The Evolution of Mean
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advertisers on bad taste. Northrop Frye would call obscenity “an essential
characteristic of the satirist,”41 and satire is seldom above a good fart joke; but
much 2008 humor was especially prurient. A pornographic film titled “Who’s
Nailin’ Paylin” with a Palin lookalike appeared. Independent videos were
uploaded to sharing sites such as YouTube, such as ‘Obama Girl’ and response
parodies. In one episode Obama Girl calls ‘Hillary Clinton’ to convince her to
support Obama, only to be told, “Thank you! I worked my whole life to be
president only to be thwarted by a girl in hotpants . . . [well], this fifth of Jack
Daniels isn’t going to drink itself.”42 News parody site The Onion reports the
election result as “Kobe Bryant Scores 25 In Holy S—t We Elected A Black
President.”43
This sort of viral internet humor is sharper and perhaps more satirical in a
purer sense than Bob Hope (the words ‘zany’ and ‘antics’ are never good signs).
Although some internet spoofing can have an element of carnival silliness, it is
less within the accepted establishment. Most internet humorists have not met the
politicians they satirize and their tone is not of a joshing intimate but of an
outsider. The field is no longer dominated by white male entertainers with
Hollywood or Washington connections. Bakhtin distinguishes pure satire from
festive laughter in that “The satirist whose laughter is negative places himself
above the object of his mockery, he is opposed to it.”44 It is not helpful to push a
medieval typology too far, but the carnival jester is present in the crowd, and the
lone blogger is usually isolated, in front of a monitor. Celebrity journalist blogs
such as the Huffington Post are nearly establishment media sources, and even
the Onion is now linked by CNN; but any dissident crank may and can create
blogs, flash cartoons, or YouTube videos of independent satire free of any
commercial interests which might water down the material to make it palatable
to a broader audience.
The breakdown of older concepts of bipartisanship in political satire has
also waned since 1980, as there really are no longer general audiences.
Economics, technology, and culture have all evolved to permit much more
balkanized viewerships, also assisted by the ending of the FCC’s 1949 Fairness
Doctrine in 1987, which had mandated addressing both sides of issues. These
developments have wrought not only satire that is biting and uncensored, but has
tended to create highly partisan audiences where group amplification polarizes
opinion. Bulletin board websites and blogs, of course, have no expectation of
objectivity, and can be wholly one-sided and abusive to dissent; there are fan
sites for candidates and for specialized interest groups. Even the Huffington Post
openly identifies itself as liberal, and few are in doubt on Michael Moore’s
politics with his films and sarcastic books.
The influence of the culture wars has also extended to network television,
which is now increasingly categorized into ideological camps. The McCain and
Clinton campaigns’ claims of media bias were hardly new, going back to Adlai
Stevenson’s gripe that the press was as objective about Democrats as dogs are
about cats.45 Networks were singled out as being ‘in the tank’ for Democrats in