PBS News Hour - Full Show - How satire shaped American history

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

From Benjamin Franklin to The Onion, satire has long been a part of how Americans process politics and power. In this episode of "In Pursuit of Happiness," Judy Woodruff talks to Sophia McClennen of Penn State University and Joshua Johnson of The Onion about the history of satire and its relationship with news and democracy today. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

From the nation's earliest days, Americans have not only argued about politics, they've ridiculed it, lampooned it, and laughed at it. Satire dates back thousands of years, and it's been woven into U.S. history from the start. From Benjamin Franklin's essays and cartoons of the Revolutionary era to Mark Twain, to late-night television, to The Onion. Unlike in many countries around the world, Americans have long claimed the right to men. make fun of their leaders. Soutire is strongly protected by law, often dismissed as just entertainment, and relied on as political commentary. Today we'll explore what satire has contributed to the American experiment and whether it still serves the same purpose it once did. I'm Judy Woodruff. This is in pursuit of happiness. Welcome to Sophia McLennan. You are a professor of

International Relations at Penn State University, and you have studied and written extensively about the global impact of satire. And Joshua Johnson, you are a journalist who's hosted shows on NPR and MSNBC. And then a few years ago, you became the anchor of the Onion News Network, which is a satirical broadcast. Bold action from the White House on immigration this week, as a new executive order is aiming to deter migrants by stationing hundreds of socially awkward men at the southern border. Welcome to you both. We are delighted to have you with us. And I want to start with just a simple question. Sophia, to you first, what is satire? You know, it's one of those questions that both seems really simple and then also people write books about it. So the very, very simple answer is that satire is a way of using irony, often sarcastic irony, to make

sense of things that seem absurd. It could be, maybe, it doesn't have to be political, although it often is, but we can satirize human folly. We saw a lot of that, for example, in some of Ben Franklin's satire. He would just make fun of what he just thought was being stupid. So at the heart of it, it's using irony, which, again, the short answer is usually not, is saying, something different from what you actually mean. So the example I like to give is that Stephen Colbert on the Colbert report used to ask guests, George Bush, great president or greatest president? And right in there, you've got all the answers you need. What is satire? It's saying what you don't. It's having fun with irony and exaggeration to make a point. And to the point I made a moment ago that you've

looked at satire around the world. This is not just a moment. just an American phenomenon, right? Well, that's sort of the beauty of satire, is that it's part of the human condition. We actually have examples of satirical hieroglyphs that are used to make fun of leadership in ancient Egypt. So as my son who found out his mom worked on satire at a young age used to say, satire is the body's response to stupid. And we see it in every culture.

and we see it in every period of human history. It's just that, you know, there are unique variations, and certainly American satire has its own history. And Sophia, for the most part, it's protected by law in our Constitution, the First Amendment. Well, that's one of the things, in fact, that makes U.S. satire so different from what we see in other countries. Because, for example, Bassem Yusuf,

who's a very famous Egyptian satirist, was arrested and is, you know, in exile in the United States because it wasn't safe for him to do satire of the Egyptian government. So, yes, one of the things about U.S. satire that's very special is that it's protected by law. So, Joshua, you perform satire as the anchor for the Onion News Network. How would you define it? I really liked the way that Professor McLennan put it in terms of sense making. I think the idea that you live in a community, a country, a world that seems crazy to you and only you is maddening. But when you realize that other people not only see what you see, but they can interpret it in a way that clicks for you, that you have a physiological reaction to, then that's amazingly powerful.

It builds community. It creates a sense of belonging. It creates some political cohesion. It lets you know that you're not alone. It lets you know that the culture that you are in that seems insane has sanity within it. And that there are people within the culture who share your views and your values who are offended by the things that offend you, who are turned off by the things that turn you off. And also who are amused by the things that amuse you. It kind of helps you not feel quite so alone in a democracy that can feel so pluralistic and so vast that it's easy to feel like you're just drowning in moments where nothing makes sense.

