Wait, so if your new argument that political activism HAS meaningfully increased? Wasn't it 'political activism is always low, twas ever thus' as little as one post ago? Now it's actually political activism is high, thanks SNL?

Would guess activism is on the rise because people are afraid of losing their health insurance.

I don't have a ton of sympathy for this view. Spicer having a laugh about his adventures spinning propaganda for Trump is horrifying, a black hole of narcissism, etc., but it's also important to recognize that the Emmys just broke one rule of politainment. It's totally fine for the Emmys (a party for a bunch of fabulously rich people to congratulate themselves on how virtuous and great they all are in addition to being rich that is somehow also televised, non-reality-show, non-sociology-fieldwork-show entertainment) to put on a self-congratulatory display of their own wokeness. That's standard politainment and the audience will be thrilled to see their own virtue reflected by rich people on the stage. ("OMG Julia Louis-Dreyfus just said mean things about a politician I don't like!") Their sin (to the extent it was a sin--people loved it!) was misunderstanding the product and allowing someone extravagantly unvirtuous to play a part in the display. He makes the show better in an objective sense, but he taints the moral quality of the product that (maybe!) is the key to its value. But the key to remember is that the thing these people ought to be indicted for is not making an unconvincing piece of politainment, it's running an industry where world-historical political disasters are mere grist for the production of commercially successful pap. The problem is not that the Emmys were an unconvincing facsimile of what real principles look like, it's the whole politainment industry producing nothing but facsimiles, both convincing and otherwise, of principles.

Political activism certainly seems higher now than 20 years ago. Don't think it's high and it's still a fringe activity. There certainly have been a lot of big protests in the news the past few months, seems at odds with your narrative...

Great now the left wants to kill art that attacks the president.

I think we're sliiiightly talking about two different things here
1. Spicer at the Emmys
2. Steward/Oliver DESTROYING political activism in the United States

1. is pretty boring, we all agree it's dumb, awful, just more of #TheResistance in the mainstream media actually being totally chummy with all this **** that's happening in the White House.

2. is perhaps more interesting (and I disagree with it), but for some reason we're still talking about Sean Spicer while discussing it. When Spicer goes on Oliver's show to make funny jokes I'll eat crow, but uh, I kinda think John Oliver would be mad about what happened last night too.

The "Steward" meme still isn't funny.

Trump wants the comedy at his expense to stop too...**** that.

Since both you and senorkeed seem tweaked by the inclusion of John Oliver, maybe we should leave him out or something since it seems distracting. I think he's actually part of the problem but I frankly don't care either way.

In the end, though, on the whole -- we can use events like #1 (the chummy behavior between comedy celebrities and Trump's allies, or Trump himself) to prove that #2 style comedy is mostly performative. How can Colbert really claim to be outraged by Trump if he and Spicer are making light of how much Spicer is a lying propagandist? So it's not that comedy brigades are destroying activism directly, but indirectly. The comedy brigades are trading off of genuine, heartfelt, real principles to make jokes and entertain. To an extent, that's entirely what comedy is. So fair enough. I've tried to carve out some space for political entertainment to persist and that's OK, no big deal. This is where the audience comes in for blame. Because the audience may be taking the performance and mixing it up for the genuine political organization, for sincere political emotion, for actual activism instead of hobbyism.

SenorKeed sort of ham-handedly dismissed this possibility but isn't it *exactly what we think happened to the right-wing over the last generation?*

So when Fox News and AM radio guys do kind of exactly this -- when they trot out a different brand of admittedly less funny, lower brow info-politi-tainment, we all lose our **** about the destructive nature of it: stop riling up the old whites and angering old white blood with preposterous hottakes, you guys don't even mean half the **** you're saying, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are just coddled millionaires who dish a bunch of insincere nonsense to entertain dumb whites for fun and profit, and it's really damaging to the political culture. The old whites get riled up with Fox News and AM radio style schtick, they take this **** very seriously, their emotions are being toyed with, and the millionaire infotainers know that in the end Hillary Clinton isn't a monster and Barack Obama isn't a Kenyan usurper President. And then our warnings come true: look, see, we lecture. Fox News and the right wing infotainers made an army of narcissistic right wing idiots wedded to tabloid style infotainment and now they're all mixed up don't have a reference of what's signal and what's noise. There's precious little distance between any core ideology and what is basically right wing performance art. And now a right wing infotainer is President, partly because generations of exposure to this have left the American right bereft of the ability to discern between substance and showmanship.

OBVIOUSLY Bill O'Reilly and Limbaugh types are appealing to humanity's worst impulses and the comedy guys maybe have better virtues, but the forces on the audience are similar and we should be vigilant. What Spicer at the Emmys and other events shows is that our celebrities and comedy guys (like Colbert, and Kimmel who had Spicer on earlier, and Fallon who had Trump on his show, and SNL who let Trump ****ing host) -- that their comedy routines are entirely superficial and performative, very similar to the right wing infotainer army. Because when push comes to shove, they glad hand each other, invite each other on their shows, and use each other when convenient. Political emotions that the jokes and skits evoke are just deployed to get you to tune in and give them attention. But these are all supposed to be respectable, rich, nice people we invite into our homes and become deeply embedded in our culture. The result is a predictable normalization of the stuff the comedy is supposed to be lampooning.

