What political satire can reveal about the strength of a democracy

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: Satire has long played a powerful role in American history, challenging authority, exposing hypocrisy, and testing the boundaries of free expression. That tradition is among the forces that have shaped American life and culture, which Judy Woodruff explores in the PBS News six-part podcast “In Pursuit of Happiness.”

Judy recently sat down with The Onion Network’s Joshua Johnson and scholars Sophia Mcclennen to talk about why the freedom to laugh at those in power can reveal a lot about the strength of a democracy.

Joshua Johnson, Onion News Network: I don’t have Ken Burns on speed dial right now, so I can’t fact-check this, but I suspect that we would not have survived as the democracy that we have become without the ability to laugh at ourselves and our leaders.

I think it is much, much harder. You know, old folks used to say you laugh to keep from crying. I think it’s a lot harder when you are a nation trying to make sense of itself that is literally every — what’s that line from “Hamilton”?

Every American experiment sets a precedent, where nothing is familiar, where everything is new, where everything is unprecedented. No matter what we do as a country, it’s never been done before. You got to be able to laugh at yourself. And to be unable to laugh at your leaders is to be unable to criticize them.

I mean, that’s the whole point of the Declaration. Like you read it, it’s just this list of things that we tried to say nicely. It’s that long train of usurpations that Jefferson writes about that we tried to say nicely, but you won’t listen, and we have been fighting for six years, and we would rather be dead than English.

Like, that’s what happens when you can’t criticize power. And our ability as these feisty ass columnists, which we still are, to laugh at ourselves takes a little bit of the steam out of the frustration of building a democracy like this. It doesn’t do it completely.

But the ability of comedians, of satirists, of artists to take what we’re all seeing and say it in a way that’s palatable enough for us to hold in our hand, to make it small enough for us to poke fun at,that’s probably incredibly healthy for a democracy. That’s probably why it is so dangerous to do satire around the world, because you are relying on the mercy and beneficence of the people you’re making fun of.

In America, we don’t — most of us we typically don’t go for that. Well, like, you’re not any better than me. If I can’t make fun of you, that must mean you think that you’re better than me. And that’s not how we do things here, or at least it’s not how we should.

Judy Woodruff: Sophia, what about this idea we just heard from Joshua that we might not have survived as a democracy if we had not been able to laugh, to poke fun at, and sometimes really be hard on ourselves, to make fun of ourselves?

Sophia Mcclennen, The Pennsylvania State University: Well, Joshua’s 100 percent right. And I always love being able to speak with a creative person, because I get to tell them you, what you just said, I have proof.

So the proof is that in the most democratic countries, you have the higher tolerance for satire and comedy. When the satirists are getting rounded up, when they are having pressure put on them, those are moments when democratic resilience is low or you’re just in a dictatorship or autocracy, right?

Try making fun of Putin today and see how far you get. All of the really good Russian satire is typically coming from outside of Russia right now. I mean, there are people doing it inside, but they have to, again, level up their creativity.

I loved it that Joshua referred to “All in the Family,” because that’s a great example. “All in the Family” was sort of what we would call in character satire, right? Archie Bunker was performing a persona. That can be tricky, because sometimes people can think he’s sincere and it can — the first episode of “All in the Family” came with a disclaimer saying, by the way, this is a show, it’s fictional.

And so what you see in moments when people are trying to hide and bypass censorship is that increased creativity. But going back to that issue, did our love and enshrinement of satire strengthen our democracy?

I’m not sure that we would put it in that kind of a cause and effect, right? We’d say that democracy is strong because it can tolerate laughter. It can tolerate criticism in the form of laughter, which is basically the toughest form of criticism to take.

And if you can take that kind of criticism, it means that you’re putting your ideals before your ego. And that’s what has made the history of this country so special with regard to satire.

Geoff Bennett: You can watch an extended version of that conversation on our YouTube page or wherever you get your podcasts.