During his 16-year run as host of The Daily Show, notoriously liberal host Jon Stewart welcomed many conservative politicians as guests. In fact, Arizona Senator John McCain appeared as a guest on the program more than any other politician—13 times. The show’s new host, comedian Trevor Noah, continued the tradition by hosting GOP presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie during his first week behind the desk.
Stewart and Noah are not the only members of the so-called “liberal media” who cozy up to the same politicians whom they satirize. Stephen Colbert has sat down with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and current Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and Larry Wilmore has hosted Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Even Saturday Night Live, which often skewers politicians in its sketches and “Weekend Update” segment, brought on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to host the program this past November.
All of these examples raise the question: can programs like late-night talk shows and Saturday Night Live successfully satirize the same politicians whom they welcome as guests, and do they have a responsibility to do so? The question has become even more complicated in the digital era. Viral videos’ growing importance has marked a shift in the late-night genre away from long-form political conversation and toward short and punchy videos featuring guests playing games or performing out-of-the-ordinary tasks. This shift has coincided with a shakeup of late-night hosts, and the combination has given late-night television a new role in the 2016 presidential election cycle.
Saturday Night Live and its peers are entertainment programs at heart, but when they host politicians, they invite criticism of their satirical capabilities. They are expected to entertain, inform, satirize, and parody as they did during the 2012 election, but they must also adapt to what garners high ratings and impressive YouTube view counts. In this environment, late-night comedians must strike a delicate balance in order to thrive and accomplish what comedians do best in politics: expose the truth.
Satirical Viability
After Donald Trump hosted Saturday Night Live, television critics across the web and in print decried his appearance as unfunny and in poor taste. Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club wrote that Trump’s viability as a candidate is based on hateful pandering, which “makes the fact that [Saturday Night Live] has invited him back to host in the middle of an election season a referendum on Saturday Night Live’s viability as a satirical enterprise.” Trump represents the “power” in the phrase “speak truth to power” perhaps more than any other presidential candidate in this election. Allowing such a man not only to host but to select mostly apolitical jokes for the episode puts into question whether Saturday Night Live can handle the balancing act of welcoming and critiquing a politician.
Indeed, late-night appearances seem to do politicians more good than harm. University of Delaware communications professor Danna Young said in an interview with the HPR that research shows that politicians benefit from appearing on late-night talk shows by reaching audience members who might not otherwise be interested in politics and by answering softball questions. Donald Trump, widely denounced as a far-right demagogue, has been making the rounds; he has appeared on Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy Kimmel, and most notably Saturday Night Live, without receiving much political criticism from his hosts. Colbert and Kimmel attempted to satirize Trump in muted fashion: Colbert played “Donald Trump or Stephen Colbert,” comparing the billionaire to Colbert’s former over- the-top conservative talk-show-host alter ego, and Kimmel presented Trump with a satirical children’s book entitled Winners Aren’t Losers in the style of Dr. Seuss. Both were attempts to quietly demean Trump, but both hosts still allowed him a national platform without directly condemning his most absurd political stances. Fallon and Saturday Night Live were even more toothless in their attempts and focused mainly on Trump’s egomaniacal personality.
Viral Videos and Politicians
The viral video era of late-night television might be welcoming this low level of political discourse, and Trump’s appearances represent the worst of what today’s version of the genre can be. Since the recent late-night shuffle—most notably Stewart’s departure and Colbert’s move to CBS—and in light of the looming election, late-night talk shows have exploded with political content that stretches along a wide spectrum of edginess. On network television, Jimmy Fallon and James Corden offer a mostly inoffensive brand of comedy, whereas Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers are a bit rougher around the edges. Comedy Central’s Noah and Wilmore and HBO’s Bill Maher and John Oliver are the most outwardly political, followed closely by now-network Late Show host Colbert. Former Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee recently debuted her talk show Full Frontal, which offers mostly political commentary in the Daily Show vein. In order to stand out in this saturated market, late-night programs—Saturday Night Live included—have taken to the web, where they post clips from previously aired episodes and web-exclusive content in hopes of supplementing their live viewership with clicks.
