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The Satire Paradox · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: It was the middle of the eighties and missus Thatcher
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: was the prime minister here and she was very popular
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: with the sort of working classes and things, and not
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: with the lefty middle classes like me.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Harry Enfield, one of England's best known comedians. He's talking
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: about where he got the inspiration for his most famous character,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: a response to the imperious Margaret Thatcher with her barb
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and pearls, who unleashed American style capitalism on the UK and.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: The student hippies. We used to live on this council
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: state in Hackney and we used to go to the
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: local pub and all the local tradesmen and things always
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: had huge wards of money and they'd take it out
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: because they thought we were squatters. We weren't actually squatters,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: but we looked like squatters because we worked in television,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: so they get their big wards of money outs instead
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: of you know, flash it at the bar and everything.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Enfield hated Thatcher, hated what she represented, but the power
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I took was the power to reduce the power of government.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Enfield and his partner Paul Whitehouse dreamt up a character
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: to embody Thatcher's England.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: And it sort of just became this sort of thing
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: really where we just go loads of money about everything.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: You know, well, that's loads of money, loads of money that,
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: loads of money that, and then it became a sort
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: of phenomenon.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: His name was loads of money. He was a construction worker,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: catapulted to sudden delirious wealth by the eighties building boom.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: I've got piles.
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: Palls and.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: He chews gum with his mouth open, wears acid washed jeans,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: white trainers, a yellow and green nylon jacket with white sleeves,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: keys on his belt, drives a white convertible the countryside.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: All performed with a kind of cheerful, unstoppable tastelessness.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: I'm in a politics right. All you need to know
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: about politics. Missus Batch had done a lot good for
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: the country, but you wouldn't want to shag it. I mean,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: at the time everything was, you know, everyone was going
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: missus statch to this, missus statcha that, and you know,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: sort of very obviously preaching to the converted. So we
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: sort of did it the other way, which is just
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: to go look at me, aren't I gray? Isn't money gray?
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Everything else is rubbish. Only money is good.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell, you're listening to Revisionist History,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: where every week I revisit the forgotten and the misunderstood.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: In this week's episode, the final episode of our first season,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about satire, political satire. We live
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: in the golden age of satire. It's almost to the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: point where we seem to conduct as much of our
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: political conversation through humor as through the normal media. Remember
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert at the two thousand and six White House
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Correspondent Stinner, in character as the conservative talk show host
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: he was then playing on television. He stands up and
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: gives a satirical toast to his quote unquote hero, President
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: George W. Bush.
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: I stand by this man. I stand by this man
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: because he stands four things, not only four things. He
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: stands on things things like aircraft carriers and rubble and
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: that no matter what happens to America, she will always
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: All the while President Bush sits unhappily on the dais
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: a few feet from Colbert, squirming and grimacing and looking
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: like it'd rather be one hundred feet underground. It was
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: a moment of comic genius. Then there was Tina Fey's
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: devastating impression of Sarah Palin during the two thousand and
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: eight campaign, when the Alaskan governor ran on the Republican
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: presidential ticket with John McCain.
• 4:31
  Speaker 6: Well, Alaska and Russia are only separated by a narrow
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: maritime border. You've got Alaska here and this right, here's water,
• 4:40
  Speaker 6: and then mess up, there's Russia. So we keep an
• 4:44
  Speaker 6: eye on them.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Who do you remember now, Sarah Palin herself or Tina
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Fey's Palin. I've written opinion pieces for newspapers or magazines,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: and there you have to write in somber, reasonable tones.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: You're limited. Satire allows you to say almost anything. That's
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: where truth is spoken to power in our society. When
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: you sugarcoat a bitter truth with humor, it makes medicine
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: go down, your audience lets its guard down. Just look
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: at the way Saturday Night Live has covered Hillary Clinton.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: They've ruthlessly zeroed in on her ambition, her humorlessness, her severity,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: her opportunism, all the things that have always given people
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: pause about her.
