Need One More Reason to Dislike Tucker Carlson? (Part 1)
The fine line between Satire and Bullshit
PERSONAL NOTE: I’m back from my unplanned hiatus of not posting anything last week. I hate to miss deadlines—even the ones I impose on myself. Thanks for your patience and expressions of support. They are much appreciated. This week, we’re back in business—and I’d like to ask a particular favor of you. If you like what you’re reading on Rant Against the Regime, please share one of my posts with someone you know who might like it, too. I’m trying to build a readership the old-fashioned way: with writing worth reading. If you find what I’m writing worthwhile, please pass it along. Many thanks. And now, on to the post at hand!
A bit of cultural theory
The one thing I’ve studied, taught, and written about the most is satire. I’m an ever-eager student of its long history in Western societies, of its aims as a mode of expression, of its clever tricks as a genre. Satire can be complex and sophisticated, but, when done well, it’s a hoot.
Satire can also deliver quite a kick in the head. As a means of communication, it leaves an impression.
Textually, satire requires a Reader Response approach, specifically, a combination of Social and Transactive methods (see my post, “Reading the Reader,” 3 May 2023). For us to make meaning out of a satiric text, we need to recognize its structural elements. That is, how the satire gives us something to do in order to spur us toward getting its jokes and points. If we don’t see how the mechanism works, we’re going to miss the purposes of that satire.
Equally, without an understanding of the historical context of a satirical work—its social moment, its audience, its speaker—there’s no way for us to get the jokes or the points of that satire. We simply don’t know the set-up. Like that proverbial rose growing on top of a manure pile, satire arises out of the controversies, rivalries, and acrimony of the day.
Why am I telling you about satire? Because...well...Tucker Carlson sucks. What does Tucker Carlson’s well-documented and much-discussed suckiness have to do with satire? Here’s my, perhaps upon first impression, curious claim:
Tucker Carlson, either in an act of evil genius or out of sheer dumb luck, employs the techniques of satire but NOT for the purposes of satire. For that matter, so does his former employer, Fox News—which also sucks.
When we get to the “So What?” section in Part 2 of this post, I’ll explain why this phenomenon is worth our attention. Before that explanation can make any sense, I need to do two things. First, acquaint you with some of the basics of satire. Second, show you what satire looks like when carried out well. In this post, Part 1, I’ll take a go at those tasks.
Some general characteristics of satire:
1. Satire always criticizes, always distorts, always entertains.
2. Satire is grounded in reality.
3. Satire is a polemic, employing a negative tone and a posture of attack.
4. Satire promotes social bonding, most often that of Us versus Them.
5. Satire employs humor of some sort, from belly laughs to dark and uncomfortable.
Some rhetorical moves made by satire:
1. Satire combines praise and blame (laus et vituperatio). Blaming fools and evildoers for their stupid and bad behaviors is the primary focus of satire. Praising smart and good behaviors, while always present, is often only implied as “common sense”—that is, as what all right-thinking people naturally believe.
2. Satire tackles only the hot-button issues of the day—politics, religion, class, race, gender, and so forth. Without controversy, satire has no purpose or bite. Satire is all about engaging in the social strife of the day.
3. A key tool of satire is the satiric persona created by the satirist. The speaker or narrator of a satire is a fictional character fabricated by the satirist for the purpose of swaying the audience into accepting the satirist’s point of view. For example, two long-standing and time-tested types of satiric persona are the good, honest man (vir bonus) as practiced by the Roman satirist, Horace, and the irate, indignant man (vir iratus) as practiced by the Roman satirist, Juvenal.
4. Satire frequently invades other genres as a way to hide itself and thus catch an audience off guard. Satire is notorious for masquerading as something else: a travel narrative (Gulliver’s Travels), a socio-economic treatise (“A Modest Proposal”), a horror movie (Get Out), a documentary (Roger and Me), a Broadway musical (The Book of Mormon), a cable news program (The Daily Show). In this way, the trappings and mechanisms of the invaded genre become additional satiric weapons in the hands of the satirist.
Some larger cultural issues to keep in mind about satire:
1. The intended audience of the satire. Who is the targeted consumer of the satire and exactly how is that consumer being manipulated into buying the satiric message? When it comes to satire, we need to pay as much attention to the narratee (fancy word for the reader or viewer) as we do to the narrator.
2. Satire is an instrument of cultural power wielded by the culturally powerful. Throughout the history of Western satire, the genre has been dominated by educated urban men of means. That is, by wealthy-enough white guys living in and around big cities—Athens, Rome, Paris, London, New York. Whether brandished in the name of social justice (fight the power!) or implemented as a strategy for social control (obey!), satire tends to be a quarrel among the elite. While the sex and ethnicity of satirists thankfully has expanded, and while developments in media technology certainly have made it easier to disseminate satiric works, it still requires sophistication and money to make and to distribute satire effectively. As with most things, people possessing more of those two resources likely will have a greater impact on the social fabric as a whole.
Applying this bit of cultural theory
Now that I’ve laid out some of the fundamentals of satire, let’s take a look at a master satirist at work: Stephen Colbert. My aim here is twofold. One, to show you someone putting to good use all of the elements of satire I just outlined above. So please read with those techniques foremost in mind. Two, by focusing on Colbert’s relentless lampooning of Fox talk show host Bill O’Reilly—the Tucker Carlson of his day—I begin my case against Carlson (and other Fox program hosts) who use many of these same tools of satire but not for the end results of satire. Let me be crystal clear about what I mean by this:
Colbert uses these devices of satire as a means to UNMASK certain ideologies—a basic function of satire. Carlson, O’Reilly, and others use them as a way to MASK certain ideologies—a basic function of indoctrination.
