Make ’Em Laugh
As President Barack Obama made his way to the podium, Anna Kendrick’s voice crooned through the speakers: “When I’m gone, when I’m gone … You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone …” It was the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, and the president was delivering his annual address to a hall full of White House press corps members, politicians and well-heeled celebrities. The audience erupted in laughter and applause. “You can’t say it, but you know it’s true,” the president deadpanned.
Obama continued, reflecting on the year in politics and the recent election cycle. “Eight years ago I said it was time to change the tone of our politics. In hindsight, I clearly should have been more specific,” he quipped. The president concluded his 30-minute speech — which included jabs at Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz, among others — with the words “Obama out” and a literal mic drop.
As a president at the end of his second term with a strong approval rating, Obama’s speech was seen by many as a victory lap. But the tradition of roasting Washington and the reporters who cover it gets at something larger that perhaps only comedy has the power to do.
Through the lenses of anthropology, political science, psychology, art history and more, USC Dornsife researchers have been examining humor’s ability to cut tension, get at truth and, perhaps, influence people’s politics. Whether it’s in a speech, performed in a stand-up routine, spoken on television, posted on social media or drawn in a cartoon, here’s a look at how laughing at our political system, our politicians, controversy and conflict just might be the best medicine.
Speak Truth to Power
Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Lanita Jacobs, like most Americans, was in need of a reprieve from the aftermath of national tragedy. So she sought out a place where laughter is not only encouraged but celebrated — a comedy club.
As an ethnographer with an interest in stand-up comedy, she was also curious how comedians — particularly African-American comics — were dealing with such a charged moment in history.
“I imagined that these comedians might have a different discourse than the one that was circulating in America in the mainstream pop culture,” explained Jacobs, associate professor of anthropology and American studies and ethnicity.
Her first stop was the Comedy Union, a comedy club in South Los Angeles known for showcasing black comedians. It was early October 2001, less than a month after the Twin Towers fell.
That night, one of the comedians who took the stage was Ian Edwards. He posited that in light of the 9/11 attacks and the resulting war on terrorism, black people had been supplanted by Middle Easterners as a target of racism in America.
“Black people, we have been delivered,” Edwards announced to the crowd.
Jacobs recalled that a woman in the audience responded emphatically: “Finally!”
That narrative ran through not only Edwards’ set, but was reiterated in jokes by other African-American comics whose shows Jacobs later attended. “I was like, ‘Oh snap,’” Jacobs said. “I have got to figure this out.”
Jacobs made the subject the basis of a research project. For eight years she frequented shows by black comics. She also interviewed comedians, clubgoers, promoters and club owners. Her goal was to untangle what exactly was happening onstage when comics poked and prodded at racial constructions in the wake of 9/11 with their humor, and what audiences were saying with their laughter or their silence.
Jacobs published a paper on her research in the journal Transforming Anthropology. In the article, she wrote: “For many minority audiences, 9/11 jokes ‘work’ as political commentaries that resist pro-war rhetoric and implicate a larger shared history of racial marginalization. These jokes also work because they invoke problems of race in America, particularly comics’ ongoing struggles against violations of their civil liberties.”
Veteran political consultant Robert Shrum says humor is a powerful tool for politicians — but only if it comes naturally to them.
Comedians were saying that “the way America is being constructed in the aftermath of 9/11 is not one I feel myself to be a part of,” she said.
Then, in the midst of Jacobs’ research into post-9/11 humor, Hurricane Katrina struck. Startling images of people — most of them black — stranded on rooftops without food and clean water appeared in media outlets internationally. While agencies rushed to help the residents of New Orleans as the city disappeared under water, many noticed that the federal government was slow to respond.
“For five whole days in the so-called ‘First World,’ while the nation and the globe are watching, you see babies and older black people with flags for blankets,” Jacobs recalled. “The two most vulnerable categories and we can’t get them water to drink? It was befuddling.”
She decided to continue her line of research and see what comedians had to say in the wake of the natural disaster.
“It was just painful,” Jacobs said. “In fact, it was the only time that I saw some comics who weren’t known to be political wax political.” She also saw another common thread emerge throughout their comedy: an assertion of black people’s resilience.
Audiences responded. “There was a lot of ‘Right!’ and ‘OK!’” she said. “I’ve never seen a comedy club feel like such a cathartic space.”
Jacobs continued her study of African-American comedians through 2008 — the beginning of Obama’s presidency. She is currently synthesizing her findings into a book, which will also analyze comedians’ responses to the Iraq War as well as the controversies surrounding activist Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who purported to be African American, and white actor Michael Richards, who unloaded a racist rant at the West Hollywood, Calif., Laugh Factory in 2006.
What her research has shown is that humor cuts to the core of an issue and offers both comics and their audiences a way to cope with tragedy.
“Humor provides a salve in times of trouble,” Jacobs explained. “It provides a moment of redress when you need to speak truth to power. It plays with notions of truth. And sometimes comedy, when it’s the most successful, is the absolute truth. It’s the emperor not wearing any clothes.”
Reveal Yourself
In addition to being a balm in challenging times, comedy is used to highlight politicians’ authenticity and to shape the public’s view of them.