And how much does it matter, Joshua, whether satire is based on something that's actual, that's true? Can it just be completely made up? Well, a lot of what The Onion does is just comedy that's insane for its own sake. I mean, when the 30th anniversary of Pokemon came around, we had a piece on ONN that the Japanese government announced for the first time that Pokemon are real and you can eat them and they are delicious. So some of it is just nuts. I do think, though, that coming from journalism and now doing this, there is a very tight common bond between news and satire, which is that they both must ring true. If it doesn't ring true, it doesn't work. I think the disadvantage that people like you and I, Judy, have as journalists, is that the truth

that we bring never feels good. It always feels like an irritant, unless it's being brought by someone who you know shares your political views. Comedy, the truth in comedy is what makes you laugh. It is what feels good about satire. So it's almost the inverse problem with the same group of people. It's that physiological reaction to the truth that can make. news so prickly and that makes satire so appealing. And Sophia, I mean, again, as somebody who's

studied satire, what about that connection between reporting what's happened, the news, and then making fun of it? How have you seen that? Yeah, in fact, I have a satire, global satire news study where we have about 280 shows. This is just televised. So, Joshua will appreciate this, not print satire. 280 shows globally since 1990. And we're talking about Nigeria, South Africa, Mexico, you know, of course, like I mentioned, Egypt, Taiwan, Iraq, Palestine. This is a global phenomenon. And what Joshua points out is important, but I'll throw out a distinction.

because you have satire hoax news where there's the facts in the story are ironic jokes about something, some reference to something in the world. That's sort of what you see with Andy Borowitz. It's what the onion satire tends to be. You're not going to those sources to learn facts. Then you have the type of satire news that you get on the daily show and that you have with a lot of the late night comedians, the facts in those cases are correct. The packaging is ironic. So we got studies, for example, that showed starting around 2007 that audiences that consume satire through those outlets were more informed on news and got higher ratings for their knowledge of current events than people who watched cable news. So there's a reason for this, and part of it is that you

remember things better when they come to you with comedy. So, you know, I always joke. Like, everyone remembers that math teacher that got you to memorize the theorem because they told jokes and had some weird pun. So we know that the brain is better at remembering things that have, like, emotional intensity. So you'll remember things through fear and you'll remember things through humor. And that's part of why satire news has been such a powerful foil in a negative news space. Yeah, it's painful to hear as a journalist that people connect more when it's put in the form of entertainment. And it's something I want to explore with both of you. Right now, I want to go back and just look back a few centuries, frankly, at satire in this country.

We know, as we mentioned, Benjamin Franklin was given credit for that drawing of a snake. and the saying join or die, making fun of what was happening at that moment in the American Revolution. If you jump forward a few hundred years, you can think of Mark Twain and what he contributed to modern day with Will Rogers, the modern day, the late night TV shows. And I want to play a clip from the Smothers Brothers, which some of us remember, their show in the late 1960s, where they were singing their version of Draft Dodger Rag. And if you ever get a war without blood and door, boy, I'll be the first to go. But until then, Mr. McNamara, I'm only 18, I got a rough shirt clean and always carry a purse. I got eyes like a bat and my feet off a flat and my ass was getting worse.

So, Sophia, what happened to the Smothers Brothers? So the Smothers Brothers are a really important moment in U.S. political satire because they put together a number of things. They were really arguably the most powerful televised satire the country had ever seen. They were coming out in the middle of the civil rights movement. They were coming out in the middle of debates over the Vietnam War. This was a highly contentious moment in U.S. history. And on top of that, they had that, you know, your audience today will know Stephen Colbert had that sort of a doorkman. horrible smile. The Smothers Brothers were the first example we have of that kind of satire,

where they're adorable, but incredibly biting at the same time. And the show aired on CVS. It was highly popular, sort of a variety show. They played songs. They did bits. And it threw out, they got increasingly more pointed, and particularly in their criticism of Vietnam. Meanwhile, CBS, the, you know, the network they were on was getting pressure, getting calls from the White House, people uncomfortable, getting corporate sponsors uncomfortable. And the story is that eventually the show was canceled. So, you know, there's a possible sort of parallel to the current moment. And Joshua, I mean, thinking back to that period and what happened to the Smothers Brothers, what does that tell us about our tolerance for the kind of satire and the kind of humor that they were using at that moment, which was, you know, the Vietnam War was something that was dividing the country in a big way then.

