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WASHINGTON Civil Rights Activist Rev. Al Sharpton said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats proceeding with impeachment is "not partisan, it's patriotic."

"I think that they've done the right thing moving forward. I think the evidence is there and I think that they've made a clear case," Sharpton said before the Urban One Honors, hosted by Radio One, where he received a leadership award on Thursday evening.

When it comes to a trial taking place in the Senate, Sharpton said that "the question is are they party first or are they patriots first? Are they going to stand up for what's right for the country? Can you set a precedent where a sitting president will use congressionally approved funds to ask a foreign government to interfere in our election by smearing his potential opponent? That's what's on trial here."

Sharpton, host of PoliticsNation on MSNBC, was also asked for his opinion of "cancel culture."

"I believe that we need to not cancel anybody. I think everybody has a place. Everybody ought to celebrate who they are -- that's what we're here about tonight. We shouldn't have to conform to anything and anybody and feel that we're going to be canceled out," he said. "We need to move the boundaries no matter who and what we are -- that's what God made us to be, we ought to celebrate that."

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Sharpton: House Democrats Proceeding with Impeachment 'Not Partisan, It's Patriotic' | News and Politics - PJ Media

Journalists grew concerned about a political partys supposed racism this week. Only this time the media were complaining about the Democratic Party.

What took them so long?

Democratic presidential candidate and Sen. Kamala Harris of California ended her campaign for the nations highest office, likely resulting in an all-white group of candidates appearing on stage for the sixth televised debate of Democratic presidential contenders Dec. 19.

JULIN CASTRO ACCUSES MEDIA OF 'DOUBLE STANDARD' IN COVERING KAMALA HARRIS CAMPAIGN

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who is African-American, went off about it on MSNBCs All In with Chris Hayes.

We're spiraling towards a debate stage that potentially we're still fighting to get on it, but could have six people with no diversity whatsoever," he complained. (Democrats used to consider gender part of diversity. Oh well.)

Booker barely scratched the surface of the problem. A series of controversies had reporters covering stories they ordinarily try to ignore or downplay. The scandals involved top-tier candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

But the Harris narrative finally captivated a news media that had eagerly forgotten the controversy regarding Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northams college yearbook photo showing one person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan garb.

NBC News carried a story headlined: With Sen. Kamala Harris' exit, Democrats can't avoid a tough conversation about diversity.

NPR agreed, asking: #DemsSoWhite? Kamala Harris' Exit Raises Hard Questions About Race And Power.

It was an unusual spot for journalists who typically depict those on the right as racist and those on the left as enlightened.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary and current presidential candidate Julin Castro blamed the news media for what Buzzfeed described as treating candidates of color differently.

To me, they held her to a different standard, a double standard, to other campaigns, Castro said.

Castro criticized The Washington Post, New York Times and Politico for writing very gossipy-sounding big articles trashing the campaign.

The Root was upset that Kamala Harris Wasn't Allowed to Fail Up Like a White Boy. Senior Reporter Terrell Jermaine Starr said the media fixated on her previous job as a lock em up prosecutor and attorney general.

Starr added that former Vice President Joe Bidens own background is far worse and Biden is still running. If Harris is a cop, Biden is the police chief, he wrote.

And MSNBC host Al Sharpton added: Women are held to a different standard and black women especially."

The Democrats problems with race didnt stop there.

Warren once more addressed her phony past claims to be a Native American. She spoke at a presidential forum on Native American issues, according to The New York Times. She offered a direct, public apology for the harm she caused with her past claims of Native American ancestry and pledged to uplift Native people as president.

I shouldnt have done it. I am not a person of color, Warren told the audience, according to Bloomberg News.

Journalists have repeatedly defended Warren on this issue and bashed President Trump for nicknaming the senator Pocahontas because of her lie.

The New York Times called Trumps comment a slur and a racially incendiary jibe. The Times Magazine devoted more than 8,000 words to profiling Warren, but included just one paragraph to her about her pivotal controversy.

MSNBCs Morning Joe Host Joe Scarborough had called the presidents criticism of Warren coded racism and an appeal to the white nationalist wing of, of this movement.

Meanwhile, a staffer whose tweets contain anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic and racist language is no longer with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, according to ABC News.

