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abouttate professor talks political satire in the age of cable television and online media. this 30 minute event was part of a symposium on satire held at the university of minnesota. >> one of the great adventures of helping told us symposium together was to identify the scholarship in the last 30 years that his advanced our understanding of satire. from central casting comes our next speaker, sophia mclennan. she is a professor of international affairs and comparative literature at penn state university and founding director of global studies. she is a nationally recognized expert. his satire saving our nation? ert's america,

satirizing democracy. lon also has a column on sa where she regularly covers politics and culture. we are discussing just out satire influences public opinion and why satire is sometimes more powerful than traditional newspaper i turn you over to professor mclennan. [applause] thank you. i think you are missing the best weather minneapolis as seen in thmonths. i appreciate you taking a moment to spend your time with me. i am thrilled to be here. i love talking about this stuff. it is pretty much what i do. i am going to throw a lot of things out. some of what is here is in the books she mentioned. part of it is in a new book i'm

working on called "trump is a joke: why satire makes sense when politics doesn't." given i have all these amazing political cartoonists in the gin, maybe you could just up a book cover for me while i talk. that would be cool. [laughter] what is it we need to have a healthy democracy? we need active citizens. attention, read the news, maybe look at a political cartoon. we need informed citizens. they cannot just be active and stupid. we need engaged citizens. how do we do that? voting, community action, healthy news media, active

public sphere where people can get together and debate and think through critical issues. he was our central things people always talk about when they talk about a healthy democracy. what do we have now in our democracy today? we have satire, we have millennials, and we have social media. that cannot be good. i'm am here to tell you that it is awesome, and there is a lot of reasons why. a lot of my research focused on what happened to our democracy after 9/11. 9/11 was a after crisis in citizenship, in the public sphere, in news media, and it was satire that came to the rescue and played a major role in keeping our democracy from falling apart. why is that? citizenship was already a mess well before the attacks of 9/11.

don't forget the drama of gore. after 9/11, we had this with us or against us mentality, coulter of fear, self-censorship, journalists getting fired, professors getting fired. people today often don't know how crazy it was. it was tough. bill martin got fired. fired. got you are in this atmosphere of surveillance and fear. also because people did not think we would ever be attacked. that was a big part of it. i missed my slide. in newshave a crisis media. after 9/11, the news media was pretty much like whatever the president says. there were other things setting us up for that level of failure.

cablewas 1976, when basic comes in. wife is basic cable bad? now i can watch they watch for the news. tch or the news. they try to make the news way more sexy. they cannot really compete with women on the beach. they tried to be more visually creative. the first 47 news channel. channel.ews there is not that much news. hey started having 10 minutes of mission and 20 yelling atpundits

each other. i amis what colbert said, going to feel the news at you. dialogueand having about the information you got what you watched his that all died -- the news. that all died with cnn. they give you feelings and opinions to you. they all yell at each other. the information you get goes down. the next thing is fox news in 1996, the first openly partisan channel. ann coulter had a show on msnbc. we live in this land of a sense of partisanshap on the news.

that ramps up. 9/11 fear and hype. the's the beginning of ticker. satire fixed it because it helps remind us of the actual story. what we know, and you guys, it's such a privilege to me that basically get what satire is. comedy is not satire. we know that satire emerges in force in moments of crisis. every human culture has satire. every community will produce it when it is told it is not allowed oto think and is

supposed to get in line. vietnam.s. you can say would be another moment, but 9/11 was the real crush for satire. we had the onion, michael moore, the yes men, but really the center was stewart and colbert. one of the things that changes is the way that satire had a measurable impact on public opinion and politics. tina fey does sarah palin and ruins her career. there is data on this you can track. tina fey does palin, people can

no long support her. tina fey does palin by repeating the same words. why is that brilliant? impersonation is funny when it requires no art. the you have colbert at correspondents dinner and sat next to the president and for you.irst time said i love because he was embodying a supporter of bush, he was able to say things. you have moments like stewart working to pass legislation. a satirist changing the law

because he decided there had not been enough support for first responders after 9/11. people will say it was his initiative that changed it. this speaking truthiness to hisr when colbert gives pivotals one of the things that is true with satire. when especially important these media is becoming more sensationalize, entertaining, ridiculous. the satirists are getting more serious. his speech was one of those extraordinary moments. it is an extra ordinary moment for what happens in the land of social media. the speech was actually panned. nobody wanted to cover it.

