Political polarization and the American political system are crippling this county. In the words of the 16th President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Yet for as long as America is old her citizens have let their political opinions tear themselves apart. President Abraham Lincoln was not the only executive to warn of political parties and divisiveness, our very first President, George Washington, once spoke against it as well. "However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion”. Though these words were spoken 221 years ago, they have never rung truer than now in 2017. How is it that we went from two incredibly smart, powerful and strong-willed men and many other respected Presidents to Donald J Trump who tweets more often than a 16-year-old girl. What’s worse though, a president who tweets every thought that crosses his mind or CNN having a live track of said tweets on their website as actual news? However, the more important question is not how we got into this black hole, or even why, but how do we drag ourselves out and back on track?

The presidential election of 2016 brought new hope to America, a fresh start. While the primaries were a bit of a joke hope still remained. That hope slipped ever so slightly with the results of the democratic and republican primaries. Hilary Clinton brought a light to the democratic party, but the results of the Republican primary were disappointing to say the least. From a list of 17 mostly qualified candidates the republican party elected Donald Trump as their nominee. This made for an interesting home stretch in the last months of the election. During these months, American voters endured biased media battles and painfully uninformative political debates, it seemed the only break we got were political comedy bits poking fun at the chaos that was American Politics. Did the Saturday Night Live political skits bring Americans together through humor or did Jimmy Fallon’s “Donald Trump Calls” skits further divide the right and left. What affect does political humor have on American voters, can comedy fix political polarization?

According to Will Self, an accomplished writer and political commentator from England, the author of 10 novels and collections of both fiction and non-fiction writings, political satire and comedy is no longer useful. While this podcast presented so many different definitions and views of satire it doesn’t come off as bias, but the podcast came out on February 13, 2015 just over a month after the Charlie Hebdo attacks which played a huge role in Self’s change in view of the effectiveness of satire. Self says that “Within hours of the killings I was contacted by an international media outfit that was putting together a gallery of responses from "the world's leading satirists". Any pride I might have felt at being included in this - potentially - august company was cancelled out by my not, in fact, feeling any pride at all… [satire should] comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. If the matter fails Self’s test he reclassifies it as offensive or egregiously offensive. For him making the Charlie Hebdo attacks into a satirical matter was crossing the line, it even brought him to question the purpose and effectiveness of political satire and whether satirists are fulfilling their purpose. “We may like to think of our satirists as still speaking truth fearlessly unto power within a social realm bounded by commonly understood norms that allow us to make effective distinctions between speech acts and physical ones, but I venture to suggest that such a view is largely delusory… In Britain, the rich and powerful get more comfortable, the poor are increasingly afflicted, and the satiric volleys are fired with greater and greater frequency and have less and less effect. In the days when I still considered myself to be a satirist, I would tell people that in a society in which there was little true agreement about the fundamentals of morality, the best satire could do would be to prick people's consciences sufficiently to make them think about right and wrong at all”. 

Will self is not the only political writer, Ian Crouch implies that late night political comedy is useless and even alludes that it aided in President Trumps 2016 election victory in his The New Yorker article “Is Late-Night Political Comedy Useless”. Crouch summarizes late night comedy’s cover of the election and details their reactions to the election night results. How Stephen Colbert “adopted a quiet, preacherly tone” and spoke slowly. Colbert had some powerful that night, “How did our politics get so poisonous? I think it’s ’cause we overdosed, especially this year. We drank too much of the poison. You take a little bit of it so you can hate the other side. And it tastes kinda good. And you like how it feels. And there’s a gentle high to the condemnation, right? You know you’re right, right? You know you’re right. Politics used to be something we thought about every four years—maybe two years if you didn’t have a lot of social life. And that’s good we didn’t think about it that much, because it left room in our lives for other things, and for other people… Now politics is everywhere. And that takes up precious brain space we could be using to remember all the things we actually have in common. So, whether your side won or lost, we don’t have to do this [explicative] for a while.” While these words are true Self, however, found his words to be hypocritical. “Colbert spent the better part of a decade talking about politics nearly every weeknight on Comedy Central—it’s what made him famous and helped him get the job as David Letterman’s replacement at CBS” Crouch even writes that for the past decade of his career Colbert has been a “dealer if the particular drug of ideological political comedy” his words have a slight to of anger implying that political comedy has made political polarization worse in this country. 

