More to the point, remember the past ~20 years when Trump was a zany screwball reality TV personality? Everyone in the entertainment industry knew what kind of person he was when they made him into a pop culture figurehead. Trump associates hosting TV shows is a reversion back to the mean.

Congratulations! You're at THAT POINT

None of these guys (don't know about Bee, haven't watched her) are claiming to be anything other than a diversion. They don't have any responsibility beyond being diverting. They're not trying to be an entry point into deeper ideological pursuits. What's NOT HEALTHY about pointing out how ridiculous and funny the current administration is?

HISTORY WILL JUDGE JOHN OLIVER HARSHLY is a scalding hot take. Bro, history won't judge John ****ing Oliver at all. He's not a historical figure. He's just some nebbish comedian. Like, let's look back at Jack Parr's HISTORICAL LEGACY. YOU HAVE A LOT TO ANSWER FOR JACK PARR!

Yeah, comedy is a product and hasn't pretended to be anything else, unlike the TV news business.

My post wasn't a criticism of the comedians but the audience. You rose to a voracious defense of the performers. I think you missed the point.

RE:

That's not the unhealthy part. It's fine to mock the Trump Admin. The audience granting comedy shows as having a role to play in organization against Trump or for social justice or whatever is the unhealthy part. They aren't allies; they aren't fellow travelers. Their criticisms of Trump are empty. That they leap to partying with Spicey and glad-handing him on their shows and award ceremonies is proof these people are largely blank slates and will willingly become co-conspirators or co-opted if circumstances and context change. And maybe only change slightly. Weigel's tweet is on point; anyone assuming SNL as a bastion or foundation of genuine anti-Trump sympathies is pretty plainly wrong. These are opportunistic showmen, not hugely different from Trump himself, just seizing on a different set of popular sympathies.

To be clear: that's fine for them. That's show business. But we shouldn't think Kate McKinnon or Colbert are part of the genuine resistance any more than we should think Hulk Hogan is a real patriot or Walt Disney is really everyone's figurative uncle and that we're really in a club with Mickey Mouse.

You said:


That reasonably reads as a criticism of the performers.

But fine. What you're shifting to is actually even more ridiculous. So you're saying these performers, these comedians are just doing their job. They're making jokes about the President, that's what they do. Their only obligation is to make the audience laugh.

BUT HISTORY WILL JUDGE YE AUDIENCE FOR LAUGHING AT JOHN OLIVER!!! How dare you laugh at funny comedians??? History will not look favorably on you for sharing that John Oliver video on Facebook. Oh Aunt Betty, you shall be harshly judged by history, indeed. The scribes of history will not be kind to you Aunt Betty.

Why don't you tell us how HISTORY WILL JUDGE the sharing of grumpy cat memes on social media. More or less harshly than the sharing of John Oliver videos?

So to summarize, comedians have no obligation other than to make their audience laugh? Then why does the comedians' audience have an obligation beyond laughing?

Because political humor is nothing new. How is sharing John Oliver videos on facebook any different than showing some other guy ye olde political cartoons in the daily broadsheet? It isn't!

Twinkies are very good at being a tasty treat and it would probably be counterproductive to never indulge once in a while, but it's not healthy to pig out on Twinkies and not eat veggies. That's not an indictment on Nabisco, that's an indictment of the American consumer.

I think history will judge harshly people who, when met with a bunch of social injustices like abhorrent treatment of refugees, watched Colbert and Spicey yuk it up about them and did basically nothing more, then congratulated themselves on a job well done, tweeted #RESISTANCE, and moved onto the next circus act.

You'll probably say LOL DVAULT1 WHO DOES THAT DESCRIBE, but I'm confident it's a lot of people.

Cat memes are not competitive with real political engagement. Political humor, especially pseudo-analytical political humor like John Oliver, absolutely is. Getting woke about the problems with auto-loan securitizations (helped along by the antics of life-sized mascot ABSy the Foul-Mouthed Securitization Squirrel) is a substitute for running for school board or canvassing for your boring (D) state legislator.

It's basically what anti-porn crusaders claim porn does to normal sexual attitudes, but true and mainstream. Like, I don't understand how you can watch Lord Haw-Haw hamming it up onstage at a national media event ABOUT HIS OWN EFFORTS TO UNDERMINE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY to the delight of the audience and not understand that you're staring at the black hole of superficiality and narcissism that's consuming American politics.

Don't think it's entirely fair to lump Stewart & Co. in the same boat, cuz I don't really remember those guys yukking it up with Trump slappies, but SNL, Mika & Joe, Howard Stern, The Simpsons, etc were all more than willing to let Trump onto their show and do his clownshow act, to say nothing of whatever network aired his Apprentice show. The entertainment/politics complex is entirely complicit in building up Trump and foisting him on America.

But it's not even past tense. See Spicey last night at the Emmy's. They're STILL participating. What are the chances Trump is a huge hit on the circuit after he's done? He's gonna have to straight up choke a black guy to death and draw a swastika on his forehead with a Sharpie for them not to instantly rehabilitate his image as a fun clown.

Hate to Godwin this, but Hitler and Mussolini were largely viewed as absurd clowns before they sized power and **** started getting real. idk what Trump does in 8 years when he's finished ****ing over the nation. There's no real historical precedent bc usually these guys don't retire peacefully. Probably he'll be in a luxury nursing home or something.

