Vector illustration of an angry Democratic donkey and Republican elephant looking at each other. Political caricature on white background.
Who are today’s political parties and is there anything to laugh about in politics?
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Scott LaMar
Vector illustration of an angry Democratic donkey and Republican elephant looking at each other. Political caricature on white background.
Airdate: August 15th, 2023
America’s political landscape has changed in recent years. Political parties may not hold as much power as they once did, or do they?
It may depend on the party. Today’s national Republican Party is firmly in the hands of former President Donald Trump, who doesn’t often doesn’t talk about policies, but rather is critical of his political opponents and what are described as “woke” issues. The Democratic Party may be a little more traditional in that the party is pushing a policy agenda to get candidates elected. However, at the top of the ticket in 2024 is incumbent President Joe Biden, who isn’t very popular according to polls.
Also, is there anything to laugh about in today’s politics and what is the role of political humor?
Dr. Alison Dagnes, a professor of political science, Chair of the Political Science Department at Shippensburg University and author of three books weighed in on The Spark Tuesday.
Dagnes said the media plays a large role in defining today’s political parties, “The media are so important in providing these cues and for leading the voters and viewers and listeners, they default to something that’s just going to be understandable, something that’s going to be kind of exciting and something that’s going to be very engaging because that’s how the media makes money. So when you combine those two things, what you end up with are the culture wars that we are battling right now. Instead of anything complicated like Social Security reform, which is important and boring. And so instead we get these arguments about trans bathrooms and arguments about about race being taught in history classes and all of these things that are coming up about abortion, about guns. It just is very exciting. It’s very motivating. It’s very angering. And it makes for really good media content. It makes for voters who are enraged and are going to run to go support their person. But it really doesn’t make for very cohesive policy making.”
Dagnes wrote a book called A Conservative Walks Into a Bar about political humor in 2012. On The Spark she said the book was outdated because the country is in a different mindset today. She indicated so many people are angry, the late-night talk shows have taken sides (against Trump) and so much of what is said is personal,”Humor is best when it’s either self-deprecating, especially political humor, whether it it punches, it punches up. Right. You got to make fun of the guy in charge. One funny thing of the last several years was the misunderstanding of a chant at a NASCAR race that turned into “Let’s go, Brandon.” Which actually, like, there’s something that’s kind of funny in that. But then what’s even funnier is that Joe Biden took let’s go Brandon and turned himself into dark Brandon which is funny, right? And so that kind of thing can be very funny. It’s not funny when you’re making fun of someone’s supporters because that’s punching down. It’s not funny making fun of people who who don’t deserve it. And when everything is so personal, when Donald Trump calls Chris Christie a fat pig, what’s funny about that? Like, to me, it’s not funny. I heard a very funny joke where someone said, I wonder what Chris Christie says behind closed doors and (the answer was) “someone pass the dip.” Now, that was funny. That’s a funny way of getting to the same point. But because humor is a sense, right? Like taste and smell, it’s going to be very individualistic. And because we’re so tuned up to just be angry at the other team, the way that we see humor these days is really just another weapon. And and that takes a lot of the fun out of it.”
