Jason Linkins, of the Huffington Post, writes about a study on processing humor, entitled "The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report." The study supplies quantitative data on (ideologically-biased) reactions to "The Colbert Report." The results are found in Linkins' headline: Colbert Study: Conservatives don't know he's joking.
From the report: "...conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements."
Nothing really new here. We already knew this intutively, or if not, then certainly it was clear after Colbert's 2006 performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner, but now there is actual quantitive data to back it up. (N=332)
Still doubtful? Then consider how many successful conservative comedians you can name, or how many successful conservative comedy programs are still on the air. (Remember that very short-lived program, "The Half-Hour Comedy Hour?" See clip above.) "All in the Family," despite conservatives' attachment to Archie Bunker, was not a conservative comedy. (The report's authors cite a similar study from the 1970's on reactions to that comedy. See clip below.)
There is a reason that there are so few conservative comedic successes. As noted in the report, a program like Colbert's, unlike Jon Stewart's, requires significant cognitive effort, due to its ambiguity. Stewart, on "The Daily Show," interjects himself, to provide external cues that assist his viewers in processing the humor appropriately. Colbert provides none.
Members of a political party or ideology who pride themselves on communicating with short, sweet, black and white messages and talking points are not going to have an easy time with very ambiguous material that is open to interpretation.
Of course, as the authors also note, most audience members of someone like Stephen Colbert will interpret his work in a way that is beneficial to their own ideology. Thus, to conservatives, he is only pretending to make jokes about conservatism; he really means what he says... at face-value.
Tangential Fact: Joel Surnow, the producer of Fox's ill-fated "Half-Hour News Hour," has since met with more success as the creator of the Emmy winning series, "24."
Certainly, a program like "24" more truly represents what have become modern-day conservative core principles... but I must now re-think the value of an Emmy. Also, is Hollywood still liberal? Or is the Torture issue just an outlier? Or, maybe they just really like Kiefer?
Regardless of the confusing narrative that still surrounds the Torture issue (not just in Hollywood, but especially among the BeltwayPunditry)... it is clear that Humor (or at least deadpan satire) does still have a liberal bias.
* * *
UPDATE: And check out Lyle Bateman's post on this same topic...
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That the failed satire producer would switch to 24 and do so much damage in further confusing these simple minds about torture is the height of irony, but not at all something to smile or laugh about.
it's always seemed, to me, that those who would deny something to someone, a thing they give to themselves or those of their group, based on their not being part of that group, wouldn't be able to engage in any humor that wasn't mockery or ridicule. (not to say that "higher" minds don't engage in ridicule - it's very effective - but they have other tools, as well.)
I have long thought that Republicans as a group, and conservatives, in particular, have some kind of humor deficit, especially in its higher forms. Of course, there are always exceptions.
Perhaps some of these unfolding scandals will bring about some more epiphanies... just today, for example, we learn that Arlen Specter is changing parties, from Republican to Democratic. His humor quotient just went up by a significant factor, I'm sure.
But that "truthiness" is definitely a GOP enhancement to politics.
How'd you like the way I made the Torture connection? Joel Surnow made it so easy-like.
I suspect that you're a lot younger than I am... I actually remember Archie Bunker in real time. And it was practically the same thing, except that the lines between news & entertainment were less blurred then, and I knew people (mostly white men) who liked or identified with Archie... in the same way that in recent years so many blue- (and even white-) collared men have identified with the GOP, despite it being against their own interests.
I just left two comments on Lyle Bateman's post on this same topic. Please send a little love his way, too. He made me a favorite, and I clicked on his blog and noted that he'd posted on the same thing I had, but he'd received and EP. I wondered what happened to mine... left a comment about that, along with a pile of scrambled egg all over my face, which was the reason for the second comment.
Thanks for reading and rating, Everyone!
There's P.J. O'Rouke, Dave Barry and Drew Carey, to name three.