Yeah, I mean, we've had a tolerance for that kind of humor for quite a while. I mean, the Smothers Brothers weren't the very first people on broadcast television to do comedy that kind of leaned up to the edge. Sid Caesar got in trouble for some jokes on your show of shows. There were a number of programs. Richard Pryor did a show on NBC. He had a variety show in the 70s that ran for a quick, hot second because his comedy, his comedic take was just a little too hot. But the thing about the Smothers Brothers, I think, for example, or even Sid Caesar or even

Stephen Colbert, is that being in that space was part of the satire. Being in a politically charged space like a national broadcast network, which by the design tries to offend no one so it is viewed by everyone and being willing to bet with the house's money for the sake of telling a meaningful joke is very powerful in end of itself. It's why shows that poke fun, I mean, I grew up in the 80s and 90s with In Living Color on Fox. It's why a show like that that made its bones by reaching out to black audiences and saying, we're going to put shows on like Living Single and, you know, in Living Color and Rock and others. that we are willing to do this in a broadcast space.

That's sort of why it's powerful in a way. I think it's why the whole controversy with Colbert hit so hard because he was able to survive in that highly particular space for 11 years. The onion operates very differently. We have no masters who are going to tell us what to say. And so the quality of the satire really is just the nature of the work. It's the content. But when you're in a space like a national broadcast network, it's when Monty Python used to run

overnight on PBS stations, that was a big thing. Like that was a thing. You go from like, you fall asleep to Monty Python and wake up to Sesame Street and then McNeil-Layer, then Nova and then Monty Python at night. It just felt so out of place. But that kilter, that kind of, that kind of jaundiced view at the world in a space that is so very prim and proper, the Tiffany Network or whatever. that's part of the joke and people feel enfranchised.

Plus, you look at a show like the Spothers Brothers, they were kind of bleeding edge to what Norman Lear was just about to do. So you go from there to shows like all in the family and the Jeffersons and Maud where we can just say the thing and not have to euphemize it. So it's almost like they had to take the hit in the beginning, but the hit wasn't in vain because the conversation had to keep going anyway. Oh, such a good way to think about it. And Joshua, how much does all this have to do with the state the country's in at that point? I mean, whether we are going through some kind of turmoil or division or it can happen at any, you know, at any juncture in our history. You know, 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 crime. I think it's a lot harder when you are a nation trying to make sense of itself. That is literally, you know, 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.

for 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've 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 colonists, 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.

We're 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. 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, and sometimes really, you know, be hard on ourselves to make fun of ourselves. Well, Joshua's 100% right. And I always love being able to speak with a creative person because I get to tell them 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 the first episode of All in the Family came with a disclaimer saying, by the way, you know, 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. You both have pointed out that satire is more than just about making fun of those in positions of political. power, that it can be about our culture, our leaders across the spectrum in our culture. And one of those examples is a kind of, in fact, a really unlikely one, Larry Flint, who is frankly mainly known for putting out hustler pornographic material. And yet he was at the center of an important Supreme Court case. Sophia, can you quickly remind us what that was about and why it matters. This is a really, really fascinating story. So again, right, Larry Flint, founds Hustler

magazine, by all, you know, generally sort of objective arguments, a fairly offensive person. One of the kind of common features of Hustler were parodies, you know, parody ads. There was, there were cartoons. There was humor was regularly part of the magazine. Larry Flint decides, to do a parody ad that targets Jerry Falwell. So again, for your audience, Jerry Falwell, we're in the 80s. Jerry Falwell led a group called the Moral Majority. It was a Christian conservative group that was saying, we need to get this country back to our founding values. We need to have Christian values more at the center of who we are. Well, you know, Larry Flint didn't like anything about this. So he does a parody ad, which at the time, there was an ad campaign for

Kampari, which is a drink that has a very unusual taste. And the joke was that people would tell personal stories and then they would say in the, and the ad would say you never forget your first time. And so it would be confusing. First time, what did that mean? Ha ha. So they did a parody of the Kampari ad, but this time suggesting that they were telling the story. of Jerry Falwell's first time having sex, which, as the ad goes on, turns out to be with his mother in an outhouse. It's very, very biting. As a consequence, Jerry Falwell, unsurprisingly, isn't happy. So he decides to sue Larry Flint for defamation, but also for what's called intentional infliction of emotional distress, i.e. you made me feel bad.

which, you know, we have as a possible thing you can do. And so this goes on. The case gets thrown out. It gets appealed. It works its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. And it turns out to be an opportunity to argue the right of using satire as protected free speech because Jerry Falwell is a celebrity. He's a famous person.