• 5:27
  Speaker 6: You're finally going to announce that you're running for president.
• 5:30
  Speaker 6: My gosh, I don't know if I have it in me.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: I'm scared. I'm kidding. Let's do this.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Comedians had become our truth tellers. That's what loads of
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Money was trying to do. Enfield wanted to tell the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: truth about what was happening in England. After Margaret Thatcher
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: came to power in nineteen seventy nine, she was the
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: British Ronald Reagan. During her eleven year reign, she took
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: on British socialism with a vengeance, called it a nanny state.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Her aggression angered and scared a lot of people who
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: felt that something fundamental about the country's character was being upended,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: that something dark and crude had been unearthed, something like
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: loads of money.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: All he did was have money, shag birds, drink, go
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: to the opera. That was it kind of thing.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize that he went to the opera.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Well, he didn't really like the opera, but he liked
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: it because it was expensive, so he'd liked to be
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: seen there, you know. So he go up to the
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: bar and flashes wood, you know, order champagne top, which
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: is basically like lagertop is a very big drink over here,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: which is lago with a bit of lime in the top.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: It's something you might get your girlfriend in the pub.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: So he'd go to the opera and order a pint
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: of champagne top.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Loads of Money around in the mid nineteen eighties on
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: a popular Friday night sketch Carmedy show on British television.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: It struck a nerve the first couple of times you
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: do this sketch, is there is the reaction immediate or
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: is it kind of bills?
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: No, it's absolutely immediate. I mean it was a sort
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: of live show and so it needed to the big, brash,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: loud characters and this was one and people absolutely got
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: it straight away.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: It's really hard to find someone over the age of
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: thirty in England who doesn't remember the Loads of Money
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: theme song. Enfield released it as a lark in nineteen
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: eighty eight and it was huge, rose to number two
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: in the British pop charts. The video is a series
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: of shots of loads of Money marching around with scantily
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: dressed women, driving fancy cars and sneering at the rest
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of the world, all the while waving huge piles of
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: pound notes. It has three point three million views on YouTube.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: There is no op ed, no letter to the editor,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: no impassioned essay that gets three point three million views
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: on YouTube. That's the power of satire. It can go
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: places that serious discourse cannot. But here's the strange thing.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: If you ask Harry Enfield about Loads of Money's legacy,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: about what he thinks he accomplished by speaking truth so boldly,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: the power. You know what he says, he says it
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: made no difference. That's what I want to talk about.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Let's call it the loads of money problem.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean, it's great fun to do, but generally,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: you know, it's just about questioning what's there. Because we're
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: allowed to question what's there, so we do. But it
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: doesn't ever change anyone's mind.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: When Harry Enfield told me he didn't think loads of
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Money made any difference, the first person I thought of
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert, not the straight Stephen Colbert of The Current
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Late Show, his breakout character, the parody of a right
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: wing journalist that Colbert played on Comedy Central, first on
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the Daily Show and then from two thousand and five
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: to twenty fourteen on The Colbert Report. Colbert was trying
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: to do a version of what loads of money was
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: doing shine a light on something crude in American popular culture.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: But you know, I was a guest on The Colbert
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Report a few times when I was promoting my books,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and I have to say that there was always something
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: a bit maybe ambiguous, is the right word, about Colbert's satire.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: You go to the studios. They're in Hell's Kitchen in
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Manhattan far West Side. You sit in the green room beforehand,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: and Colbert comes in to say hello. He's not in character.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: He's this warm, charming, nice guy. And I can't stress
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: the nice part enough. Everyone who meets Stephen Colbert thinks
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: he's nice. He chats with you, and he warns you
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: that when you go out on set, he's going to
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: be someone else. But you don't quite believe him because
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: you you see this really nice guy in front of you.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Then you get on stage and he really is someone else.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: He's now this aggressive right wing talk show host.