Does O'Rourke really fit here? He admits to having been a flaming lefty during college, and went on to serve as managing editor of National Lampoon and foreign-affairs desk chief at Rolling Stone, two left-leaning publications to say the least. He would hardly have been able to flourish there without a sense of satire and irony, to which he was certainly exposed as a 60s lefty.
An argument could also be made that Dave Barry is apolitical rather than Republican.
The best humor involves intellect, and that is the difference between a pratfall clown and a true wit.
"Conservative" isn't the word to describe the Cult the main thrust of GOP politics now represents. The bus load of right wing ideologues careening down, ironically, the left side of the IQ Bell Curve zoomed past the conservative off ramp years ago.
So you get "comedy" like the Half Hour News Hour, where, as icemilk notes, the "humor" revolved around ridiculing "the other."
"My sister married a liberal." "That's too bad, she should have married a guy with a job!" yuk-a-yuk. No wonder it bombed.
It's easy to compare to a cult. The children write and perform a play praising the Father Leader and the tenets of the belief. Meaningful to the indoctrinated, tedious and absurd to the normal world.
The GOP is left to appeal mainly to the least intelligent, whose inability or refusal to commit expansive thought leads to the largest degree of like-mindedness that can be achieved. With higher intelligence comes more differentiated thinking and greater understanding, but less cohesiveness in viewpoint.
So, to clear what might be confusion - a conservative can be funny to most, but an ideologue can only be funny to another ideologue.
Yes, I just called right wingers dumbasses.
There are solid comedic writers on the right, like PJ O'Rourke, but I do wonder why a parody of "extreme liberals" hasn't caught on as well as Colbert has. Of course, we shouldn't underestimate the fact that Colbert is a genius, but certainly if you can parody the like of Coulter and Limbaugh on the right, then you can also parody folks like Michael Moore on the left.
Excellent article :)
Lea & Jeanette... that literal-minded mindset is probably what made Archie Bunker such a conservative hero. I think the Smothers Brothers were on then, too, and I didn't completely get everything they did, but I knew I really, really liked them. Even then I had finely tuned radar for subversive humor.
Ocularnervosa, that performance by Colbert at the WHCD was positively brilliant. I thought it was one of the bravest things I've ever seen. He stayed in character the whole time-- with GWB just a few feet from-- while he mocked the president and completely humiliated the press. It was awesome. The following year was completely disappointing. (Wasn't that also the one with Gregory dancing backup for Rove? Or am I mis-remembering?)
icemilkcoffee... that's it! The GOP & RWA brand of humor is primarily the kind of "satire" (ironic quotes intended) that pokes fun at those who are lower on the food chain or who have less power or belong to an oppressed group (even if they have more personal power, like Obama does). What they really don't seem to understand is that Satire used properly is a tool for the oppressed to prick the conscience of the powerful, i.e., to afflict the comfortable... the sort of thing the press once did on occasion. "Those were the days..."
Miller, I know was once considered a liberal, until he decided to go to the Dark Side. Baffling...
Lyle, I appreciated your post, too, and must thank you for not hitting me on the head after my first comment there. I went directly to your post from my email...
Your comment about the whole joke being who gets it and who doesn't makes me feel a teensy bit of compassion. It must be some kind of hardship to be a butt of a joke, just because you don't get the humor.
As for the parody of extreme liberals... who's going to do it? A conservative with a humor deficit? ;~) Not very likely. The closest thing we have to that is the bubble around the beltway, wherein the punditry, if they deign to notice Liberals, call us/them "shrill," just because we/they also believe in those all-American values of Accountability, Responsibility and the Rule of Law. Especially regarding Torture, about which I can't find anything funny to say.
An explanation that I've often heard for the humor divide between "Conservatives" and everyone else is that many on the right grow up in bastions of right-wing culture that also happen to be crawling with Biblical literalists. ("Conservative" is such an inadequate category, since it can be applied to certain paleo-conservatives like Barry Goldwater, who would have laughed uproariously at Colbert.)