The standards are different. There had been a previous case with the New York Times in the 60s that established that difference. And so the long, long story is that you had a conservative court that ruled in favor of protecting satire because it's such a strong U.S. institution. And the brief is great. The story of, you know, in it goes back to, you know, Ben Franklin, goes to Thomas Nast and all of these great U.S. satirist and says, hey, you know, if you don't like the joke, then just suck it up because that's the way this country is. Joshua, remind us why that decision was important. I think it's important in a number of ways. I mean, as the professor said, it is so institutional

for us to country to believe that people need to be able to express themselves about power. Again, the run up to the revolution. We tried to tell the crowd like, hey, this is not okay. We have to change this. This is not okay. We have to change this. Even before that, we also had a long history of people in power trying to pinch middlemen wherever they could just to get their point across. I mean, it's the case of John Peter Zenger, who was just a printer. He was just publishing something critical. He wasn't even writing it. He was this guy who ran the printing press. And then colonial authorities, like, we're coming after you and argued in court before we had a First Amendment that there's something offensive about this. If you're in power, all you have to do is go, eh, that's literally the,

that's the whole defense against satire. I'm, what do I care? I'm an elected official. I'm rich. I'm powerful. Print whatever you want. It doesn't make a difference. All you have to do is shrug it off. But something offended us, even as colonists, about the idea that we've clothed you in immense power. You get to control tax dollars. You may get to control law enforcement or paramilitary authority. You get to conduct trade. You get to manage our infrastructure, roads, bridges, tunnels, education, and our environmental resources. And I can't tell a joke about you. Something about that has always offended us before we were a country. And I think there's something in our values as people that we know that's wrong. All we're asking you to do is be a good sport. All we're asking you to do for the cost of power is just to be a good sport. And if you can't, can't do that, then maybe you don't deserve the power we gave you. We've kind of always felt that way. And the fact that the court backed that up has made all the difference since then. Now, I can't think of any reason anybody would ever make fun of the news media, certainly not the news hour

or anybody involved with the news hour, but... Fine institution of esteemed character, and I won't have it impugned. However, it has happened. I'm Judy Woodruff, and this is the PBS News Hour. We're what your grandma is talking about when she says, I saw this on the news. Saudi United Live has done skits over the years about the news hour when it was McNeil Lairor, when it was Jim Lairor.

They did one skit about me interviewing Carrie Lake, who was running for governor. Now, Ms. Lake, you have proposed some big changes to local voting laws. If you become governor, do you promise to make sure if everyone's vote counts? Judy, I'll make it easy. If the people of Arizona elect me, I'll make sure they never have to vote ever again. You both have referred to this, but what we find is that increasingly is that Americans are trusting, and the polls are showing this, in many cases, they're trusting what the, what the, the satirist, what the people telling the jokes are saying about what's going on more than they are

what we and the media are telling them. Why do you think that is, Sophia? So the story of how we got to where we are with this is somewhat complex. And part of it has to do with the history of not just news media, but the media in general. Again, I'm old enough to remember when there was no cable, you know? And so we've seen these shifts when it used to be, I remember growing up, it was the time to watch the news. We sat down, we watched it for a half an hour. And that was an American tradition. It starts to change when you get cable and suddenly you could be watching the news or you could be watching Baywatch. And then the news had to suddenly get a little more entertaining to pull those eyeballs back. And so that's one big shift. And the next big shift

is the creation of CNN. So now you have a channel dedicated on cable 24-7 to news, except there isn't enough news. So you suddenly get pundits and let me throw out an idea and now I'm going to have three people discuss it for you. The big shift there is that now the person is that now the person who's in the audience doesn't get to take the information and form their own opinions. They're watching opinions fly around, and so they're having a connection that's fully about affect and not about thinking critically. And so all of those things mixed together with, I would argue, the really bad coverage of 9-11 and the fallout from that when we had people as respected as Dan Rather saying, George Bush is my president, I'm just going to back him up 100%.