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: Okay, I'll get straight to my problem with this. Okay,
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: you know I've got a problem with this, right sure,
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: I can't come as a surprise to you. Yeah, okay,
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: the New Yorker. Okay, you think pieces that's you're right,
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: you write think pieces. Why do you want to make
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: me think about my dog? I feel about my dog,
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: and my dog loves me back onconditionally? Why ruin that
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: with thinking about it?
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Now? You know intellectually that it's satire. He's doing a
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: parody of a brain dead talk show host. But it
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: doesn't feel like a parody when you're sitting there. He's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: jabbing his finger and raising his one acrobatic eyebrow, and
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: there I am like a deer in the headlights of satire, blinking.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying. I think I went on three times, and
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: every time I swore I'd never go on again.
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: Our dogs?
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Do you have a dog?
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: I don't have a dog.
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: I don't have a dog.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: My building doesn't allow dogs. I'm an aspirational dog owner, but.
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: I really day, had you the ability you would own
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: a dog.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I would someday I hoped to own a dog.
• 11:23
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I grew up with dogs, and.
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: I've you're raised by wolves.
• 11:28
  Speaker 6: Grew up with dogs.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: That's what I mean by ambiguous. Am I in on
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the joke or the butt of it? I don't know.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: The Colbert Report has actually been studied by a communications
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: scholar named Heather Lamar an assistant professor at Temple University
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. She's part of a group of social scientists
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: who've made a specialty out of studying how humor operates
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: in popular culture, and she was drawn to the Colbert
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Report for the very reason that I'm talking about that
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: gap between what you as the audience know intellectually that
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: he's trying to do and the way his performance feels.
• 12:04
  Speaker 7: I have a lot of liberal friends, especially in you know, academia,
• 12:08
  Speaker 7: but I also have a lot of friends and family
• 12:10
  Speaker 7: members that are conservative, and I started noticing that they
• 12:14
  Speaker 7: would talk about the show as if it was equally funny,
• 12:17
  Speaker 7: but in completely opposite ways.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: It struck her as something worth examining in more detail.
• 12:22
  Speaker 7: Why are my Republican friends and family members watching him
• 12:27
  Speaker 7: every single night and finding him hilarious, but they see
• 12:30
  Speaker 7: him making fun of liberals and my liberal friends love
• 12:34
  Speaker 7: him to death. I'm just biggest fans ever and think
• 12:37
  Speaker 7: it's hilarious that he's making fun of people like Rush
• 12:39
  Speaker 7: Limbaugh and Bellow Riley.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: As an example, Lamar picks a clip of an interview
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Colbert did with a left wing journalist, Amy Goodman. This
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: is from two thousand and nine.
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: Thank you so much for coming of the show.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: It's good to be read you, Steve.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And now.
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: You're a communist right, you're super liberal lefty. They don't
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: get any more liberal lefty like outside agitator than you
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: do they.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 13:08
  Speaker 6: I think that conservative liberal lines are breaking down.
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: Right, yeah, to right and wrong.
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: Let me talk about the reddest state.
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: Let you do anything you have to earn every inch
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: of this interview, young lady. Yes, you don't come in
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: my house and get me to let you do anything.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: During that outburst, Goodman nervously swivels back and forth in
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: her chair. She starts to smile, but only gets halfway,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: so there's a kind of grimace left on her face.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: She raises her arm and points it at Colbert, but
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: then just as quickly takes it down. I know exactly
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: how she feels.
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: I heard you were a fire brand. Will bring it, baby.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: What does Lamar find when she studies audience reactions to
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: a clip like this? She finds it the more liberal
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: you are, the more you see Stephen Colbert as a
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: liberal skewing conservatives. But the more conservative you are, the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: more you see Stephen Colbert as a conservative skewing.
• 14:05
  Speaker 7: Liberals, so essentially they saw what they wanted to see.
• 14:08
  Speaker 7: So the big takeaway here of this study was that
• 14:11
  Speaker 7: this is what we would call motivated cognition or biased perception.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Colbert says to Goodman, you're a communist. That's funny if
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: you think the joke is on Colbert. It's also funny
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: if you think Goodman actually is a kind of communist
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and someone is finally calling her out on it.