In his satiric persona as a rightwing pundit on The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 2005-2014), Colbert carries out, in my view, some of the sharpest and most insightful political and social satire ever made (here). The cable news personality that Colbert parodies is Bill O’Reilly, whose show The O’Reilly Factor (Fox News, 1996-2017) was then the most-watched program on Fox. Unless you really don’t understand what Colbert is up to, there’s no mistaking him for an actual rightwing mouthpiece on a conservative cable news program. Just the opposite: Colbert is a satirist attacking conservative talking heads such as O’Reilly.
By the same token, there is no mistaking O’Reilly—or Tucker Carlson—for actual satirists. Even though, as we’ll see below and in Part 2 of this post, both men employ many of the aggressive tactics of satire, their aim is not to enlighten and convince their audience into a point of view. Just the opposite: they seek to endarken and bully their audience into a point of view. There is a big difference between these two activities. Namely:
Satire attempts to pull the wool from our eyes; punditry attempts to pull the wool over our eyes.
The bedrock of The Colbert Report as satire is its invasion of the genre of a Fox News show—specifically, The O’Reilly Factor—along with Colbert’s creation of a news anchor character based on O’Reilly himself. Nowhere are these two elements of satire more in evidence than when Colbert appeared on O’Reilly’s show and, in turn, O’Reilly appeared on Colbert’s show.
During Colbert’s guest spot on The O’Reilly Factor (18 January 2007; here), O’Reilly seems intent, at first, to nail Colbert. That is, to show him up as a fraud. As, in fact, a card-carrying liberal for O’Reilly’s audience to scorn. Of course, a card-carrying liberal is exactly what Colbert is and aims to be. In this way, O’Reilly’s rightwing gotcha mission is doomed from the start. Colbert is in no way trying to hide his political agenda. In fact, Colbert has come onto the show to further his satiric mission of unmasking O’Reilly as a conservative blowhard—while on O’Reilly’s own program no less!
Colbert accomplishes this mission by using the stealth missile of his satiric persona.
The more O’Reilly tries to attack or make wry comments about Colbert’s pose as a faux-O’Reilly, the more Colbert turns it against him. We watch O’Reilly become increasingly stumped when trying to shadowbox with, in essence, himself. Along the way, Colbert lands plenty of punches of satiric blame. A particularly good one comes near the end of the interview when Colbert, pretending to complain about O’Reilly’s detractors, says, “They criticize what you say, but they never give you credit for how loud you say it. Or how long you say it.”
You almost feel sorry for O’Reilly, trapped as he is in the funhouse mirror of Colbert’s sendup. There’s no escape. Whenever O’Reilly tries to focus the conversation back onto Colbert—for example, saying, “It is tough being me. Is it tough being you?”—Colbert sharpens the satiric focus even more right back onto O’Reilly, quipping, “It’s hard for me to be you. I’ll tell you that much.”
When O’Reilly appears on The Colbert Report (18 January 2007; here), his ordeal is worse. Early in that interview O’Reilly says as much. During the run of banter, he interjects genuinely, “This was a huge mistake me coming on here. I’ll admit that.” If he couldn’t control the narrative when Colbert appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, O’Reilly has no hope of contending with his doppelganger on The Colbert Report.
Colbert prefaces the big interview with a split-screen montage of how closely he and his show mimics the hyperbolic look and feel of “Papa Bear” O’Reilly. Before O’Reilly even steps onto the set, Colbert’s appropriation of the visual and auditory devices of The O’Reilly Factor begins the satiric barrage. Moreover, Colbert as an interviewer—unlike O’Reilly—controls the narrative from start to finish. Under the large MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner (a dig at President Bush and the war he started in Iraq), Colbert thoroughly deflates O’Reilly’s façade as a legitimate news commentator.
Colbert starts the interview by holding up a copy of O’Reilly’s book, Culture Warrior—the book cover featuring, glaringly, a 30% OFF sticker from Barnes & Noble. With this simple visual, Colbert sets the subtle but unmistakable tone of his attack. In the discussion of what O’Reilly means by his term “Culture War,” all of O’Reilly’s accusations and wisecracks against “secular progressives” fall somewhere between flat and mean-spirited. All the while, Colbert stays in character, doling out plenty of rope for O’Reilly to hang himself.
By the end of the interview, Colbert has O’Reilly denying his own conservative, tough-guy image. Jokes O’Reilly: “I’m effete. I’m not a tough guy. This is all an act.” Colbert leans in to lower the satiric boom: “If you’re an act, then what am I?”
At a stroke, Colbert not only acknowledges what his viewers already know—that his performance as a rightwing pundit is a tactic of satire—but shows that O’Reilly’s performance as a rightwing pundit is equally hollow and artificial. That is to say, programs like The O’Reilly Factor are not the “Fair and Balanced” reporting of events by evenhanded journalists. Instead, such shows—and Fox News in general—are the artifice and stratagem of conservative political propaganda and attack.
We can see, then, how very effective the ploys of persona and genre invasion can be when reaching out to an intended audience in order to instill in viewers, when it comes to hot-button issues of the day, a mindset of Us versus Them via the painstaking calling out of blame and praise. Stephen Colbert puts these rhetorical tools to expert use in the implementation of his progressive satire. He pulls the wool from our eyes when it comes to the cynical project of O’Reilly and Fox News to spread conservative vitriol and disinformation under the guise of legitimate news reporting.
Next week, when we explore the pundit stylings of Tucker Carlson, we’ll see if we can accomplish the same.
Postscript: If you’d like to see more of Stephen Colbert in glorious satiric action, watch the following two clips where he exposes the scam of Political Action Committees, commonly known as Super PACs: The Colbert Report, 30 March 2011 (here) and The Colbert Report, 29 September 2011 (here). You’re welcome!