it was the fans that did. there was a site that said tephencolbert.org. that is where i saw it. colberthad stephen doing things like giving us the word truthiness. what is it that makes satire powerful? sometimes it is that it gives you a public vocabulary, a shared narrative, saying something that everybody feels but did not know how to do it. that is why that one cartoon sticks in your head. it gives you the vocabulary, whether it is the visual one or a textual one. now, we are in the land of satire and fake news. you have to remember, these shows were called fake news. it was not derogatory.

he called it fake news good we had no idea what was coming -- news. we had no idea what was coming. one thing that is very tricky is that the satirists after 9/11 were not just talking about the problems with politicians and public figures, they were consistently attacking the flaws in the news media. this became one of the central targets of satire. gets a lot ofwart credit for ramping that up. one of the things that then weird.super don't like to think about this, but public knowledge -- my political scientist friends don't like to think about this, but public knowledge of issues was at its highest for viewers of stewart and colbert. meanwhile, if you watch fox news, you actually scored lower

on a test of aptitude of social public issues. you score lower than people who watch no news at all. moment when a lot of information people are getting that they're are using justke decisions is deceptive, uninformed, misinformed. of calling ebola the isis biological -- you have got to be kidding me. the people who consume satire are more educated, not just because they're just actually theyer, which is true, but were right about things. they were understanding things and having more detailed aptitudes. that is a unique thing because, again, you remember when we were talking earlier during vietnam,

it could be cronkite and the parking. we don't have contacted it. cronkiteave the -- today. we just have the satire. that is the big shift. i could give you the data. you just have to believe me. i am right. this,e like me works on satire is saving our nation. they are like, no. satire produces apathy. slactivists. o'reilly referred to stewart viewers as stoned slackers, even though his viewers scored higher than bill o'reilly's on issues. there is pleasure in satire. that cannot be good.

all of this is bad. it turns out it is really good. all of the research we have about what happens with satire in the brain is extremely positive. people who produce satire and smarterit are simply because they didn't wants, irony, layers of meaning. they get that problems have multiple ways you can solve them. there are other cool things that happen with the brain. it lets you speak truth to power in a fun way. we know that when people are having fun, they are engaged and connected. we have interesting data that correlates satire and cynicism and political engagement, whereas if you listen to crazy conspiracy theory radio, it could be cynicism and apathy. consumere viewer, tends to be more active in politics.

there are other sorts of really cool things that happen. one of the other things that that satireatire is is often about exposing faulty thinking. you are told you can do this or this. mb binary.du i am going to expose that. we have an administration that is constantly making irrational and illogical arguments. the biggest battle in the u.s. today is not between red and blue. it is between smart and stupid. satire is just about pointing out the stupidity everywhere you can find it, on the left, on the right, doesn't matter. thatther piece of this is we know when people are engaged

in satire, they enjoyed participating in politics different ways. we see this in terms of the way you've culture is always -- youth culture is always engaging in politics through satire. i call this the citizen satirist. we now have citizen satirists everywhere. social media has enabled that. also have the satirist activists. i have a friend who used satire pranks to help bring down most melosivich.- this stuff is cool. satire is part of how you draw out political views. i can give you lots of impact.

people worry. his thing, what is the power of satire? i have tons of different data lberts, whether it is co launches a term, how often that is used, in what ways is a news. -- it used. john alder is a brilliant example of the satirist that has tons of impact. there are 70 ways he has impact -- so many ways he has impact that you cannot limit it to just one. when colbert and skewer stepped down, a lot of people wondered what happened to satire. what happened is we have more on the menu than ever.

they are all over. they all complement each other. this has been pretty good. makes the reasons that erare in the trump different is when people were doing satirical jokes in the bush era, there was this tiny twinge of am i going to get in trouble for this? trump.e makes fun of if you don't, you could lose your job or lose your ratings. this is part of what is happened to jimmy fallon. trumpkimmel jumps on the bandwagon, his ratings go up. we have never seen a moment when it has been so easy to make fun of a president with no consequences, and part of that is because everyone is doing it. it is a most possible to find out where it starts and stops.