While Will Self and Ian Crouch both made strong points against political humor, there is something to be mad of the positive effects of late night comedy on political polarization. Politics and American affairs can be so dark and seem helpless, the people need something to take their minds off the hard matters of life including America’s political state. Comedy gives people that break, as the French poet, novelist, and dramatist once wrote, “Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face”. Comedy can be that sun in the winter of political turmoil. In her peer reviewed journal entry “The Persuasive Force of Political Humor” Beth Innocenti, a professor and undergraduate director at Kansas University, agrees with this argument. She quotes Seth Myers “attempts at humor that meet with success depend directly on the specific audience and situation in question” and when it comes to late night political comedy it makes perfect sense that it can be persuasive because viewers of late night comedy obviously respect the hosts and their opinions, and will take them seriously. Innocenti explains that late-night comedians purpose is to “deploy strategies to enhance the conditions for the favorable reception and influence of their messages” she also explains that there are two types of persuasive political humor, design theory and normative pragmatic theory, and that “Both explain how communicators deploy strategies to design a context where even reluctant audiences- individuals short on motivation or ability to act- are influenced to act as the speaker intends.” While late-night comedy and humor provide a break from the stress of politics they’re both also designed to influence their audiences. Hosts of late-night talk show and comedians have a huge platform with their audiences, those who follow their work feel a connection with them, respect them, and trust them, even they’re political opinions and views. And now with the developing social media industry, late-night comedy and comedians have more influence on their audiences than ever. 

Professors Amy B Becker and Beth A Haller, from Townson University, both with published work, also research the effects of political comedy on voters in their entry in The Howard Journal of Communications, “When Political Comedy Turns Personal: Humor Types, Audience Evaluations, and Attitudes” This article follows the particular political case of New York’s first blind and African American governor, David Paterson, and how his short time as Governor “was wrought with controversy and bad politicking giving comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report rich material to work with- ultimately making Paterson an easy Target for a satirical political attack”. While Saturday Night Live originally aired a distasteful skit poking fun at Paterson’s blindness and others with that disability, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report “focused almost exclusively on Paterson’s missteps as Governor”. Despite the unhappy reaction to Saturday Night Live’s original skit, they aired similar skits two more times, and only “briefly mentioning Paterson’s political mistakes”. So, in an attempt to take hold of the situation Paterson made an appearance on Saturday Night Live. “Paterson began by chastising the SNL cast; he then went on to state his accomplishments as governor and then quickly started to engage with SNL’s brand of humor. He told Weekend Update co-host Amy Poehler that they made ‘so much fun of me for being blind that I forgot I was black’… what began as a critical appearance ended with Paterson engaging with and participating in SNL’s physical humor” the episode took well with some of the audience because even though the purpose was to clear the air and shame Saturday Night Live for them making humor of those with disabilities, he spent time participating in the humor. Showing his ability to make light of tough situations. They also write that “self-directed humor has generally been shown to have a significant and positive effect on attitudes and perceptions. In some cases, Particularly Richard Nixon’s 1968 appearance on the variety program, Laugh In, there has even been speculation that willingness to engage with humor has translated into success on Election Day”. When candidates make appearances on late-night comedy it helps audiences see them in a less serious light and a different side of them. Seeing them poke fun at themselves and politics gives the audience a connection with them, and the audience to even cast their vote for them. 

In “All Joking Aside: A Serious Investigation into the Persuasive Effect of Funny Social Issue Messages” published in Communication Monographs, Robin Nabi a professor at University of California Santa Barbra who has a long list of peer reviewed publications, Emily Moyer-Gusé who is a professor at Ohio State University and is researching understanding how and why entertainment media may influence individuals and Sahara Byrne who is an associate professor at Cornell University who also has work published in many journals look at how comedy can affect the opinions of audiences on social issues. The writers begin their article by addressing the idea that using humor in a social argument distracts from the message and confuses audiences. They then go on to present evidence that incorporating humor into a social message actually does the exact opposite for the argument, “certain types of humor likely enhance source judgements… First, humorous ads attract more attention than nonhumorous ones, particularly when the humor is related to the product or issue. Second, humor likely does not harm comprehension though it may not help. Third, there is strong evidence that humor enhances source liking, though is unlikely to affect credibility judgements. Finally, humor may be persuasive for feeling-oriented products (e.g., clothes, perfume) or low-involvement products (nondurable consumer goods)”. Research has found that using humor in social messages can help progressive the argument for its audience. People relate to humor so it’s reasonable to think that using it in social messages, such as advertising, helps sell it, but this can also apply to politics. While political humor and late-night comedy can’t help people understand all political matters it will not harm it, it will attract attention and be persuasive toward a political candidate or issue. 

“A house divided against itself cannot stand” President Abraham Lincoln. How is it that these words were spoken 159 years ago, yet they are still true for America today? Despite the fact that the media and late-night comedy’s coverage of the 2016 election did not earn the victory that most of America hoped for we citizens cannot give up and cannot continue to let politics divide us. Our current state makes us appear weak to other countries and if there is no change it will get worse. While it seems likely that these next three years will be dark, America can find a light through humor and being politically active. Stephen Colbert made a sad but true point about politics today, it’s no longer an every four years matter but now an everyday matter and the only way to fix it is for citizens to be politically active, not only in national politics but in their local politics, start with small changes and move to big changes. Being politically active is not the only fix this country needs, however, our political parties need to learn to compromise and pass bipartisan legislation to benefit the country as a whole and not just their own political agendas. Americans are sick of their government and political system with divisive media and parties, but being fed up is not enough, now they need to stand up and work for change together. 