Once formalized in writing, Republican political tenets, in parallel with Biblical injunctions concerning morality and images of the "strict father" that Paul Sjordal posits, take on a status akin to canon. They thus become all but sacrosanct by association because the "Word of God" must never become the object of satire or irony.
"Brilliant move, Eric. This should finally lose us an account we should never have had to begin with." Eric thanked me for the kudo, but took the opportunity to stress that the team needed to remain positive about all our clients, no matter how frustrating.
Wait a second. Is it possible that Eric's reply to my reply was Cobertesque, and that I'm the one who didn't get it? Yikes. I'm dizzy.
I've always assumed, however, that one sleepless night he had a vision of an unoccupied market niche that was his for the taking (articulate reformed lefty tempers right-wing gravitas with pot-inspired levity).
The field was almost empty, and its sponsors had deeper pockets. He quickly reversed polarity and became its apotheosis.
For example: He also co-wrote National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook with Douglas Kenney. O'Rourke said later that Kenney brought comedy to the piece and he brought the organisation. The Yearbook was a bestseller and some themes were later used in the movie Animal House. [emphasis added]
That seems very telling.
And then there were these paragraphs:
O'Rourke has described himself as a libertarian.[4] He has sarcastically proposed two other American political parties: one for those with his mixture of views, another for those who hold the opposite mixture. O'Rourke is also strongly pro-life and opposed to stem cell research that involves destroying human embryos.[5]
O'Rourke types his manuscripts on an IBM Selectric typewriter, though denies he is a luddite, asserting that his short attention span would make focusing on writing on a computer difficult. [1] In a January 2007 interview, O'Rourke gave an example of his view of computers and writing by referencing novelist Stephen King, whom he paraphrased - saying had he a computer he could have written three times as much in his early days . To which O'Rourke remarked-- "Does the world need three times as many Cujos? Three times as many Jane Austens, maybe." [emphases added]
The parts I bolded were things I sympathized with... and I think that something he and I might have in common is a dislike for utilitarian arguments. (His dislike of stem cell research, e.g.)
And I joke about being a Luddite, even though I'm not really. I just hate to be on the bleeding edge of any new technology. I might call those values traditional, rather than conservative.
I know I consider myself a liberal, and don't even like to use the word progressive anymore... since I think it's one favored by libertarians, a member of which I am not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvLS4Jv6Tpw
[fast forward to the 3:09 mark.]
But even that temporary, possibly disingenuous foray into long-hairdom could well have been what gave his humor a depth and versatility his more sober, unindicted co-conspirators didn't have. (Except Pat Buchanan.)
His refusal to fall prey to the right-wing humor deficit is what we're trying to explain. Could be in part hereditary; he does bear an Irish surname, after all. I don't know any Irish with humor deficits. (See Buchanan reference above. Full disclosure here would reveal a conflict of interest, but we won't go there.)
And O'R had the curiosity and moxy to venture into a foreign camp, adapt, reconnoiter, and return. And that has set him apart. Maybe he knew it would distinguish him right from the beginning?
Having an Irish surname myself, I am happy to agree with you about the effect of O'Rourke's DNA on his Humor Quotient. Certainly, it does give one at least an well-attuned radar to recognize satire, if not the desire to write it, too.
And I agree, too, that his foray into the other camp played a role in his development. Something like a bildungsroman... but as applied to Humor. ;~)
On another tangent, I also noted his birthday, and (because my mother fed us upon stars & such growing up) I wondered if that combination of being both a "5" and a Scorpio was part of it. Scorpio is a transformational sign, and belongs to deep thinkers. And his "alteration" for lack of a better word might have been a kind of personal transformation.
The "5" is more like Gemini (or Mercury), i.e, quick-thinking, problem-solving, possibly organized, and often an excellent communicator or disseminator of information.
It's not an easy combination of traits.
Honestly? I don't think they would get it... but that's my own bias showing, I know.
McCart: Thanks for that link. I'm looking forward to watching it a little later. It is so rare that we get to see the "real" Stephen Colbert, and not just his persona from TV-Land.