• 14:28
  Speaker 7: Yeah, and he's sticking it to a communist. And we
• 14:31
  Speaker 7: ask those kinds of questions in several different ways, and
• 14:33
  Speaker 7: every single time, the conservatives and especially the strong conservatives
• 14:37
  Speaker 7: would say, yeah, it's a joke, but he really kind
• 14:39
  Speaker 7: of means it, So he really does sort of think
• 14:41
  Speaker 7: she's a communist, and he really does sort of think
• 14:43
  Speaker 7: there is a right and a wrong. And I agree
• 14:45
  Speaker 7: with that, whereas the liberal would be like, oh, yeah,
• 14:48
  Speaker 7: he's clearly making fun of Bill O'Reilly.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: There's no difference in how funny conservatives and liberals find Colbert.
• 14:55
  Speaker 7: And that's part of the magic, right. So that's why
• 14:57
  Speaker 7: I would say he was a comedic genius.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Lamar loves Colbert, and she thinks that what he accomplished
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: with the Colbert Report was extraordinary. He created a character
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: who managed to appeal to all sides of the political
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: spectrum simultaneously. Do you know how hard that is? Really?
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Really hard? But if you think he's somehow winning an
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: ideological battle, you're wrong.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: By Millow playing.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Songs my neighbourhood parade, guys like gosh, we hadn't made.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: This isn't the first time as this happened with politically
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: motivated comedy. By the way, almost fifty years ago, when
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Norman Lear's All in the Family was the most popular
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: show in American television, there was a huge debate over
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the show's star character, the bigoted, reactionary Archie Bunker.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Isn't anybody else interested in up Poland's standards?
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: Oh wild?
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Just coming crumbling down?
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: The coons are coming.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Bunker was created to satirize conservative attitudes on race and sexuality,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: but in the end, the consensus among social scientists seem
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: to be that he didn't do that at all. Here's
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: the conclusion of the best known study on the show.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: We found that many persons did not see the program
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: as a satire on bigotry. All such findings seem to
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: suggest that the program is more likely reinforcing prejudice and
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: racism than combating it. It didn't change any minds, and
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the same thing happens with loads of money. At one point,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Enfield does a benefit for British nurses who are all
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: on strike. Nurses in the UK are public sector employees
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and they want a modest race, and Thatcher, whose intent
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: on shrinking the size of the public sector, won't give
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: it to them. Sweat this benefit. Enfield comes out on
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: stage as loads of money in his white trainers and
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: acid washed genes and nylon shell and screams at them
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: all get back to work, you scum that He burns
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: a ten pound note on stage and the room of
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: nurses goes wild. They love it. He's perfectly captured what
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: they're up against. But the other side, the side they're
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: up against, they love it too.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: And it got sort of taken on by the Sun,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: which was a very right wing paper and the kind
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: of left wing papers. Basically everyone took it on. Everyone
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: decided it was theirs, you know, they made him their property.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: So the Sun looked on loads of money quite affectionately.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they thought it was great and it was
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: a sign of Thatchers Britain that all working class people
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: were getting richer. That's what they That was the propaganda.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: That was how they interpreted it. I guess yeah, which
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: obviously wasn't really the case. But it was quite funny.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Were you taken by surprise by the reception that loads
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: of Money got.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: I was, why, well, just because you know, I've done
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: other characters and they've been all right, but this seemed
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: to go very big, and it got sort of in
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Parliament and then missus Satcha suddenly said we've got loads
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: of money economy or something, and then the leader of
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: the opposition said, you know, you've created the loads of money.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: And they were both using it. One of them was
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: using it with pride and the other one with you know, contempt,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: and it was odd, very odd. I didn't expect it
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: at all, Malcolm.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: It really is odd. There are cultural histories written of
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the Thatcher years, and invariably they talk about loads of
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: money and how the character was this great symbol of
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: the era, and it's clear that enthusiasm for this grotesque
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: mockery was even greater on the right than it was
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: on the left. Finally, Enfield just kind of gives up,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Tell me how you killed him off.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, I think he got well. I think I just
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: stopped doing him. And then we were doing comic relief
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: over here, and I think we did a sketch where
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: he got run over. He was run over by a
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: van on Live Telly for charity.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: The loads of money problem happens because satire is complicated.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: It's not like straightforward speech that's easy to decode. It
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: requires interpretation. That's what draws you in, that's where the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: humor lies. But that active interpretation has a cost. How
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the Lamar calls this the paradox of satire.