we have never had a president, you could watch someone impersonate him on tv and then tweet about it right there and then and complain. this is an interesting thing. after always goes presidents. most of the time, people tell you to ignore it. this time, he does not ignore it, he threatens all sorts of crazy stuff. rump is a joke, but what he is doing is not funny. satire is in this strange place where it is feeling like a thesure to help draw out negative and long-term effects of what happens when you don't respect democracy. that is part of what my new book is about. i don't know if you have seen this, but assignment -- -- hasan

trump in 2017. it is brilliant. ech is about the first amendment. you want to value the country that lets you say the things you do right next to the president who in this case refused to go. the fact that the white house correspondents association dinner has always had a comedian tells you there is an interesting relationship between the news media and comedy. satireoned the citizen ringing us back to social media. my guess is a couple of people socialroom don't like media, just gauging on the demographics. it turns out that social media has lots of negatives, but from a mobilizing democracy

standpoint is super exciting. one of the things we are noticing is the way people engage in politics on social media is often ironic and snarky and sassy. comfort,tainly of some right? i like this one. i used to be the only pretty blonde woman reading fake news, now there is an entire network devoted to that. this came out during the government shutdown. a lot of people saw the tweet, but the best part about it was that the tweet was exposing faulty logic. you are saying we are supposed to come from us, but the copper mice is not a copper eyes. what is interesting is that inual tweet got read congress.

part of that is facilitated by social media. that brings me to millennials. my guess is that some people in the room maybe are not sure millennials are great, but millennials are probably the most exciting generation this country has seen in at least since the vietnam era of young people, maybe better. millennials understand politics. they understand the economy. we have never had a generation of young people so completely screwed economically, and because of that, they have to pay attention. they do vote, but they may not have voted for president because it turns out they did not like their choices. they donate blood at a higher percentage of their demographic than any other generation. they are engaged in the community. have fun, take

selfies, get on twitter and be doing politics. a lot of that is connected to having use social media. government shutdown, that wasthe hashtag started, laughing at the system and thinking through ways to solve the problem. relationshipseing between social media and social action so that you see this direct link between social media, social action, and enjoying the public sphere. satire is now constantly part of it. someone told me they had been in a march. they told me, you are right, how many signs did i see that were trying to compete to be more witty and ironic? this is different. it was not like that in the 1960's. this is cool.

i think it is really exciting because it gives me a reason to keep working on this. i don't know how much of my time i used. i have five minutes. day, inill be here all the evening, so you can ask me questions about any of this anytime you want. thank you. [applause] >> can you talk about why there is some if you are conservative fewersts -- so many conservative satirists? >> that is another question i always get. the answer people want me to give is that because conservatives are grouchy and stupid. that is not true. there are conservative satirists. there just are not that many.

the argument we used to make was that conservatives believe in the status quo, and satirists do not. as a fundamental thing, they want to keep authority, and satirists cannot, so that is why. news, friendaking of mine dana young at the university of delaware has an new book coming out that has done a bunch of research on this, and she is suggesting one of the reasons is because conservatives don't like irony. i know. i did not say it. she said it. very dangerous argument to make . i did not read the whole study. i only read one short article. i think it has to be historical. conservatives over time have loved irony so they could be superior and snarky over the people they disdain.

in the current context with this sort of conservative zeitgeist, it is very hostile to nuance, which means it is hostile to irony. that is interesting. there is another book called the republican brain that suggests that is part of it. ais idea that there is problem, more than one way to solve it, that is something that is becoming winnowed out on the conservative way of thinking. there has been no discussion of satire as part of parody. you listen to rush limbaugh, he is a must self-parody. -- almost self-parody. >> yes. it is hard to get in all the things you want to. it is not just that the news media is not doing its job. it is that people are now become consumers of personalities and

not news. historical story of pivot points was the end of the fairness doctrine, which allows rush limbaugh to just blather on forever and have no foil to his madness. the rise of conservative radio is dangerous. i just wrote a piece in salon that says the next piece in this story is the rise of sinclair media owning local tv. that is all part of it because what is happened is you are being told i am looking out for you. i am not a crazy lunatic. i am reasonable. it starts to shift what people think is reasonable. yes? [inaudible]

ironically, defenders of the status quo, inasmuch as donald totally trashed the status quo. >> that is an interesting question. i think it just depends on how we would define the status quo. in my morethings geeky work is talking about how the satirists had to clean up for the massive postmodernist theory, which i could talk to you about more if you want. are you kidding me? at some point we have got to have some ability to distinguish the truth. 9/11 put that in stark relief when george w. bush said, i don't know, the geneva conventions, they are vague. i'm not sure how you interpret

them. there is a line. you crossed it. satirists found themselves advocating for truth, advocating for a functional judicial system. that is a very good point. i think it is going to increasingly be true. i will close it there to keep us all on time, and i will be around and i will love to keep talking. [applause] during the 1916 presidential election, woodrow wilson rand on the slogans "he kept us out of war" and "america first." next, a panel of historians analyze the impact of america first thinking on u.s. foreign-policy between world war i and world war ii. this is about an hour and 40 minutes. good morning everyone, it is great to see