It's not at all clear that the effect of, say, John Oliver is substitutive rather than synergistic.

It might be. As I said:

I'm confident that it is a substitute, but if it's not and I'm wrong on that point then shame on me. I grant that if it's a starting point then it can be largely beneficial. I think for a lot of people it's not a starting point but literally THE POINT. That embarrassing and lampooning Trump on cable is enough, job done.

It's the politics-as-hobbyism debate (something I am sure we are all guilty of, to some extent): that so much of what we do is for self-gratification rather than more fulfilling and effective forms of mass political participation. As I said: watching John Oliver is fun, he's clever. But it's not effectual and done to extreme amounts in some contexts (e.g., joking with Spicer about refugees) is actually quite callous and inexcusable.

Although I do want to go back and note that SOME of the acts themselves (thinking about Fallon ruffling Trump's hair like a school boy and SNL letting Trump host the show as a ****ing candidate) come in for special mention and culpability. That's a little bit contradictory from what I said earlier.

So the point of my criticism remains targeted mostly at the audience who are so entirely wrapped up in entertainment vehicles for personal gratification vis a vis political scions like Trump that they become part of the problem, part of the collective shame of our moment even if they superficially oppose Trump. Clapping along with Spicey ribs at the Emmys undermines basically all of the criticism people make about Trump destroying norms and threatening democracy.

But having said all of that, SNL letting Trump host the show only to pivot to Resistance Cake bits like 6 months later is pretty ****ing heinous too. So in my rush to condemn the audience, I noted that it wasn't so much a criticism of the performers. But surely some of the performers are absolutely guilty of unscrupulous behavior.

How in the world can you be confident that it is a substitute? Political engagement has been low and decreasing for decades. That some people get their news mostly through John Steward or John Oliver is a symptom of that disengagement, not a cause. And this idea that there is some significant population of dudes who were totally going to canvass for a local politician but oh hey there's a John Oliver video, I'll watch that instead is ludicrous. That person does not exist.

Because ~all political behavior is social, it's not really coherent to separate cause and effect like you are claiming. It's all feedback loops. Low political engagement creates a market for performative-but-meaningless forms of political participation, and then a bustling market for pseudo-participation conditions low political engagement.

EDIT: It is silly to imagine a person on the threshold of canvassing getting distracted by John Oliver and not doing it. But what's not silly is to imagine someone who wants to be perceived as a politically active, liberal person choosing to cultivate that image through the easy means of sharing videos of John Oliver DESTROYING the injustice of the day rather than having to do the work of going out and doing actual political things to earn that image.

Then by the same token also not coherent to dismiss the possibility the possibility that your John Stewards and your John Olivers could spark non-meaningless political participation.

But please describe the feedback loop whereby this lady was totally going to run for office but then she watched a John Oliver video. Because that mechanism seems, uh, dubious.

You could be critical of the comedians when they suggest eating cake and staying home when the white supremacists march.

You're still missing the point, sure some people will watch Oliver or whoever get outraged and do something else, DVaut's not targetting them for criticism but the ones that think laughing at Oliver and sharing it #theresistance is enough.

#TwasEverThusBro, twas ever thus. Meaningful political activism in the US has been a fringe activity for many years. I've seen no evidence that there is a difference in meaningful political activism between now and say in the nineties.

I guess? But then it's also not silly to imagine someone be motivated by watching a John Oliver video to take IRL political action.

In 2008 Obama got 6 million volunteers, basically before social media was a thing. In 2016 Hilldawg -- a historically awful candidate who ~no one was excited for -- got 5.5 million volunteers. So Historically Awful Hilldawg nearly matched the enthusiasm for Obama? Maybe those John Oliver shares on facebook didn't actually replace real action?

I'm fine with making fun of Trump as entertainment, it isn't a replacement for actual activism but it does reinforce how stupid and unfit he is.

The Emmys trotting out Sean ****ing Spicer is in a completely different category and is indefensible and awful.

I'm not going to wade into the empirical claims (activism now versus the 90s). I'll just grant it because I think you're correct.

In any case, it seems like a non-sequitur. Sure, maybe it IS twas ever thus territory. It's still worthy of criticism. The argument Trump's critics are making is that the stakes are raised, they're really high, Trump is exceptionally bad. Isn't that why Kate McKinnon sang Hallelujah and Colbert is doing the Nazi salute and whatever else? But then the audience actions don't square with the behavior they're applauding. The result then is an input into a bad feedback loop: ratcheting up the rhetoric, the preening, the attention-seeking -- without any underlying changes in political behavior beyond rhetoric. A bunch of empty shouting while legitimately bad things happen is not healthy. See my posts earlier.

tl;dr summary: you're probably correct levels of activism haven't changed. But then rhetoric and vanity political signals have seemingly increased. Either people are sincere in their rhetoric but their actions don't match the heightened alarm they speak about -- because they see watching comedy as a substitute. Or their rhetoric is insincere. Which is bad in two ways: people should be alarmed, and sincerity > insincerity.

tl;dr summary 2: if Trump is a ****ing Nazi, get out on the streets. If he's not, stop cheering on performative mocking Nazi salutes, or at least recognize them as such and say politics is just your hobby you laugh about and this isn't serious business, just funny business. I think that gets us back to "umm, so hey, some refugees are suffering huge harms due to Trump policies, why are we laughing about this again?" territory that I sort of tut-tutted about earlier.