• 19:30
  Speaker 7: So the trade off with satire becomes all of the thinking,
• 19:34
  Speaker 7: or a lot of the thinking becomes devoted to what
• 19:37
  Speaker 7: the comic means, who the target of the joke is,
• 19:40
  Speaker 7: and as they interpret that, then they spend less time
• 19:44
  Speaker 7: thinking about whether that warrants any kind of real consideration
• 19:48
  Speaker 7: or counter arguing sort of the merits of that message.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: This doesn't happen when you listen to a straightforward discussion
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: of politics, you just think about the arguments.
• 19:59
  Speaker 7: But with satire here you're spending all of your time
• 20:03
  Speaker 7: thinking about the nature of the comedy, which leaves very
• 20:06
  Speaker 7: little mental resources available to think about whether the comedy
• 20:09
  Speaker 7: has truth.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: There's a brilliant essay written on its very subject in
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the July twenty thirteen London Review of Books. It's called
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Sinking Giggling into the Sea, and it's by the writer
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Coe. You should read it. Co takes the argument
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: against satire one step further. He says the effectiveness of
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: satire is not just undermined by its complicated nature, by
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: its ambiguity. Co says it's undermined by something else, the
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: laughter it creates.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: Laughter, in a way, is a kind of last resort.
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: If you're up against the problem which is completely intractable,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: if you're up against the situation for which there is
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: no human solution and never will be, then okay, let's
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: laugh about it.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: In say, the Humor of Laurel On Hardy, Co says
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: that kind of laughing is perfectly appropriate.
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: Because when you see them taking on some ridiculous sisyphean task,
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: like pushing a piano up an endless flight of stairs,
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: failing time and time again, then you know what they're
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: asking you to laugh at. There is the human condition
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: and the intractability of the forces of nature, and the
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: forces of physics, which we can do nothing about, so
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: of course we have to laugh with political problems. It's
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: slightly different. I mean, some political problems are intractable, but
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: some political problems can be solved, and perhaps instead of
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: laughing about them, we should try and do something about them.
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: I just hope that tonight the lamestream media won't twist
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: my words by repeating them verbatim.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Back at the beginning, I mentioned Tina Fey's brilliant impersonation
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. I love those sketches.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I think tinafe is a comic genius, but after listening
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: to Heather Lamar and Jonathan Coe, I can't help but
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: think that her comic genius is actually a problem. SNL
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: brought Tina fe into skewer Palin out of a sense
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: of outrage that someone this unqualified was running for higher
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: office in two thousand and eight. Lots of people felt
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: this way. Palin was the running mate of John McCain,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: an elderly senator of uncertain health. She could easily have
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: been president. SNL was trying to hold Sarah Palin to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: some kind of scrutiny to say this is who she is.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: But looking back now, I don't think it worked because
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Tina Fey is too busy being funny.
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: Oh please welcome the lovely Tina Faye.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: In October two thousand and eight, just before the election,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Tina Fey does an interview with the talk show host
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: David Letterman. Now, you would think with the vote looming,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Fay and Letterman would want to talk about the subject
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: of her satire, or the intention of her satire, the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: fact that someone this unqualified might be less than a
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: month away from the vice presidency. But they don't. They
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: talk entirely about the mechanics of Faye's satire.