The Washington Free Beacon revealed how new Deputy Director of Constituency Organizing Darius Khalil Gordons past on Twitter was filled with a ton of things that I wont quote here.

Of course, traditional outlets didnt discover the comments, so kudos to the Free Beacon for doing actual research.

New candidate Michael Bloomberg was even caught in the controversy. His opponent Booker also found it stunning when he learned Bloomberg had referred to him as "well-spoken. It was a gaffe reminiscent of Bidens comment about then-candidate Sen. Barack Obama as the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.

Not to be left out, the Buttigieg campaign had a gathering of African American supporters in South Bend, reported NBC News. The kicker was that Buttigieg was interrupted by a man wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt.

Liberal racism, sexism and anti-Semitism have been the donkey in the room for a long time. The media were finally forced to confront it, at least briefly.

Nancy Pelosi blasts reporter

Journalists are quick to defend anyone in the media who is criticized by the president. But when a reporter is criticized by the Democratic speaker of the House, the rules change.

Sinclair Broadcast Group reporter James Rosen asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California a simple question: Do you hate the president, Madam Speaker?

Pelosi, who has bashed Rosen before as Mr. Republican Talking Points, used the opportunity to claim she had the moral high ground.

As a Catholic, I resent your using the word hate in a sentence that addresses me, she said.

The news media, who love it when Pelosi opposes the pope and the Catholic Church on abortion, rallied around her faith when it suited them. Both CBS and NBC promoted an identical Pelosi quote: Dont mess with me.

Imagine the media reaction to a Republican politician calling out a reporter, pointing a finger directly at the journalist and telling him Dont mess with me.

Actually, you dont have to imagine it. We see it daily when the press rallies in defense against every criticism they get from the right.

USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page described Pelosi as fierce.

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NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell took Pelosis side readily. Mitchell said that the speaker, as a person of deep faith, which we know to be the case with her, really took offense at anyone questioning.

Mitchell didnt seem to recall that Pelosis deep faith has strident disagreement with the Catholic Church on abortion.

CNN loved it as well. Chief Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin described Pelosi comments as one of the many iconic Nancy Pelosi moments from this period.

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MSNBC talking heads were just as excited. Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski was thrilled that Pelosi went right to her Catholic roots.

Joe Scarborough mocked the reporter for daring to ask a question. Maybe James Rosen would like to ask Donald Trump, do you hate children, or do you hate Jesus?

The confrontation was a reminder of how faith is both a sword and a shield for the press. They wield it against anyone they disagree with and use it to defend those they support.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY DAN GAINOR

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Dan Gainor: Media criticize Democrats A rare break from their attacks on Trump and Republicans - Fox News

George Zimmerman, the Florida man who shot and killed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin, is suing Martins family, the lawyer who represented them, and other people associated with the murder case. Zimmerman is being represented by a right-wing lawyer who supported the anti-Obama birther movement, and the claims in the lawsuit stem from a documentary by a fringe filmmaker who traffics in conspiracy theories.

Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in a 2012 case that sparked a national debate over racial profiling and gun laws. Martin, 17, was unarmed when Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, reported him as suspicious as he walked through a gated community where Martin was visiting family in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, claiming he acted in self-defense. He was later acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges. Now hes suing Martins family and associates for $100 million, based on claims from a discredited documentarian.

The lawsuit targets Martins mother, father, various people associated with Martin and his case, the state of Florida, the Martin familys lawyer Benjamin Crump, and HarperCollins Publishers, which released Crumps book on the killing of minorities this year. The suit claims one of the witnesses against Zimmerman misrepresented herselfwith Crump and the Martin familys knowledge.

Zimmerman is being represented by Larry Klayman, an attorney described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a professional gadfly notorious for suing everyone from Irans Supreme Leader to his own mother.

While accusing President Barack Obama of secretly being Muslim in 2013, Klayman called for a second American nonviolent revolution to get Obama to leave town, put the Koran down [...] and to figuratively come out with his hands up.