Ratings have always mattered in late-night television. But today’s late-night programs have a distinctly numerical goal: to garner more viewers by producing viral video-friendly content. The newly viral video-driven genre must now appeal to online audiences with short and shareable videos. Previously, the fusion of late-night comedy and political commentary had been a tale of two eras—before and after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Before 9/11, the mainstream late-night hosts were Johnny Carson and Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, David Letterman on The Late Show, and Conan O’Brien on Late Night—and according to Mount Holyoke sociology professor Nickie Michaud Wild, they shied away from political comedy as we now know it now. The new genre of political late-night comedy was a result of the effect that 9/11 had on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. Stewart crafted The Daily Show’s brand by providing a counter-narrative to the Bush administration’s War on Terror, Michaud Wild explained to the HPR, and thereby raising expectations for mainstream network shows to engage with serious subject matter. In the digital era of late-night TV, however, hosts’ attempts to create viral media govern tone and content when politicians—most recently 2016 candidates—appear as guests. Saturday Night Live’s “Hotline Bling” music video parody featuring Trump best illustrates the program’s prioritization of online viewership over political discourse. It was short, it derived from a popular Internet meme, it featured Trump, and—most importantly—it garnered nearly six million views on YouTube.
Satirical Television Transformed
Can late-night talk show hosts properly balance the need to satirize politicians with the need to have them on as guests? “I tend to think the answer is no,” said Young, who believes that engaging in the “critical, aggressive, judgmental satire that scholars have written about for decades probably requires a level of distance that few contemporary late-night hosts have today.” The good news is that there is at least one show that routinely establishes that level of distance: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Young recalled an interview John Oliver gave on NPR’s Fresh Air, in which he acknowledged a comedian’s responsibility to be an outsider. “There should be a kind of awkward tension whenever a journalist walks into a room that politicians are in, because you should’ve done things that annoyed them in the past,” he said. “It’s the same as a comedian. You’re no one’s friend.” Oliver rarely conducts on-air interviews, and he has never invited a politician or political candidate on his program as a guest. Oliver maintains critical distance and delivers substantive satire while simultaneously creating viral videos that garner millions of views on his show’s YouTube channel.
Politicians and late-night talk show hosts can have substantive discussions about policy issues. But more often, politicians’ guest appearances feed what University of Wisconsin media and cultural studies professor and Satire TV author Jonathan Gray calls “a plethora of bullshit.” Consider two different talk show appearances by Florida Senator Marco Rubio. When Rubio appeared on The Daily Show in January 2015, he and then-host Jon Stewart discussed Rubio’s philosophy of economic inequality and the earned income tax credit. The two matched wits in an amusing but informative interview. Contrast this interview with Rubio’s appearance on The Tonight Show in January 2016, during which he and host Jimmy Fallon discussed the Senator’s controversial heeled boots and how Rubio proposed to his wife atop the Empire State Building. Watching the two clips side-by-side reveals a clear difference in Rubio’s comfort level and the host’s authority. Rubio and Fallon laugh it up in a backslapping atmosphere, whereas Rubio uncomfortably chuckles at Stewart’s quips as Stewart rallies the audience behind his criticism of Rubio’s policy proposals. As Gray notes in Satire TV, Stewart’s use of the audience places the guest in an outsider position and creates the distance required to satirize, rather than mock, the guest. Both Oliver’s lack of guests and Stewart’s audience manipulation are examples of how late-night hosts can remain satirical in the viral video era.
On late-night talk shows politicians search for softball questions to enhance their public image but run the supposed risk of becoming the object of the host’s satirical takedown. However, not every host can or even wants to render a political candidate a fool in front of millions of television viewers and even more online ones. Digital media has largely pulled the teeth from late-night political commentary. And while a handful of ambitious satirists and critics remain, it seems that entertainers and politicians have turned from foes to friends.
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