• 23:06
  Speaker 6: She got that crazy accent. It's a little bit far ago,
• 23:08
  Speaker 6: with a little bit Reese Witherspoon an election. And it
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: also I tried to base it on my friend Paula's grandma,
• 23:17
  Speaker 6: because she had her grandma is the sweet, sweet lit
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: old lady from Joliet, Illinois, and she would always say like,
• 23:22
  Speaker 6: oh this and that and stuff like that, and I
• 23:27
  Speaker 6: think that's might be our next president.
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: But it's it's It sounded to me a little and
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: I don't know what the connection would be.
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: It sounds a little like Upper Midwest kind of Great
• 23:38
  Speaker 6: Lakes region. Yeah, she drop in the Jesus, you know,
• 23:41
  Speaker 6: and her rs or she really loves the you know,
• 23:43
  Speaker 6: like these terrorists and William yerrs and and uh she
• 23:48
  Speaker 6: did for those arts. I think she thinks there's oil
• 23:51
  Speaker 6: in those urs.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: She and J and D.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: They want the laugh, so they make fun of the
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: way Sarah Palin talks. And the way she talks is
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: not the problem.
• 24:03
  Speaker 6: There's certainly been a strange reaction to it. And then
• 24:05
  Speaker 6: I've seen people who say, oh, no, you're helping them.
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: You're helping them because people, it's people. It seems makes
• 24:11
  Speaker 6: her seem nice or you know, or it's or some
• 24:14
  Speaker 6: of the Republicans say it's sexist. That's you know, just crazy,
• 24:17
  Speaker 6: because you have to be able to goof on the
• 24:20
  Speaker 6: female politicians just as much. Otherwise you really are treating
• 24:23
  Speaker 6: them like they're like they're weaker or something. And this
• 24:25
  Speaker 6: Sarah Palin is a tough lady. She kills things, big.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Kills the animals.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Did you catch that? Because you have to be able
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to goof on female politicians, goof like the role of
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: the satirist is to sit on the front porch and
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: crack wise, why doesn't Tina Fey just come out and
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: admit that her satire is completely toothless. And then what
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: happens the very next day, The day after Tina fe
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: goes on Letterman, Sarah Palin appears as a guest on
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live, right beside Tina Fey.
• 25:06
  Speaker 7: No, I'm not going to take any of your questions,
• 25:09
  Speaker 7: but I do want to take this opportunity to say,
• 25:12
  Speaker 7: live from New York, it's Saturday Nights.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: They let Sarah Palin in on the joke, and Pale
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and Tina Fey dress up in identical red outfits with
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: little things in their hair and put on identical glasses
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: because that's even funnier. And what are you left with?
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: You left with one of the most charming and winning
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and hilarious comics of her generation, letting her charisma wash
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: over her ostensible target, disarming us, Disarming Sarah Palin, And now.
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: I'd like to entertain everybody with some fancy pageant walking.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Sure we laughed, but it's kind of heartbreaking, isn't it.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: At least Harry Unphil was trying to take a bite
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: out of the establishment with loads of money, Saturday Night
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Live has taken out its dentures and is sipping the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: political situation through a straw. Lord help us if some other,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: even less qualified and more frightening political figure comes along.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: I think the pleasure that laughter generates can be deceptive.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: That's writer Jonathan Coe again.
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: To make an audience laugh is very it's a very solid,
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: very tangible thing. I think it's it's only after the event,
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: maybe years after the event, that you pull back and
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: ask yourself, well, was that the effect that I wanted?
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Coe brings up Peter Cook, the legendary English comedian
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: of the nineteen sixties. Cook was the driving force behind
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Beyond the Fringe, the British satirical review. That's really the
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: spiritual ancestor of shows like Saturday Night Live.
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: What I mean is they're not English, They're not the
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: English stock.
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: I mean you only had a look at the names
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: Lift of Its ribble Bits, Vessily, and those are English
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: names they used.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: To Cook later started a comedy club in Soho in
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: London called The Establishment.