And certain people started saying, that doesn't feel right. Meanwhile, John Stewart's out there saying, hey, you know, we need to be asking more questions. Stephen Colbert standing on stage right next to George W. Bush, roasting him and the press at the same time. And that pivots it in a really significant way in which the U.S. has never gone back. So that's sort of the quick reason why we are where we are now. I do want to raise this criticism that some have made of satire that it has, frankly, bred cynicism, that it's made people, you know, question what they hear anywhere else, that it is, it has poked so many holes. in people in power, that it's contributed to our, frankly, to so many Americans saying today they don't trust any big institution. They don't trust government. They don't trust business. They don't

trust the presidency. They don't like Congress. They don't like the Supreme Court. They don't like the media. And the list goes on and on. How do you see that? Sophia? Do you think guilty is charge and, you know, how much does it matter? This is a fantastic question. It's very, very important. So there is a correlation between the satire audience and cynicism. There's no question about that. We can't prove whether satire just attracts cynics or creates them. That's not something research can prove for you. But what we can prove is that the cynicism, that's associated with satire actually leads to higher political engagement. So what has been historically the mistake is associating cynicism with apathy.

You might recall that, you know, we would hear Bill O'Reilly say to John Stewart, all your viewers are stone slackers who cares about those people anyway. The facts are that people who consume satire feel, as I mentioned before, confident that they understand the political landscape and they're not happy with what it looks like and they're going to do something about it. And so we have some pretty nice research that lines all of those things up. So that kind of worry that satire leads to disengagement is a mistake. The other thing we want to remember is that the U.S. turn towards cynicism isn't uniquely associated with satire. The MAGA group is also highly cynical, right? They have deep distrust of all institutions, in fact. So the development of cynicism in the

United States is certainly marked, you know, it's it's noteworthy and it's dramatic. We are seeing also a rise in cynicism globally, this could be attributed to basic things like the science says that we have a climate crisis and no one in leadership is doing anything. And all of these issues that are sort of happening globally are leading to a lot of distrust in institutions and their sort of commitment to the values that uphold them. Right. So that is true. But the cynicism itself maybe isn't the worry. It's just what is the cynicism? coming from? Does the cynicism come from an actually reasonable set of information? Or does it come because you're seeing someone make fun of what someone looks like? I mean, we want to also

distinguish this is super important between comedy that mocks power and comedy that satirizes it. Because mocking power could just mean making fun of how slow Biden talks and how he seems like he's falling asleep and he's really old. That's, that's just an attack on his physicality. That's not his attack on his policy. So we do see in cases like that, that when comedians are making fun of leaders in ways that sort of just make them seem like idiots, that you will see a declining support for those leaders. But that's, I mean, again, you know, not wanting to be too nerdy. That's not technically satire, right? That's just mocking someone in power for what their hair looks like or whether they're too skinny or too fat, things like that. Or too old. Joshua,

I mean, do these comedians, do these satirists make a distinction between mocking someone and and what we're here talking about, which is satirizing them? I guess it depends on the comedian. I mean, at the onion, we do all the above. We have done some great political satire that is pointedly about issues. We had one about the White House being evacuated because their trans alarm went off. And that was more of a political satire. I also anchored a piece about Joe Biden being rushed to Walter, rushed to Walter Reed because he tried to touch the rotor blade of Marine One. with his tongue. And they had to rush him to the hospital. So some of it's just like insanity. There's room for both of it. I think even if it's poking fun at a person, their physicality, their age, you know, something that's just silly, it's usually a person in power or a group of people who we can kind of collectively make fun of in a way that doesn't have to feel personal and biting. Or it's something satirical about like the way that we are. We did a very successful

video on Election Day in 2024 of a kind of a Steve Kornacki magic wall parody where we went way too deep into the mind of a Pennsylvania voter down to his DNA. And it just, it was the number one video on YouTube that day. Number two was a video by Beyonce. Don't tell her. But even in that situation, it had to like the bits and thank you, the bits and pieces had to ring true for it to work, even if you're punching down. Because if you're punching at somebody and the punch doesn't make, sense of like, why are you making fun of how fast Joe Biden runs? Like that it's screwball. Okay, fine. But then it's like you have to make another backflip to make that kind of a joke work. It's almost harder to make a joke work if it's pure mockery and there's no kernel of truth

to it. And I think the onion does a pretty good job of walking that line. When you're making fun of a particular political person, you can, in fact, destroy their career, right? We have the example of Tina Faye impersonating Sarah Palin. We have actual proof that those impersonations had a substantial impact in voter approval of Palin. And it may well have been the case that those SNL impersonations had something to do with how that election cycle turned out. In a different case, we have Chevy Chase impersonating Gerald Ford and making Gerald Ford seem like a spas when he was actually a fairly athletic person who had had a moment. And, you know, what happened with those impersonations was that it did leave the public confused. And they started to wonder, was Gerald Ford spastic?

