in October, the farces of the CNN and Rick Warren “debates” will be long gone, replaced by a tightly moderated session and an audience forbidden from disruption. But the circuses of these past debates won’t be forgotten, and because of the strict time constraints of the upcoming debates, short answers will likely still look better than intellectual musings, and smart people will continue to be silenced. How can we ever expect to progress if the format is already rigged?

To Leni Riefenstahl, With Love...

Former Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn recently praised McCain’s overblown campaign commercials, saying that they will likely be an effective strategy in helping the Republican senator win the presidency. Penn was one of very few media commentators to have positive things to say about the now-infamous Britney/Hilton ad and the sardonic Obama-as-savior ad. While most of the media criticized these ads as vapid, devoid of any substantive political argument, Penn argued that despite their content, such extreme commercials have a tendency to dissuade voters. To “prove” his point, Penn referred to the Hillary Clinton “3am” ad, Walter Mondale’s 1984 “red phone” ad, and Lyndon Johnson’s iconic, fear-mongering “Daisy” ad from 1964.

But what I don’t understand is Penn’s assertion that McCain’s ad successfully “worked” like Clinton’s considering that she lost the nomination. Of course, one can argue that the ad helped scare up votes for Texas and Ohio when it aired there in March, but Obama’s success after Pennsylvania and Super Tuesday would argue that it had no lasting effect. What Penn doesn’t acknowledge is the media scrutiny and criticism those ads came under that hardly had a parallel when the Mondale or Johnson ads were released.

Parodies of the Clinton "3am" ad showed up on YouTube just days after its airing, just like the Paris Hilton “retort” showed up days after McCain’s ad. The mainstream media and online communities dissected these ads to no end. There was even a local television news report detailing the young girl sleeping in Clinton’s ad, who is now of voting age, revealing herself as an Obama supporter. This informed voters who would otherwise not know that such ads are largely made up of stock footage assembled together into the context that the creator pleases.

I believe the growing trend of dissecting political campaign ads by both the online community and the mainstream media (but primarily the former) will prove itself to be helpful towards creating a more objective (or, at least, cynical—and I mean that in the best possible way) political discourse. The fact that young people are showing that they understand that these ads as mere juxtapositions of text, audio, and images that can be arranged to mean any damn thing the author wants exhibits a new understanding of how visual media can manipulate public opinion. Thus, fear-inducing (“3am”) or mudslinging (“Paris/Britney”) can be taken in with their respective grains of salt as anybody with access to the web or iMovie understands that they can create such propaganda themselves with relatively limited materials.

Whether its used for political discourse or just a mind-numbing diversion, YouTube has been critical towards displaying the ease with which images can be manipulated and restructured in ways that alter their meaning. Take this fake trailer for The Shining for example, which uses new music and certain clips taken out of context to give a completely fabricated impression of what the movie really is:



Political ads, just like movies, are mere assemblages of visual and aural information, and their meaning can be reengineered just as easily.

Now, let’s take a look at the evolution of political campaign ads, starting with a famous 1960 John F. Kennedy ad (featured in the first season of Mad Men):



The ad feels just as old as it is, and works no differently than a commercial for cereal or cigarettes from the same era. There’s absolutely no information regarding Kennedy’s policies or why he should be President, simply an annoying jingle that will inevitably make you remember his name as you hear yourself humming along to it the rest of the day.

Now, take a look at LBJ’s aforementioned “Daisy” ad four years later:



This ad demonstrates the basic ideas of juxtaposition used to create meaning that we see in contemporary political advertising, just on a more nascent level. Cutting a shot of a cute girl with several shots of an atomic bomb, all with LBJ’s prophetic voice, pretty much slaps the viewer in the face with the message, “If you don’t want this to happen, vote for this guy.” This practice is not unlike showing an image of Obama juxtaposed with Paris and Britney, but McCain’s ad favors derision rather than LBJ’s blatant fear-mongering. That being said, LBJ’s ad is simultaneously so simplistic and over-the-top that it would never fly today. This was still the early 1960s, a time where middle America at large still believed what politicians and newsmen said—before the healthy dose of cynicism brought by student riots, hippies, and Watergate.

But, in contrasting Kennedy’s ad with Johnson’s, we see a huge difference in the operations of ready-made TV-friendly political discourse in four years. Kennedy’s ad contains the residue of Norman Rockwell’s 1950s, while Johnson’s reflects the era of a nation being divided inside by the Civil Rights movement and inducing fear of the outside through the threat of Communism—not to mention reflecting the fear of a nation that had seen the man whose name was in that catchy jingle die before their very eyes a year before.

Here’s a 1972 George McGovern ad, running against Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign during the worst days of the Vietnam War:



While this documentary-like ad gives the impression of an objectivity or straight-forward attitude lacking from most political campaign ads from then and now, the care and subtlety with which onlookers’ faces and McGovern’s words are juxtaposed suggests a new measure towards complexity in political campaign advertising (but then again, is there anything that feels less constructed than the "town hall meetings" of 1960s and 70s presidential campaigns?). It is also refreshing to see a politician attempt to say something that doesn’t sound like the bullshit rhetoric people simply want to hear. But McGovern lost in one of the biggest landslides in modern election history, so maybe there’s a reason such ads are rarely seen today.

Furthermore, even “non-bullshit rhetoric” can become rhetoric in itself. Notice how McGovern’s campaign used the word “change” as the theme of the ad. And just like with Obama’s campaign, once-inspiring words like these can lose meaning with their overuse, even to the politician himself.

The Candidate, a movie released during the same year of McGovern’s run stars Robert Redford as a no-bullshit politician running for senator in California, and chronicles how the no-bullshit guy becomes just like the rest. After his refreshing, original ideas have started to attract voters, Redford’s character goes on a campaign tour where those ideas turn into stump speeches, and have been repeated so much that they have become totally arbitrary to the politician himself. Check out this scene where the talking points for the politician have completely lost their meaning:



Here’s Ronald Reagan’s famous “Morning in America” ad from his 1984 reelection campaign:



This ad is interesting because it juxtaposes a word with dense ideological weight, “America,” with images that suggest what such a word is supposed to mean. This ad clearly defines what the Reagan idea of America means, totally oblivious to the possibility that it might be shutting out alternative interpretations (for instance, everybody in Reagan’s America seems to be white). “America” is a word that contains different meaning depending on who you are and where you’re from. Here’s a fascinating scene from the film The Parallax View (1974), starring Warren Beatty, that demonstrates how differing meanings can derive from the same word:



Here’s another Reagan campaign ad from ‘84:



I must admit, Reagan’s ads are quite fascinating and effective, much more interesting than most of today’s. What’s most surprising about this ad is that, unlike both the “Morning in America” ad and Reagan’s presidency, it acknowledges the multitude of opposing ideas, ideologies, and interpretations regarding issues that affect all Americans. Yet it suggests that we all conform to one just in case one side is right (and I think I know which side they’re referring to). This ad is indeed one intended to motivate fear, but not the same type of fear that LBJ would have us jump on board with. It’s subtler, calmly asking you to cross the fence, even helping you over, while saying to you, “I understand that you disagree, but I’m still correct.” But the ad, of course, doesn’t allow us to see the bear get shot. Some people say that Karl Rove’s tactics were effective, but even Bush Jr’s very own Goebbels wasn’t this clever.

Now, to conclude this brief history lesson, let’s look at the ads referred to at the beginning of this post:







So intent with meaning, yet so utterly meaningless.

NYC’s Museum of the Moving Image is running a feature on their website containing all the major Presidential campaign commercials since 1952. Definitely worth a look.