Wait the problem with right wing media is that it ACTUALLY HAS produced real world political results. It culminated in the election of Trump! So if Steward and Oliver get the same results, uh, wait that seems OK. The Trump that Steward and Oliver would get elected is what? Obama?

Disagree. A large chunk of his audience is getting educated about issues they have never heard about. That's helpful, even if the effect occurs in a slower, roundabout way.

Like others ITT, I think we should separate what Oliver is doing with what Colbert did last night.

Okay, but then look at the conclusions - you said this was a route to having no real political engagement and losing, kinda seems like it's worked out well for the right?

...what's the analogy here, that Stephen Colbert knows Donald Trump isn't a fascist? I think it's more that he just doesn't care as much as he pretends to. Taken with this:

...it's harder to reconcile this in your analogy, because the chief problem on the right-wing side of it is that Limbaugh et al were lying.

Just so I'm not strawmanning, can I get a confirmation that here from SK and goofy that the comedy troop is fine and great and desirable if the Democrats elect a left-wing infotainer reality show host someday? Because both of you seem to get the larger point (performance art should not be the core of a political movement) but then want to say well, OK, it might not be great, but look at how much success the right has had with Donald J. Trump.

Let me know if I'm not capturing this correctly before I continue.

Depends who you're talking about, I'm totally down with Oprah 2020. You'd have to give me an idea of how much of a moron we're talking about (idk who our choices even are...Chris Harrison? Ryan Seacrest?)

I'm not really outlining a counterpoint of my own so much as pointing out that your arguments don't totally make coherent sense. Performance art shouldn't be the center of a movement - okay, but like, the great sin of the right isn't solely that the hosts were insincere in their delivery of it, it's also that they were peddling total bull****. That's why I don't think the analogy really works on the left, unless you think Colbert is overselling how bad Trump is while not believing it as sincerely as he should. They sold the right a real big lie about immigrants, and Barack the foreign Muslim invader, and all that ****, and they elected a president who fulfilled all those lies. The danger on the left is... __________ fill in the blank? I guess that we elect someone who promises to nuke Russia?

Exactly. Right-wing media is drowning in bull****, so it's no wonder they elected one of the great bull****ters of our time. That's an undesirable outcome, obviously.

Meanwhile, the left equivalent so far seems to be... what, Al Franken? As far as I can tell, he's been a very good, thoughtful politician. I'm not seeing how the danger is remotely comparable.

Well I don't watch Colbert so I can't really comment on him. SNL does not appear to me to be shared on social media in the way that you seem to be saying -- literally no one is saying look at this IMPORTANT SNL SKETCH. People do that perhaps a little more with Seth Meyers' stuff, but his stuff is more opinion-y and he makes some explicit political arguments. And Oliver's stuff does get shared in that fashion, but he's actually informing people in subjects that are sometimes important and interesting. HE MAKES LEARNING FUN.

I only have seen large amounts of Meyers and Oliver, so I won't comment on others. But is what Meyers or Oliver doing harmful? No, of course not. Not at all, even remotely. Meyers' A Closer Look segments are funny, honest, and cohesive. Oliver's show is funny, honest, cohesive, and sometimes educational. They're actually substantially better than Steward, who was often frustratingly dishonest (not quite dishonest, but not as honest as Meyers and Oliver). If shows like this encourage political action, it won't elect a left-wing Trump, exactly because these comedians are being honest. It is the dishonesty of right-wing media that is problematic.

How do you figure that? A lot of anti-war activists during the early-to-middle of last century happened to be performance artists. Musicians spearheaded anti-war activities in the 60s. Bands like the Clash and Rage Against the Machine exposed kids to politics more recently. I'm not sure why comedians deserve special treatment.

By "performance art" he means pretending, not art that is performed (I'm pretty sure RATM was quite sincere)

Some of the dadaists and surrealists certainly fit that criteria. Though they were sincere as well.

The chief criticism of Oliver etc is that people regard it as cathartic, rather than as something that stirs them to action. I can easily see it doing one for some and the other for others. It's probably the former in the vast majority of cases, and I suppose people for whom it's solely cathartic are probably not the kind of people to become active anyway.

The benefits and downsides should elect an insincere left wing showman was your and SK's input here, not really mine. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't strawmanning your arguments.

I agree that the right-wing info-tainers being both simultaneously insincere and bad people makes them worse than left wing infotainment. But left wing political infotainment shouldn't celebrate the insincerity. The danger is that it ultimately normalizes the transgressions of Trump style politicians since it treats criticism as a kludge to fulfill the end of a comedy routine and that stage props like Spicey can become part of the act (see last night), despite the fact that the whole criticism of Spicey's role is that his brazen lying on behalf of a would-be fascist is and was a threat to democracy.