And what was interesting about that, though, was that Ford took those impersonations. in stride. And he thought they were funny. And we have pictures of him shaking hands with Chevy Chase and saying, good job. And, you know, of course, we have similar examples with Barack Obama taking jokes. And so when leaders can take jokes and when the jokes are not at the level of am I a competent leader, they tend to be the kind of thing that will just blow over. But when the joke is, I'm a complete moron, that is going to be a good. going to end up affecting the public. And so, so, you know, they're all, again, there's all these sort of subtleties and how these jokes can influence voting behavior. So from the standpoint

of the satirists, the comedians themselves, holding power, being power centers themselves, did they have a responsibility not to be, to go overboard, not to destroy, to go far, but not so far that they're destroying people. I love the question because it always kind of pushes me right to the edge, right? So I would say the comedians, they are at heart, entertainers. They do not sit around thinking about the consequences of what they're doing. Typically, they also, as Joshua says, they don't always distinguish, is this mockery, is this satire, this is going to help make something complicated, legible to the public?

Am I advancing the national conversation? These are not necessarily things that happen in the writer's room. But we do know that some, you know, we have perfectly like very good examples, right, particularly from people like Jimmy Kimmel right now. He knows he has an audience. He knows he can affect the public conversation. He's doing it with intention and he's doing it with intention. and he's doing it with clarity.

So it's not a perfect yes or no. And then the bigger question is, do they have responsibility? And I always go back to the public. It's the public's responsibility to decide what they will believe. It's the public's responsibility to navigate the complex world of information

that they're getting. And our job is just to make sure that they have access, right, to all these forms of, of communication. And again, in the form of satire, if it's speaking to them, then, you know, their question is, are they going and finding more news sources? And this will be something that will make your audience feel better. The research shows that if I am a 21-year-old and I watch the daily show and I see a bit on a story on a news item that I did not know anything

about. The next thing that person does is start scrolling the news stories. They read maybe what's in the guardian. So it becomes the catalyst for information seeking. And so again, satire tends to be a trigger event to get somebody to become more informed about an issue. But again, you know, that straight mockery does have its impact. And if you're the kind of viewer who you know, has that effect how they vote, then that, again, is another sort of unfortunate consequence. Joshua, what about this question of whether the people who are making fun have some responsibility? Is there a line beyond which they shouldn't go? You know, Judy, I think this is where my old school journalist comes out because I do think there is

responsibility. I think you need to own every word you say. If there's one thing that used to just keep me up nights. And I know it's kept you up nights too. It's thinking about what you say after you say it. Like you go home, you're laying in bed and you have that moment where you're like, oh God, that third story in the C block, did I quite, I'm not sure. Like those moments of panic are real, but they show that you care and that you take seriously what you're doing. Had that many, many, many times. And as much as I enjoy what we're doing, I wouldn't do it if I thought I'd have to apologize for it over and over. Like, I wouldn't do it if I didn't think the people with the onion have their hearts

in the right place. There's a reason that the onion fought so well hard to acquire Info Wars, the website that Alex Jones used to put out his fabulous conspiracy theories, particularly about Sandy Hook, and they're finally kind of beginning to build that into what they wanted. I don't think that satire is devoid of a moral responsibility, just like art is not devoid of a moral responsibility. If to own what you say, comedy has been going through this a lot with the rise of comedians like Tony Hinchcliff, who makes his living as kind of like a Don Rickles on meth.

He's just sort of the weirdest worst version, in my opinion, and attracts people by his willingness to offend everybody. The problem is you can't really tell where he ends and his act begins. and there's a lack of a moral compass there. The onion has a very clear moral compass. You know the values of the onion by reading it or by watching our work. And I've never put anything out there that I felt I had to apologize for. So I think, yeah, just because you're communicating something that is protected by the First Amendment, rightly so,

doesn't mean you're absolved of responsibility for what you say. It doesn't mean we have to accept it. Remember, you have freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. and it doesn't mean that the consequences and the repercussions of your words won't reverberate. If you want your comedy to do some good, you've got to also accept if it doesn't. If you miss or if you offend somebody in a way you can no longer defend, it's sort of incumbent. Just like if we make an error in a piece. You got to you know what?