A birther who claimed Obama faked his U.S. birth certificate, Klayman has also claimed the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was ordered by Saddam Hussein. Klayman is a founder of the conservative group Judicial Watch, which has repeatedly sued the Clintons. This summer, a D.C. legal ethics panel recommended barring Klayman from practicing law for 33 months over a complaint by a former client who accused Klayman of exploiting her financially when she refused his advances. Klayman said he planned to appeal and claimed the hearing was politicized. The panel told The Daily Beast the appeal was ongoing.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, Klayman said, George Zimmerman seeks justice not just for himself, but for all of those others victimized by dishonest prosecutors who seek convictions to further their political and other unethical agendas to advance their careers. He also seeks justice against those who would divide the nation by pitting the races against each other for fun and profit, including the Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump and his friend Al Sharpton. (Sharpton is not a defendant in the case.)

In a statement on behalf of himself and Martins family, Crump blasted Zimmerman.

This plaintiff continues to display a callous disregard for everyone but himself, revictimizing individuals whose lives were shattered by his own misguided actions. He would have us believe that he is the innocent victim of a deep conspiracy, despite the complete lack of any credible evidence to support his outlandish claims. This tale defies all logic, and its time to close the door on these baseless imaginings, Crump said Wednesday.

Those alleged baseless imaginings stem from a new documentary by a longtime conservative conspiracy theorist.

The facts pled in this Complaint, which set forth the injury suffered by Plaintiff, were only recently discovered by Plaintiff Zimmerman on or about September 16, 2019 through the publication of the book and film by Hollywood director Joel Gilbert, both entitled The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud the Divided America, the lawsuit reads. (Klaymans announcement of the lawsuit also advertised a screening of the film.)

Gilbert is a repeat Infowars guest who has peddled a number of right-wing conspiracy theories. In 2012, he made a movie claiming President Barack Obama was actually the secret son of labor leader Frank Marshall Davis, and that Obama had been raised from birth to lead a communist revolution. (Gilbert accounted for the two mens lack of physical similarities by claiming Obama had plastic surgery to hide his link to Davis.)

Gilbert also pushed a hoax that claimed Obama wore a ring inscribed with a declaration of Islamic faith, and that Obamas mother posed naked for fetish magazines (both claims were debunked).

During the 2016 presidential election, Gilbert produced a film falsely accusing Bill Clinton of fathering an illegitimate child (the man in question took a DNA test decades ago that indicated Clinton was not the father). Gilbert also designed a pro-Trump Times Square billboard, paid for by Roger Stones super-PAC. He previously marketed other conspiracy films, including one suggesting Paul McCartney is secretly dead. The film was later reclassified as a mockumentary.

Gilbert claimed to have mailed millions of copies of his anti-Obama documentary to swing state voters in 2012, raising questions about his financial backing. The Federal Election Commission mulled legal action against Gilbert that would have required him to disclose his funding, but the agencys general counsel ruled that the videos counted as a media action, not an independent political expenditure.

Zimmerman has previously tried to capitalize on his fame from the Martin shooting. In 2017, he advertised a celebrity boxing match against rapper DMX. The fight was later cancelled. Later that year he likened Martin to a dog. He also made $138,900 auctioning the gun he used to kill Martin.

See the rest here:
George Zimmerman Sues Trayvon Martin's Family With Help From Right-Wing Lawyer Larry Klayman - The Daily Beast

WASHINGTON (JTA) On Wednesday, theU.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee launched impeachment hearings just hours afterthe Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., concluded its own impeachment inquiry.

The 300-page Intelligence Committee report concludes that President Donald Trump placed his own personal and political interests abovethenational interests oftheUnited States in asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, calling it the act of a president who viewed himself as unaccountable and determined to use his vast official powers to secure his reelection.

It is nowthe Judiciary Committees task to decide whether to recommend articles of impeachment. And whilethe officials who appeared before Schiffs committee were fact witnesses who describedthe events surroundingthe Ukraine scandal, Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., brought three witnesses all constitutional scholars that he hoped would outline a theory of impeachment.

All three witnesses are Jewish: Noah Feldman of Harvard, Pamela Karlan of Stanford and Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina. So are Schiff and Nadler, and so wastheDemocrats counsel who directedthe first 45 minutes of questioning, Norm Eisen.

Why does this matter?

Well, predictably, it mattered to anti-Semites.

Ann Coulter,the right-wing agitator, tweeted, Too little ethnic diversity amongthe professors for me to take them seriously. Consideringherpast flirtations with anti-Semitism, one could conclude that she wasnt faultingtheprofessors just for being white.