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: Peter Cook kind of his genius and also his curse,
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: was that he he saw all these contradictions as soon
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: as he started, really, and he was under no illusions
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: that he was going to change the world through satire,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: and yes, the else he used with the establishment was
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: that he was modeling it all on all those wonderful
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: Berlin cabarees from the nineteen twenties, which had done so
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: much to prevent the rise of Hitler and the beginnings
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: of Nazism.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: There's a television show in Israel called A Wonderful Country
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Eretz Nderit. It's been on the air since two thousand
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and three. It's satire, very political. The show's writers belong
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: to the beleaguered Israeli political left. They won a separate
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: state for Palestinians. They want an end of the Endless Wars.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: They worry about the increasing conservative religious influence on the
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: country's politics. They're ideologically motivated in their humor in the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: same way that Harry Enfield and Tina Fey were. But
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: there's a difference.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: It's more political, and it's a little more rugged and hardcore,
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: because life in Israel is much more rugged than hardcore.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: That's Mouley Segev, the show's executive producer. A Wonderful Country
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: airs Friday night at nine after the news. Practically the
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: whole country watches it.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: The stomach of reality viewers is much more adjustable. You know,
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: they can adjust too much tougher material. Firstly, because the
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: news broadcast that is on the air before US shows
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: so many gruesome stuff and horrible things that naturally the
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: comedy after that will be the same.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: A wonderful country goes further than the kind of TV
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: satire that we have in the US or the UK.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe because the stakes are so much higher in Israel.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe in a country with a tortured history, suffering under
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: constant threat, the boundaries that satire needs to push up
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: against are more real.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: And we have very very bad reactions sometimes.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Can you give me an example of a sketch that
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: brought a bad reaction.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Let's say, like a couple of years ago, we made
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: a sketch that was a parody on a game show
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: called a One Versus one hundred.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: You know that show One versus one hundred was a
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: quiz show where one supposedly brilliant contestant known as the One,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: squares off against one hundred people sitting in little cubicles
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in the audience. The One and the audience are asked
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: a question and whenever someone in the audience gets it wrong,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: they're eliminated. The light in their cubicle goes off and
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: we can't see them anymore. In A Wonderful Country's version,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the one was the Prime Minister at the time, and
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the audience was made up of one hundred and nineteen people.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: One hundred and nineteen was a number of Israeli soldiers
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: who died in the two thousand and six Lebanon War.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: He was asked, why did you go to that war?
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Why did you do that? Why did you do that?
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: And all the hands that he gave was were wrong.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Naturally, it was the one versus the one nineteen, And
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: with every wrong answer from the Prime Minister, the light
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: went off underneath one of the soldiers in the audience.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: They vanished from sight.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: And that was very graphic and very hard to watch,
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: but it was but it was imp ot for us
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: to say so that this war was unnecessary at the time.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine Saturday Night Live doing that sketch during
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the I Rock War? Of course not. I think we've
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: forgotten what real satire is in the West. That's real satire.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: It uses a comic pretense to land a massive blow.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: The first A Wonderful Country sketch I ever Saw was
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: from five years ago. It was done right at the
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: time when liberal Israelis began to despair about the direction
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: of their government under Benjamin Nett and Yahoo. The sketch
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I saw is styled in the manner of a government
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: funded documentary, a kind of promotional video for a new
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: educational initiative in the schools. It's set in a classroom
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: full of adorable kindergarten students, seriously adorable a warm and
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: very compelling teachers at the front of the room Ayom Mirad.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: The teacher says, today, kids, we will talk about peace.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Who can tell me what we need to have peace?
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Then the kids start to mouth every cliche that the
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Israeli right wing uses to justify not negotiating with the Palestinians,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: opposing a two state solution, or ignoring world opinion and
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: continuing to build settlements in the occupied territories. A truly
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: cute girl with curly hair says, what peace? Who will
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: we make peace with? There's not even anyone to talk
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: to on the other side. The teacher replies, that's right, lolly,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: there's no one to talk to. Another adorable girl says,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: I used to be a lefty, but then I got disillusioned.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: The teacher asks, so why is the world angry at us?