Re the rest of the conversation here:
1. When I was growing up, it was conventional wisdom that the left had no humor, they they were too earnest about issues.
2. I don't think either Barry or Carey are all that political. I knew about Carey--he's from Cleveland where I live--but honestly, he's no Dennis Miller, showing up on Fox or anything.
3. I do appreciate PJ O'Rourke's wit and agree that intelligence is a big part of humor. I think intelligence is why Christopher Buckley and other conservatives have moved over to the left, if only temporarily until there are more brains on the right again. It's true that intellectualism used to be associated with the right, and I have felt sorry in recent years for the George Wills and Bill Safires who have had to suffer the likes of the Bushes. Obama has inspired serious party-intellect envy.
4. As for parodies of the extreme left, in a way that's what South Park is, isn't it? They rip on political correctness like nobody's business. Also, all those ho-hum movies like Meet the Parents with die-hard hippie types mixing with button-down conservatives or even "regular" people? I think those are mildly mocking the left. The difference is that the left laughs along with them. I think--at this particular point in history--the left is simply not as defensive. I mean, with all the fodder GWB has given us, we know we're in the right, so to speak, so it's easy to feel sorry for anybody who's gotten it wrong or to poke gentle fun of ourselves.
Great post--thanks for the interesting conversation.
They make me slide out my chair laughing. Apparently I just don't get this whole humor/irony/satire thing.
I think that is kinda the point here. The Republican party is so far to the edge now, they have lost all perspective. It can happen when you go too far to the other edge too. People who perceive themselves to be embattled, whether they really are or not, tend to think self-directed humor is too risky because it threatens their credibility.
I also think ktm is correct that "All in the Family" was not a conservative comedy, but I really think Lear tried to understand the conservative mindset of the time. Bunker was not always shown as an unsympathetic character. Many tidbits about his past, such as the fact that he had to drop out of school to work, fleshed out the character. Not to mention that fact that Carroll O'Connor was a fantastic actor. Don't forget that Michael's hypocrosies were also exposed from time to time.
I can understand many conservatives not liking Colbert and thinking he is unfunny. But not realizing that he is just pretending to be a conservative blowhard in the vein of Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and especially Bill O'Reilly, for the purpose of mocking them and also scoring some satirical zingers in every day... wow.
Then again, a few weeks ago I encountered someone who claimed that he disliked and found him unfunny because of the offensive things he says. When someone pointed out that Colbert is being satiric, the person responded that Colbert is no different than Limbaugh: they both say offensive, stupid stuff and them claim it is OK because it was "satire". So maybe that was a liberal who didn't "get" Colbert...
There are lots of conservative humorists. Rush Limbaugh, anyone? Bill O'Reilly? I don't agree with those guys but I find them hilarious.
Liberal humor is having a renaissance with the Daily Show and Colbert Report, but back in the day there wasn't much but SNL, which went through a long doldrum-y period in the 1990s. Now with the political tide leaning left, it's easier to produce and market these shows, so the liberal humor is more widely seen and appreciated.
As for the 'study,' when someone repeats your beliefs in a mocking way, the way that Stephen Colbert does, obviously you will be less likely to spot the satire if you agree with those positions than if you think they're ridiculous. You'd have to show people examples of both left-wing and right-wing humor to have a chance at a meaningful study.
(Btw I must be the only liberal in the country who doesn't find Colbert funny. I love Jon Stewart but Colbert just seems like he's always either trying too hard or not trying enough.)
RATED
Is it any wonder, then, that conservatives aren't willing to change their accepted views regarding Colbert by looking objectively at what he was saying? They have been shown that they are unwilling to challenge their already pre-conceived notions.
Thanks, rated.
Yeah, it is amasing that many conservatives do not understand satire. I would not be surprised if there is a center in the brain which helps with humor. Although technically satire is not exactly humor even though it can be used to humorous effect.
Thank you for the post. It made me rewatch the White House Correspondents Dinner speech. Priceless.
You may well have solved the O'Rourke defection mystery, ktm.