THROUGH satire, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert mock American political life. They expose the hypocrisy and ineptitude of our politics and critique our culture by revealing the ridiculous. But for many young people, watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report goes beyond entertainment; it represents an intellectual stance. To watch is to support a more fair, honest more accountable government. These fans wish for a more responsive politics, where Stewart and Colbert are not only funny but politically influential. Facebook's fastest growing political group ever, "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" is held as empirical support. Supporters believe the popularity of Stewart and Colbert demonstrates their potential political power. But the two raise many questions along with their laughable answers. First, it is unclear if support from a virtual group of people of unverifiable age and intellect counts for anything. Also, do Colbert's satire and Stewart's sarcasm put forth and create more than they critique and destroy? Finally, does laughter actually bring change?
Critics of Stewart and Colbert argue that their jokes are not just about politics and the press, but also about voters and the audience -- the people who allow the things joked about to take place. According to skeptics, supporters overlook how they perpetuate our political situation through their laughter: fans view politics as theatre, something to watch rather than engage with.
The young people who support Stewart and Colbert, critics argue, ignore how these comedians contribute to our political apathy. Since their views cannot be fully realized in public policy, they withdraw from political life into the sarcastic. Seemingly energized and politically active fans do nothing more than giggle. Laughing at politicians cannot replace contacting Congress, and joining Facebook groups cannot replace civil demonstrations. Watching their shows is not political action, but an acute form of youth impotence: the inability to do anything but laugh. Their popularity, critics say, is a sign of apathy rather than a prelude to a progressive political future.
Enemies of Stewart and Colbert are correct to point out that just watching their shows will never bring political change. In this light, Stewart and Colbert's political hue is not the hopeful and progressive blue of the Democrats, but the pungent and pessimistic green of a jaded audience. Can this cynical interpretation possibly account for all the laughter?
It is doubtful that so many young people would tune in if they were truly apolitical and disinterested. And it is also unclear whether political satire would even make sense without an informed and concerned audience. A taste for ironic humor should not automatically preclude one from being a responsible member of our republic. The joking and laughter is an articulation of society's discontents, an expressing dissatisfaction and disgust towards a political system nearly broken.
To laugh at Stewart and Colbert, to simply watch Comedy Central and do nothing else may be to reject democracy as farce.? But to laugh with them, to vote and protest, to struggle with and engage in the political process is to acknowledge that American democracy is in need of repair. With relentless irony, Stewart and Colbert inspire civic arousal -- the kind that ignited Martin Luther King's civil rights and Ralph Nader's consumer movements, the kind that revitalizes politics. Stewart and Colbert offer intellectual gifts that will inspire the future electorate. These comedians do not splice entertainment into news, but with jokes, make their entertainment "newsworthy." They do not ram their ideology into their audience, but mock ideology itself.
In the journal "Political Communication", Geoffrey Baym argues that Stephen Colbert's "Better know a district" is a critique of right-wing political spectacle, an exploration into the use of deliberation and representation. And in the "Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media" Julia R. Fox studied the TV coverage of the 2004 election and found the amount of substantive information in broadcast networks' nightly newscasts to be the same as "The Daily Show." With unrivaled wit, Stewart and Colbert accept the world-views of our politicians and take them to their dystopian extremes. They hijack other people's metaphors and then smash them into the wall of reality, where the comic explosion reveals the absurdity once accepted as coherent.
By making our politics just a little more transparent, perhaps their comedy can also be profound.
Hamza Shaban's column appears Fridays in The Cavaier Daily.He can be reached at hshaban@cavalierdaily.com.
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