On March 30, 1981, an otherwise routine day in Washington, D.C., President Ronald Reagan was shot. Secret Service agents quickly pushed the president into his limousine and raced him to the hospital. As he was placed on the operating table, bleeding — his lung pierced by a bullet — Reagan looked up and famously said to his doctors, “I hope you’re all Republicans.”
Reagan went on to make a full recovery. His sense of humor, which clearly remained intact even with his life in jeopardy, won him points with the public.
That’s no surprise to veteran political consultant Robert Shrum, whose career includes guiding presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns. Politicians can seem remote and inaccessible. Humor allows people to relate to them, explained Shrum, Carmen H. and Louis Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics and professor of the practice of political science at USC Dornsife. “It’s a powerful validator of their humanity.”
Using humor to connect with an audience — or an electorate — is nothing new. But doing it with authenticity is what really makes an impact, said Shrum. “For folks who can do that, and do it naturally, it can be a big asset.”
He pointed to Reagan as well as President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as politicians with a special knack for wit. Shrum, who served as speechwriter and press secretary to Edward Kennedy, recalled that the senator — who was thought to be a shoo-in for president, but never ran successfully — once joked: “Frankly, I don’t mind not being president. I just mind that someone else is.”
Art historian Jennifer Greenhill studies how 19th-century artists like Thomas Nast used their craft to express their political ideologies and influence their audiences.
But it’s not just what politicians say that affects how they are perceived, but what other people are saying about them.
Politics is the bread and butter of comedy news shows like The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight and The Nightly Show. It’s popular fodder for late-night talk show hosts’ monologues. And almost every weekend, Kate McKinnon and Darrell Hammond don wigs to skewer presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live.
The repeated ways that comedians portray politicians can have an effect — either positive or negative — on how we perceive them, Shrum said.
These programs “shape the images of candidates,” he said. “They become water cooler conversation. It can be a very powerful force. Humor cuts through in a way that simple rhetoric doesn’t.”
Shrum, who was himself a guest on both The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, also noted that these shows are where most young people get their news. “They tend to trust those hosts more than they trust a lot of conventional journalism,” he said. “I think that they find that the humor is getting more at a truth, at a deeper truth, at an underlying truth.” A 2015 Pew Research survey of news preferences by generation backs up that claim: Millennials are more trusting of infotainment news shows like The Daily Show than are older generations.
The same report cites Facebook as the top source for political news among millennials. In fact, social media has been where some of the most hilarious — and cutting — political barbs have occurred.
Know Your Meme
As any social media user knows, you can merely post updates on your Twitter or Facebook account or you can “crush.” Effectively using funny memes helps achieve the latter.
Take, for instance, when the official White House Twitter account began holding “office hours” in 2011 so that its Twitter followers could learn about timely issues facing the nation. During a discussion about the debt ceiling and deficit reduction negotiations, at least one Twitter user considered the exchange to be less than thrilling.
David Wiggs, tweeting as @wiggsd, wrote: “This WH correspondence briefing isn’t nearly as exciting as yesterday’s.” The official White House Twitter account quickly responded: “@wiggsd Sorry to hear that. Fiscal policy is important but can be dry sometimes. Here’s something more fun.” The Twitter account then did the unexpected — it linked to a video of British popstar Rick Astley singing his 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” on YouTube.
The practice is known as Rickrolling — a popular bait-and-switch internet meme where someone lures an unsuspecting Twitter reader to the Astley video.
The tongue-in-cheek stunt from the White House Twitter account garnered more than 5,000 retweets and 1,429 likes, as well as significant news coverage.
On social media, memes like Rickrolling are popular ways to make a political point (or, in this case, divert from a dull policy discussion).
Morteza Dehghani, assistant professor of psychology and computer science, studies social media as a means to understand people’s behavior and reasoning. He sees memes as snippets of popular thought.
“If we think of cultures as a shared way of thinking — a shared pattern of mental representations and beliefs — then memes are the basic units of those beliefs,” explained Dehghani, who leads the Computational Social Science Laboratory and is a researcher at USC Dornsife’s Brain and Creativity Institute.
Adapting memes to serve a purpose in our culture ensures their staying power, particularly when they are funny. But when it comes to influencing the people with whom we share memes on social media, their real power appears to be in supporting what we already feel is true.
“That’s just general psychology,” Dehghani explained. “We really like reinforcing our beliefs. Basically, it boosts our egos. It tells us that we’re right. It tells us that our point of view about the world is correct, and also it tells us that the opposing group is wrong, which is probably more important than knowing that we are right.”
One recent Twitter exchange that got a lot of coverage for this year’s presidential candidates took place after Obama announced that he was endorsing Clinton for president.
Donald Trump fired off the tweet: “Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama — but nobody else does!” Clinton responded with “Delete your account,” a popular Twitter meme that roughly translates to: Your tweet or opinion is so bad that you should be immediately disqualified from further participation on the platform.
Trump was quick with his own comeback to Clinton: “How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up — and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?”
Clinton earned headlines from Time, Politico, The Wall Street Journal and others for her clever use of the meme, and the exchange delighted followers from both sides who thought their candidate came out on top.