TruNews,the YouTube channel run by ananti-Semitic Florida pastor who has coinedthe term Jew coupto describethe impeachment process, took to Twitter to accuse Jewish socialist Jerry Nadler and his three Jewish witnesses of escalatingtheJew coup. TruNews also helpfully informed us that Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University scholar and witnesses called by theRepublicans who testified thattheevidence for impeachment simply does not add up, is a Roman Catholic.

Twitter removedthe tweet. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblattscreenshotted it for posterity,calling on social media platforms to take action against blatantly anti-Semitic posts.

Why not ignorethe blatant anti-Semitism?

Because the fringes no longer have pariah status: TruNews has been accredited for White House news conferences. Trump has taken questions from them (about his plans for Israeli-Palestinian peace, of all things) and his son, Donald Jr., gave TruNews an impromptu interview earlier this year at a Michigan rally. (Trump Jr.s spokeswoman told The Washington Post that he was not aware atthe time of TruNews outlook.)

Those views have crept intothe mainstream discourse.

While the hearings were underway, Breitbart News,the Trump-boosting news site, posted a story, Norm Eisen, Democrat Impeachment Counsel, Linked to George Soros.Breitbart reportedthat Soros Open Society Foundation had helped fund an ethics watchdog Eisen founded, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, tothe tune of $1.35 million in 2017. (This is not a secret: Its on the Open Society website.)

Butthe Breitbart story failed to explainthe relevance. Eisen is not pretending to be nonpartisan or unaffiliated from a liberal outlook; there is no suggestion that Soros money is reachingthe committee itself.

Soros,the liberal Jewish billionaire philanthropist, is incessantly attached to conspiracies. Fiona Hill, a former senior National Security Council staffer, noted last month how the baseless Soros conspiracy theories besetthe Ukraine scandaland called them anti-Semitic.

Republicans onthe panel attempted to depictthe three scholars onthe Democratic side as effete elitists, another classic trope.

Democrats still dont get it, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Twitter. They are pushing ahead with impeachment based on opinions from liberal law professors from coastal universities.

McCarthy, from California, attended a coastal university (Cal State, Bakersfield), and Turley, the GOPs scholar, teaches at one, George Washington but never mind.

This creates Jewish fear

I got texts from leading Jewish Democrats during Wednesdays hearings wondering, with not inconsiderable trepidation, whether thescholars were indeed Jewish.

The trepidation is a shame because considerations of how being Jewish shapes ones outlook should be free of anxieties about what anti-Semites will make of it. And there are meaningful Jewish stories behindthe decisions of these witnesses to become constitutional scholars:

I grew up in Alabama, and I grew up Jewish in Alabama inthe1960s, Gerhardt told C-Span last year, and that was a time of great turbulence, andthe timethecivil rights movement was sort of unfolding, and it was all unfolding in front of me, and I paid attention to it, and that those events that arose inthe 60s and early 70s really shaped my interest in civil rights, but also my interest in law.

Karlan, delivering closing remarks in 2006 at theannual meeting oftheliberal American Constitution Society, called herself one ofthe snarky, bisexual, Jewish women who wantthe freedom to say what we think, read what we want and love who we do,calling on listeners to seize backthe high ground on patriotism and on love of our country from the rich, pampered, prodigal, sanctimonious, incurious, white, straight sons ofthe powerful.

Feldman, who in 2015 launched Harvards Julis-Rabinowitz Program in Jewish and Israeli Law, also helped draftthe Iraqi constitution; he is gripped by how and whether religious and civil law can coexist.

Jewish law and Israeli law are distinct and different,Feldman was quoted as saying by Tablet atthe time ofthelaunch oftheHarvard program, yet they also interact and make claims on each other.

In Other News

Georgia on my mind:Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a conservative narrowly elected a year ago with a boost from Trump, this week named businesswoman Kelly Loeffler to filltheSenate seat vacated by Johnny Isakson, who is ill.Thetwist is that Trump wanted Kemp to name Doug Collins,theranking member ofthe Judiciary Committee who ledthecharge Wednesday againsttheimpeachment and now Trump and Kemp are onthe outs. Trump is losing his luster in the South (gubernatorial candidates he backed were defeated in Kentucky and Louisiana and won narrowly in Mississippi) and women in Atlantas suburbs, emboldened since Trumps election, are thehinge on whether Georgia turns blue next year. Kemp does not want to further alienate them.