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: A little boy says, our problem is pr and then
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: he repeats it. The teacher turns to the camera. We
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: don't want them to grow up ignorant. We teach them
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: geography from a young age. She points to Israel on
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: a globe. Here is our tiny little Israel in the
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: middle least, who knows what we call the rest of
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: the world, And the children chant in unison, antisemitic sh
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: It's hard to explain a comedy sketch if I can't
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: show it to you, though, you can always pause and
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: go see the whole thing at revisionishistory dot com. And
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: it's doubly difficult to explain comedy from another country. But
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: believe me when I say the kindergarten bit is hilarious.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: I laughed out loud.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: We tried to put it in this situation where kids
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: in kindergarten on learning it, and you see how bleak
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: it is, how sad it is to raise a generation
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: with no hope. And that's exactly the ideology of N'tagnielle.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Things are only going to get worse. All the world
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: is against us, we're alone in the world. We have
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: to build a fortress around us and pray for God
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: to save us. It's not in our hands. There's nothing
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: we can do. And that's it for the rest of
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: your life.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Kids, I said, I laughed out loud the first time
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: I saw that sketch, but the second time I saw it,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't laugh at all.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: That's what we're aiming for. In a lot of our sketches.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: It appears to be funny, and then it sinks in
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: and you think about it once more, and then maybe
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: something will touch you and you feel the pain that
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: you know driven us to write that the fundamental truth
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: when you think about it, is kind of sad.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Can someone read this sketch the wrong way like Stephen
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Colbert got read the wrong way? Could some viewers think
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: this sketch satirizes left wing is really thinking? Maybe? But
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I think the intentions are pretty plain. They're not hard
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: to decode. We have children mouthing the absurd, dead end
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: arguments of adults, and if laughter is normally the great distractor,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: the laughter dissipates awfully quickly.
• 34:05
  Speaker 6: Here.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Satire works best when the satirist has the courage not
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: just to go for the joke. The teacher says, do
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: you want to play? Nobody gets to preach to us
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: about morality. The kids shout out yes, yes. The teacher
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: pulls out a tambourine and starts chanting the Italians. One
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: little girl, chance back, they collaborated with the Nazis in
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: the Holocaust. The teacher chance the French. A child replies,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Vishi regime teacher. The Turks massacred the Armenians, teacher, Norwegians.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: And the kids say, killed all the Salmon teachers. So
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: what do we tell the world? Kids in Unison don't
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: preach to us about morals?
• 34:58
  Speaker 6: H Sam Lord La made no bonos.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: The kids are waving their fists in the air at
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: this point, shouting in Unison. There is courage in that sketch,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: unlike Saturday Night Live on Sarah Palin, which is comedy
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: done without any courage at all. If there's a lesson
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: to the ten episodes of this first season of Revisionist History,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: it's this that nothing of consequence gets accomplished without courage.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: You can't educate the poor without making difficult choices, without
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: giving up some portion of your own privilege. You can't
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: be a great basketball player without being willing to look stupid.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: You can't heal your church without sacrificing your own career.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: You can't even drive a car properly unless you're willing
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: to acknowledge that you sometimes make mistakes, stupid, involuntary, dumb mistakes.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: The path to a better world is hard. Is that depressing?
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think what's depressing is when
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: we ignore every we think history is trying to tell us.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: you've heard, please do us a favor and rate us
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: on iTunes. You can get more information about this and
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: other episodes at Revisionististory dot com or on your favorite
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: podcast app. Our show is produced by Mia LaBelle, Roxanne Scott,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: composed by Luis Guerra and Taka Yasuzawa. Laon Williams is
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: our engineer. Our fact checker is Michelle Siaka. Thanks to
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the Penalty Management team Laura Mayer, Andy Bauers and my
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: old and dear friend el Hafe. Jacob Weisberg