You guys seem to want to say, welp, sure, it's a little insincere, Colbert just doesn't care that much but he probably thinks Trump is bad -- but look how much fun the right is having, look how much power they've accrued turning the party over to Fox News pundits and showmen! To which I say --- yeah, no thanks, I don't want to emulate that, so let's stop that here and criticize our performative, insincere artists for yuking it up with Trump flackeys.

I'd reiterate that focusing on Al Franken or electing Oprah are strawmen, not really relevant here. I agree Al Franken is progressive enough to be an asset and good on him. I'm not suggesting we disqualify SNL cast members or celebrities as future politicians, but that most political comedy is of limited utility, it can foster complacency if not a certain callousness. Where would the limits of Trump Admin rehabilitation end? Will Steve Bannon be welcome on Fallon's show? Is Kellyanne Conway going to promote her book on Kimmel? Does Jeff Sessions get to host SNL? At some point it moves from comedy to brazen unfeeling. I prefaced my very first post that I realize the whole take care comes off as stodgy but surely there are limits to who gets to party with celebrities and promote themselves on these comedy shows, right? If not, I argue yet again that their comedy is hardly meaningful. It's performative and nothing more. The audience is being used.

So: the danger is that is that embracing political comedy as a form of meaningful political activism can quickly embarrass us: as the apologists have noted up and down and insisted on, Colbert and SNL's job is to entertain primarily, maybe to educate or something, but they're celebrities and they have jobs to keep things light and funny -- and so embracing Sean Spicer's post Trump rehabilitation tour is good business, nothing more. To which I say: exactly. Choose your allies wisely, this isn't good for us.

I am quite confident that Kate McKinnon singing Hallelujah and Tina Fey's Resistance Sheet Cake hit the mainstream cultural zeitgeist and were considered high brow #Resistance art.

But as I said, if we want carve outs for this entertainer or that one, fine. I agree Oliver is funny and he takes some arcane topics and brings them to light. It's OK to laugh and derision can be good. If I laid out my deeper arguments against Oliver, they would basically be that he's not radical enough and that MOST of his advice is ultimately mealy mouthed and servile to working within the current constraints of the system. And that's fine and his prerogative and has merit and whatever. It's not that relevant here.

All I ask is that his audience, if they agree with what he's saying, meaningfully acts on the things he's talking about. John Oliver can be a fantastic step 1 into political organization but if you stop there, it's not sufficient. We all struggle to find the time and energy and resources to move to the next step, I get it. But I suspect a huge part of his audience (and the audience for similar stuff like Sam Bee and TDS) are using entertainment as a crutch or to embrace self-centered pursuits. And that's fine, it's politics as hobby. I have 25k posts on a poker forum. I get it. But then at least count yourself as on the sidelines. Most people probably do, like All In Flynn says.

And I think when history looks back at YouTube videos of John Oliver's show getting 10 million hits or whatever while grave injustices continued unabated, I think they will question us collectively and they are correct to do it. Most of John Oliver's audience clearly DGAF or at least don't give that many ****s. Hence the predicament.

...this goes back to my #1, talking about Sean Spicer is boring, we already agree on everything about him showing up at the Emmys.

I think we're going in circles a bit but because you keep pointing to how the right's entertainers have led their audience down down a path that we're in danger of following ourselves if we aren't careful, I'd say a Glenn Greenwald point from sometime way back when applies very well here: what you say matters a lot more than why you said it.

I forget the original context he used but it applies in a lot of situations, both when saying good things or bad. When a politician supports gay marriage, shut the **** up with this "do they really believe in that or are they just being politically convenient" stuff, it's important that they're supporting it, who cares what they really think. When a poster on 2+2 is racist, chez and Lestat should shut the **** up with this "do they really believe black people are inferior in their hearts" stuff, the racist stuff they're posting is the important part. When Rush Limbaugh tells his audience that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim who's going to turn America into a Marxist state, it makes him a bit more deplorable than he otherwise would be that he doesn't even believe it himself, but the great impact there on his audience is, again, what he said, not why.

And now we're here at a point where some entertainers on the left in their lofty mansions and such go on TV and play characters that are really mad at Trump, but sometimes **** up and get too chummy with Sean Spicer on stage. So we're mad at the why, but what's the huge danger in the what? In this case the worst part of the "what" was the Spicer part itself, which I think is what you're talking about here:

...but, at the danger of believing my Google search results, seems like people more or less had the right reaction to that. These are all from the first page of search results I got for "sean spicer emmys":

CNN: Hollywood just enabled Sean Spicer and that's not funny
LA Times: Hollywood was not having Sean Spicer's Emmy cameo
Washington Post: Sean Spicer's cameo at the Emmys was yucky
Fast Company (?): Why Sean Spicer Will Never Be Funny, And The Emmys Should Have Known Better
The Atlantic: Sean Spicer's Emmy Cameo Shows Hollywood's Strange Politics

So, maybe this is just google feeding me up them good libtard search results, but it seems like there's been plenty of a reaction from the left not acquiescing to Colbert's request that we just make this all a funny joke. If this was testing the left and our unquestioning commitment to our entertainers, I think we passed?