On the whole, the social posts were an effective communication tool because of their humor, reinforcing loyalty from each camp’s supporters, and spreading the candidates’ messages in a way that only the social platform can, Shrum said.
“Social media amplifies all forms of political communication,” he said. “In the old days — and the old days are not so long ago, 15 years ago — to get the kind of attention Clinton got for that tweet, you’d have to give a whole speech.”
Or, in the case of a political cartoonist — going back more than 100 years — it was his illustrations published in a weekly magazine that made even more of a clear-cut impression on voters.
The Mighty Pen of Thomas Nast
Satirist Thomas Nast held an enormous amount of sway at the end of the 19th century. According to art historian Jennifer Greenhill, “In the U.S., he was seen to be absolutely singular in terms of his political impact.” In fact, he’s credited with making the elephant the symbol of the GOP and popularizing the donkey as the symbol of the Democratic Party.
Nast, who is considered the father of the modern political cartoon, began sketching caricatures of New York City politician William “Boss” Tweed while he was an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly news magazine. Tweed, who ran the city’s Democratic Party throughout the 1870s, was also one of its most infamous corrupt politicians — he was exposed for extracting bribes, filling his party’s ranks with his cronies and stealing millions from public coffers.
Most often, Nast would depict Tweed with a money bag for a face, overweight, and with his brooch and hat embellished with dollar signs.
“Nast makes it incredibly clear what the man’s motives are,” explained Greenhill, associate professor of art history. She is the author of Playing It Straight: Art and Humor in the Gilded Age (University of California Press, 2012), which examines deadpan humor in late 19th-century American art. “Caricature strives to make legible the aspects of his character that are hidden — those he might work to conceal.”
For a public that included illiterate consumers of news magazines, Nast’s drawings on their own were a powerful statement. Tweed is reported to have said, “I don’t care so much what the papers write about me — my constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see pictures.” Eventually Tweed was brought to justice.
In addition to the role Nast’s drawings played in Tweed’s downfall, the cartoonist held great power in swaying one, if not two, presidential elections. His flattering images of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant were said to have helped Grant to his first term as president, but Nast’s influence was even more apparent during Grant’s bid for re-election when he took on Grant’s opponent, Horace Greeley.
“Nast shows Greeley shaking hands with the wrong sort — everyone that a Liberal Republican wouldn’t want to be associated with,” Greenhill said. In one image, Greeley is even clasping hands with Tweed. “It becomes a visual formula, an iconographic trope that is just relentless. It was a brilliant strategy because it suggests that Greeley has no integrity whatsoever.”
To further subjugate the candidate, Nast represented his running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown, as a scrap of paper with his name scrawled on it attached to Greeley’s coattails. In the end, Nast’s artistic crusade helped Grant defeat Greeley (and, in fact, Nast developed a friendship with Grant).
The Art of Revelation
Greenhill sees a parallel between the function of Nast’s political cartoons in Harper’s Weekly and current comedic news shows.
“Because the magazine was weekly, Nast’s commentary was incredibly timely,” Greenhill said. “In a way, it’s The Daily Show of that period in terms of its timeliness, and with a comedic commentator who is shining a light on what’s going on in politics from his perspective.”
And that is what humor’s main function appears to be when it comes to politics — to render a truth, whether it is to further someone’s agenda, as in Nast’s case, or to shed light on something uncomfortable or challenging by wrapping it in laughter to make its consumption easier.
Obama, for instance, has been acknowledged for using his wit to connect with constituents to advance White House initiatives through channels that appeal to audiences of all ages. After the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, he appeared on comedian Zach Galifianakis’ parody talk show Between Two Ferns to encourage millennial viewers to sign up for health insurance while subjecting himself to Galifianakis’ inane questions. Recently, he was featured in a Buzzfeed video encouraging Americans to register to vote. His rundown of “5 Things That Are Harder Than Registering to Vote” included making friendship bracelets, anything involving the game Operation and listing all of the characters on Game of Thrones who have died. “Jon, but maybe that doesn’t really count?” Obama opined as he ticked off names on his fingers.
He could have just looked into the camera and told people to vote because it’s their right as citizens, but Shrum noted that Obama’s strategy is far more effective. “He’s meeting young people where they live and laugh,” he said. “And meeting them on their own media will always work better than a statement from a podium in the White House press briefing room.” Clearly Obama is using humor to his advantage. More than 2 million people have watched the Buzzfeed video.
So, humor can help politicians advance their agendas, and it can humanize them so their public can relate to them. On Twitter and other social media channels, humor offers an outlet for political opponents to artfully level one another with pithy posts and to reinforce our ideologies. And as Nast’s work demonstrates, political humor can indeed influence the public. Meanwhile, in a world where we contend with injustice, we look to humor to help us cope and heal, and to bring people together. “Just as caricatures unmask hypocrisy,” Greenhill said, “we look to comedy as an art of revelation.”
Read about writer and cultural critic M.G. Lord’s career as a daily political cartoonist for Newsday
Read more stories from USC Dornsife Magazine’s Fall 2016-Spring 2017 issue >>