You're right. We should have talked to this person. We didn't source this correctly. We've made this assumption. We will do better next. We won't retract it. We'll correct it. But we'll do better next time.

And we need to assign another. piece. You do that with all artistic work and satire is just another form of art. So I don't know, I guess that's where I feel like my background as a working anchor has served me well because it allows me to go into the comedy that I'm a part of with my eyes fully open and with a willingness to say whether it's Dwight Richmond, the character I play on O&N or Joshua Johnson, it's still the same person. I still have to be able to own everything that I say publicly, good, bad or otherwise.

And I still have to be willing to put a moral compass on what I do. Entertain people first, for sure, but don't act like I'm immune from the repercussions of my work, especially if there's room for me to improve. So as we wrap up, I just want to ask both of you one last thing, and that is, as we look back on this period, And we think about where we're headed from here. What do you think historians,

what do you think 100 years from now people are going to remember about this time when it comes to satire? And maybe even more, I'm really more interested just briefly in knowing what you think about where satire is headed. I mean, how much more outrageous can it get? Do I dare ask?

where does it go from here? Sophia, what do you think? What satire is beautiful at doing is pointing out these follies and flaws and absurdities and all of the ridiculousness in our society, in every society. And it does a really good job of making that visible. And I think if anything, satire will be the one place where we will feel and hear satire about satire's power, right? And so that'll be one of the ways in which we'll see how we kind of work our way through this moment. Joshua, where do we go from here? I think we're going to go in a much flatter direction where the nature of satire feels increasingly personal. I think that in a

world where you had three big networks in CNN, then the nature of the institutions that satirized were very different, but now that people can create something funny on their phone and just share it on their own, that is shifting. I think the nature of news obviously is shifting a great deal. I do still think that people need to be able to give me their best Bernard Shaw and just tell me what the hell happened. That's a skill that's vital. But I think that because of social media and because of technology, the barriers between people have dropped significantly. I think that will be a good thing. I mean, you've got parts of the world where young people are demanding to be seen online. Bangladesh just had this very intense youth uprising because the government tried to block

Facebook there. Like, things are happening where people insist on being seen in the fullness of who they are. Let's not forget that Russia is at war with a country right now whose president was a comedian making fun of being presidents. That's today. So the idea that this firewall has to exist is already seen. somewhat obsolete. We sort of already know that, you know, there's no wizard behind the curtain. I think if we can live in the truth of that, we're going to be fine. I could drop into a studio right now

and go back to doing the news because I have a skill set. I can go over to The Onion in Chicago's River North neighborhood and go do comedy right now because I have a skill set. And I think the veil has been lifted from people kind of lionizing the Walter Cronkites of the world because they know it's just a skill set. Some of the people who do news on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram are really, really good. And they've never set foot in a newsroom. And the democratization of that skill set is scary for traditional journalists. I am worried. I'm also hopeful that I can get in there and help that people can see high quality work and emulate it, that they can see high quality satire, like the highly produced work the onion does, and respect the level of craft that.

that's there. I can't control where it goes, but I can get in there and say, hey, your piece was really good. Let me show you how you might write this a little differently. Let's go for some active voice instead of some passive voice here and see if we can save you a few words. I can be part of that future rather than trying to apply the brakes to this space shuttle that's taking off with everyone trying to do everything because, well, I saw you do it, so I'm going to do it too. I think there's some good work that's going to come out of that. There's some crap that's going to come out of that, at the end of the day, that which rings true will rise to the top. And it's incumbent upon people like us who value the truth above all, whether we're doing news, comedy, art, scholarship,

or anything else to just make sure that whoever makes it whatever median they're in, just make it true. Just let that be your North Star. It doesn't matter if people like it. It doesn't matter if it's any good. It won't be. It doesn't matter if you have to try it 10 times. But above all, just make sure it's true and make sure you don't have to apologize for the truth that you're going to tell. If we can do that, I think we'll be all right. Well, great points to end on. We can't talk about, it's almost as if we can't talk about satire without talking about journalism, which tells us a lot. Yeah.

Joshua Johnson, Sophia McLennan, thank you both so much for this thoughtful, thoughtful hour. Thanks for having me. Thanks very much.