A lot of those women are Jewish. I spoke to two who head up asalon of 1,500 Jewish women aimed at flippingthestatefor Democrats, and also toAtlanta-area Jews who are grappling with how to rebuild a moribund alliance with African-Americansas a means to topple Republicans.Two Jewish candidates feature in two separate Senate races next year, and I met with both.

Two states and only two states:Earlier this year, Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif, introduced a resolution backed by J Street,theliberal Middle East policy group, that wouldrecommit Congress to a two-state outcome totheIsraeli-Palestinian conflict. Theidea was to keeptheoutcome alive while boththeTrump and Netanyahu governments had retreated from it.Theresolution likely comes to a vote before this week ends, and it has had a rocky road.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., themajority leader, endeavored to sign on Republicans totheresolution. They agreed, iftheword only was removed fromthe phrase onlytheoutcome of a two-state solution that enhances stability and security for Israel, Palestinians, and their neighbors can both ensurethestate of Israels survival as a Jewish and democratic state and fulfillthelegitimate aspirations ofthePalestinian people for a state of their own. J Street forcefully objected andthe Republicans balked.The resolution will pass with only, but a look atthesponsor list features only Democrats it wont accrue many, if any, Republicans.

Bipartisanship is becoming harder: AIPAC has been asking its members for weeks to get senators to sponsor legislation that would extend sanctions to entities dealing with already sanctioned Palestinian groups. So far, it has 20 sponsors for the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act of 2019, but until this week there was just one Democrat, Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who initiated thebill with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Ive heard another two Democrats have just signed on.

Clemmons making Clemmonade:Alan Clemmons istheRepublican South Carolina state legislator you may never have heard of who is shaking up U.S. Israel policy. His2015 bill penalizing Israel boycotters has become a template for other state bills doingthesame thing. He ledthepush in 2016 fortheGOP to removethetwo-state outcome commitment from its platform. Clemmons now chairs ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that circulates templates for state legislation themodel Clemmons pursued after passing his 2015 bill targetingthe movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. That puts him in a position of enormous influence in theconservative world. ALEC had its annual get-together this week in Scottsdale, Arizona. ALEC is a wellspring of learning of, by and for legislators, he said in a release.

Worth a Look

Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice Jay Sekulow hosts the GMA Honors Celebration and Hall of Fame Induction at the Allen Arena at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee on April 29, 2014. (Rick Diamond/Getty Images for GMA)

Elizabeth Williamson atTheNew York Times profiles Jay Sekulow,the un-Giuliani:theTrump lawyer not currently mired in scandal and his own legal difficulties. He is alsothe general counsel for Jews for Jesus. Politico reported this week that Sekulows son, Jordan, also a lawyer on Trumps team, gleefully anticipated damagingthe scholars that House Democrats invited to impeachment. I cant wait to find out what crazy stuff the law professors have written, Jordan said on his dads radio show. I bet anti-Israel, borderline anti-Semitic. Maybe anti-American? That was before we learned all three were Jewish.

Tweet So Sweet

Seforim Chatter, an account dedicated to Jewish exegetical texts,uncovers a book on how to properly consume Hanukkah doughnuts.

Stay In Touch

Share your thoughts on The Tell, or suggest a topic for us. Connect with Ron Kampeas on Twitter at@kampeasor email him atthetell@jta.org.

The Tell is a weekly roundup of the latest Jewish political news from Ron Kampeas, the Jewish Telegraphic Agencys Washington bureau chief.Sign up hereto receive The Tell in your inbox on Thursday evenings.

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The Tell: Three of the impeachment witness lawyers were Jewish, and it matters - JTA News

Editors note: Our friend Danna Young is a scholar of, among other things, the intersection of entertainment and information particularly humors use within the political landscape and the ways in which its messages reach and affect audiences.

She has a terrific new book out this week from Oxford University Press: Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States. In this piece, she describes how conservative and liberal media differ not only in content, but also in form in ways that exacerbate polarization.

1996 was a banner year for Americas polarized media ecosystem.

In October, a new 24-hour news channel was introduced to American audiences. I figure there are 18 shows for freaks, the former Republican strategist and Rush Limbaugh producer Roger Ailes told the Associated Press in 1995. If theres one network for normal people itll balance out. As CEO of the new Fox News Channel, working alongside founder Rupert Murdoch, Ailes would have his chance to create that network for normal people, packed with analysis and opinion programming, with a dash of news for good measure. Among those analysis and opinion shows was The OReilly Report (later rebranded as The OReilly Factor), a conservative opinion talk show hosted by former Inside Edition entertainment talk show host Bill OReilly.

From its inception, The Factor defined the conservative television talk genre. It also exemplified a genre that Tufts Universitys Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobieraj refer to as outrage.

But what some people may have missed is that just three months earlier, in July 1996, another non-traditional form of news-ish programming launched also as a response to mainstream media. It was a news parody and satire program called The Daily Show, on Comedy Central. Created by Lizz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg, The Daily Show featured headlines from the days pop culture news and introduced fictional news correspondents in pretend field segments.

Winstead and Smithberg set out to create a parody program that commented, not just on the politics of the day, but also on the emerging cable news landscape that produced politics as entertainment. In an interview with The Cut, Winstead recalled sitting in a bar, watching Gulf War coverage on CNN: We were all watching the Gulf War unfold and it felt like we were watching a made-for-TV show about the war. It changed my comedy I started writing about how we are served by the media. Their framing from the start: to do a news satire where the genre itself was a character in the show.

The twin births of The Daily Show and The OReilly Factor in 1996 were not a coincidence. Both programs were the result of changes in the economic and regulatory underpinnings of the media industry and the development of new cable and digital technologies. Both presented politically relevant information that offered an alternative (in form and function) to mainstream news. Both were reactions to a news environment being transformed by pressures stemming from media deregulation throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Both were positioned as reactions to problematic aspects of mainstream journalism. Both tapped into an increasingly polarized political electorate. And both reflected the economics of media fragmentation that replaced large, heterogeneous, mass audiences with small, homogenous, niche audiences homogeneous in demographic, psychographic, and even political characteristics.

When scholars and journalists discuss conservative outlets like Fox News, they typically position the cable network MSNBC as its closest functional equivalent on the left. While its fair to say that the MSNBC of 2019 is a liberal-leaning cable news outlet that features liberal political analysis programming, this iteration of the network is relatively recent. When MSNBC was introduced in 1996, the network featured talk shows and news analysis shows from across the political spectrum. In fact, several conservative political talk personalities (including Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter) started their cable news careers at MSNBC. It wasnt until the mid-2000s that the network, failing in the ratings war, pivoted to the left and positioned itself as a liberal alternative to Fox.

But from the moment The Daily Show launched during that fateful summer of 1996, it did reflect an overwhelming liberal ideology. Im not referring to its targets or political point of view Im referring to the ideological leaning of the packaging and aesthetics of satire: packaging and aesthetics that run counter to those of conservative opinion talk.

Thats right: What if satire actually has a liberal bias, not due to its targets and arguments, but due to its playful aesthetic, layered and ironic rhetorical structures, and rampant self-deprecation? And what if political talk actually has a conservative bias, not due to its targets and arguments, but due to its constant threat-monitoring, didactic rhetorical structures, and moral seriousness?

Yes, the content, effects, and aesthetics of liberal satire and conservative opinion talk are completely different. So it can seem counterintuitive to conceptualize satire as any kind of liberal equivalent to conservative opinion talk. But we know that the two genres serve parallel functions for their audiences: highlighting important issues and events, setting their audiences agendas, framing the terms of debate, informing them on ideologically resonant issues, and even mobilizing them. And we know that the audiences of both liberal satire and conservative outrage show low trust in news, low trust in institutions, and enormous political efficacy (meaning confidence that they are equipped to participate politically). And both showed up in Americas living rooms within three months of each other in 1996 each framed as a response to problematic aspects of television news.

In my book Irony and Outrage, I argue that the modern birth of these genres can be traced to the same set of political and technological changes in the political and news ecosystem in the 1980s and 1990s. I also argue that the distinct look and feel of these genres can be traced to underlying differences in the psychological profiles of people on the left and the right differences that shape how we orient to the worlds around us and the kinds of content we are most likely to create and consume.

Decades of research from political psychology points to important psychological and physiological differences between liberals and conservatives that hinge on how we monitor our environments for and engage with threat. Conservatives, who are more prone to threat monitoring, have a lower tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity a trait that correlates with various lifestyle, occupational, and even artistic preferences. Liberals, who are less cognizant of threats in their environments, are less likely than conservatives to rely on emotional shortcuts or heuristics, instead thinking more carefully and evaluating information as it comes in.

Conservatives (especially social and cultural conservatives) tend to value efficiency and clarity. They prefer order, boundaries, and instinct. I find that that these inclinations shape their political information preferences preferences for didactic, morally serious, threat-oriented content that leaves very little doubt about what viewers should be worried about and who is to blame. Content like we find on Hannity or The Ingraham Angle.

Liberals, on the other hand, are more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. With a lower threat salience, they are more open to play and experimentation. These inclinations shape their political information preferences for layered, ironic, complex arguments that often never really say exactly what they mean. Content like we find on The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

While these genres have shared roots and may even serve parallel purposes for their viewers, the symbiotic relationship between each sides preferred aesthetic and the psychology of their viewers renders their impact quite asymmetrical.

The underlying logic and aesthetic of conservative outrage make it an ideal mechanism for tactical, goal-driven political mobilization. With its use of emotional language and focus on threats, it constitutes what philosopher Jacques Ellul refers to as agitation propaganda. Writing in 1962, Ellul described hate as the most profitable resource of agitation propaganda:

It is extremely easy to launch a revolutionary movement based on hatred of a particular enemy. Hatred is probably the most spontaneous and common sentiment; it consists of attributing ones misfortunes and sins to another

Importantly, it is not only the content of conservative outrage that renders it powerful. Rather, its the symbiosis between the threat-oriented content and the unique psychology of the conservative audience that facilitates its political impact. These conservative audience members, psychologically oriented towards protection and the maintenance of a stable society, are poised to respond to the people, groups, and institutions that have been identified as threats. The fact that these are the very characteristics of outrage content that have been harnessed by the conservative wing of the Republican Party should not come as a surprise.

In contrast, satire is a genre that remains in a state of play, downplays its own moral certainty and issues judgments through implication rather than proclamation. As a result, liberal political elites ability to harness satire and use it to their own ends is compromised. While the symbiosis between outrage and conservatism lends itself to strategic persuasion and mobilization, the symbiosis between the aesthetic of irony and the underlying psychology of liberalism render satire fruitful as a forum for exploration and rumination, but not for mobilization.

Consider one of the most critically acclaimed and influential pieces of satire of the past decade: Colberts 2011 creation of an actual super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

Colberts coverage of super PACs and Citizens United influenced public opinion and knowledge of the topic. But, according to Colbert, he didnt create his super PAC with political or persuasive intentions at all. He didnt push the limits of campaign finance in an effort to fuel activism on the issue of campaign finance reform. Rather, the whole thing came about by accident.

After having mentioned a fictional super PAC at the end of a political parody on The Colbert Report, Comedy Central expressed resistance to the idea of an actual Colbert super PAC. Are you really going to get a PAC? a network representative asked Colbert. Because if you actually get a PAC, that could be trouble. To which Colbert replied: Well, then, Im definitely doing to do it.

And so began the largely organic and experimental process of launching and raising funds for an actual super PAC and learning about the (nearly nonexistent) limits of campaign financing. As Colbert explained: [At] every stage of it, I didnt know what was going to happen next. It was just an act of discovery. It was purely improvisational. And, you know, people would say, What is your plan? My plan is to see what I can and cannot do with it.

When The Daily Show and Fox News both appeared in 1996, it would have seemed ridiculous to suggest they had much in common. But I say that they do, especially in terms of the technological, political, journalistic, and regulatory changes that gave rise to both. Ironic satire and political outrage programming look and feel different because of the unique values, needs, and aesthetic preferences of the kinds of people who create and consume each one. But the potential for these two genres to be used strategically towards partisan mobilization is absolutely not the same.

If outrage is a well-trained attack dog that operates on command, satire is a raccoon hard to domesticate and capable of turning on anyone at any time.

Does satire have a liberal bias? Sure. Satire has a liberal psychological bias. But the only person who can successfully harness the power of satire is the satirist. Not political strategists. Not a political party. Not a presidential candidate. Outrage is the tool of conservative elites. But ironic satire is the tool of the liberal satirist alone.

Continued here:
Why liberal satire and conservative outrage are both responses to mainstream media but with very different powers - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard