'16 election: UD political satire guru talks late night

In the opening moments of last month's PBS "Frontline" documentary profiling Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump adviser Roger Stone pointed to April 30, 2011, as the night Trump decided once and for all he would run for president.

It was the evening that President Obama mocked a stone-faced Trump from behind the presidential podium at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

"I think that is the night that he resolves to run," Stone said. "I think that he is kind of motivated by it. 'Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all.'"

While Obama's jokes at the expense of Trump are remembered most, the night's performer, Seth Meyers, followed Obama's stand-up routine with a barrage of his own Trump jokes.

About 10 punchlines came in rapid fire.

"Donald Trump has been saying he will run for President as a Republican, which is surprising since I just assumed he was running as a joke," Meyers started. "Donald Trump often appears on Fox, which is ironic because a fox often appears on Donald Trump's head."

A little later, one of the hardest hits came midway through Meyers' Trump takedown: "Donald Trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks, but unless the Blacks are a family of white people, I bet he is mistaken."

If Trump did or did not decide that night that he would stick it to the political establishment, there's little doubt that political humor and satire played some role, whether it came from the president's mouth or the then-"Weekend Update" anchor from "Saturday Night Live."

Since the early 2000s when Jon Stewart transformed "The Daily Show" into hard-hitting political satire, the genre has grown to dominate the late night scene — mostly due to former "Daily Show" correspondents who now have their own politics-heavy shows, such as Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Samantha Bee.

"All of these shows have politics front and center. They are all political satire first and foremost," says Dannagal Young, an expert who has studied and taught about the role and effect of late night comedy in politics. "And that's something that's different. Until Stewart took over the 'Daily Show,' the kind of political humor we saw were surface level, mainstream jokes. This is a whole new sub-genre."

With Election '16 finally winding down much to the approval of a dispirited American public, we turn to Young, associate professor of communication at the University of Delaware and co-author of 2013's "Breaking Boundaries in Political Entertainment Studies" (USC Annenberg Press, $2.99 digital).

Not only has Young examined the impact of politically charged comedy shows from the past 15 years, but she also has been an improvisational comedian with Philadelphia-based ComedySportz for nearly two decades.

As someone who studies political satire and humor, what has 2016 been like for Young?

"In one word: exhausting," concedes Young, who has taught at UD for 10 years, including classes on mass communication, culture, politics and entertainment. "When you watch most of these late night hosts, you get the sense that they are almost at the end of their rope in terms of what there is to make fun of."

But that doesn't mean they aren't going all out to try.

Shows like "The Daily Show," "Late Night" and "The Late Show" have all aired live post-debate episodes to capitalize on the wild presidential race and Seth Meyers brought "Late Night" to Washington, D.C., for a week of shows earlier this month. Colbert upped the ante recently, announcing that "The Late Show" will air live and uncensored on election night on Showtime, a sister network of CBS.

Ahead of his show at The Playhouse on Rodney Square earlier this year, "The Daily Show" correspondent Lewis Black aired his own frustrations over political humor in '16, focusing mostly on Trump's over-the-top antics.

"I don't really need to make a lot of jokes about Donald Trump," he told The News Journal. "I don't know how you satirize what is already satiric?... All you really have to do is go on stage and say, 'Did you see what happened today?' and you'll get a laugh."

Unsurprisingly, the outspoken Trump has been at the heart of most of the late-night jabs and controversies this year. He's a shiny new toy for political humorists compared with Clinton, the comedy equivalent of microwaved leftover meatloaf after being a political and comedic punching bag for decades.

We asked Young to talk about some of late night's most political programs and the election season's biggest late night moments, starting with Trump's controversial appearance on "The Tonight Show" last month.

NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon"

Unlike Colbert and others, Fallon's political humor doesn't have a hard edge, although his Trump impression was arguably the best until Alec Baldwin put on orange make-up and a red tie for "Saturday Night Live."

Fallon treated Trump just like any other guest, leaning on playfulness and even tousling the Republican nominee's famed 'do. The backlash among some started immediately with headlines like "Jimmy Fallon’s Trump Interview Was the Opposite of Inoffensive" (New York magazine), "Viewers express outrage over Fallon’s Trump interview" (Associated Press) and "Jimmy Fallon Mussing Donald Trump's Hair Is the Point of No Return" (Slate).

And while some hosts like Colbert defended Fallon, others like Bee and retired elder statesman David Letterman took him to task. "If I had a show, I would have gone right after him," Letterman told The News York Times.

Young says she was surprised by the reaction, even though many hosts have uniformly lined up against Trump.

"They are not even trying to make it seem as though they are even-handed anymore. They are just not," she says. "They are consistently being critical of core elements of his campaign and we've never seen anything like that. It's so fascinating because Fallon did what most late night hosts have done for decades, but journalists, progressives and everyone in the comedy/entertainment circuit were ready to break up with him.

"As it happened, I thought, 'No one else is doing this and there's a reason why they're not. No one wants to be the one to be singled out as the comedian who made Donald Trump palatable. No one wants to be that guy or girl. I feel a little bad because I do feel it's fair for him to say, 'This is what I do and have always done. I'm not going to have a different standard because this man is perceived as a racist, xenophobe or whatever.'"

NBC's "Saturday Night Live"

Protesters were chanting outside Rockefeller Center when Trump hosted "Saturday Night Live" 11 months ago. Even then, there was a debate about how to handle Trump, who had especially riled Latino-Americans with his immigration proposals.

What a difference a year makes.

The sketch show returned earlier this month and America was introduced to a darker Trump, played by Baldwin. (In his first appearance, he referred to debate moderator Lester Holt as a "jazzman" and "[John] Coltrane," signaling that they days of playing with Trump were over.)

But Young thinks the criticism over the "Saturday Night Live" handling of Trump is overblown, pointing to one the show's most famous political impressions, Tina Fey as Sarah Palin.

"It's overstated to say 'Saturday Night Live' has been home to the most hard-hitting, scathing political satire over the years. With Fey's Palin, we look back and think, 'Oh, what critical satire,' but a lot of it was her delivering the words that Palin herself said," Young says.

Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah"

Stepping into Jon Stewart's shoes after he revolutionized late night was never going to be easy. And it certainly hasn't been for Trevor Noah, the former "Daily Show" correspondent who has presided over a prolonged grieving period for Stewart die-hards.

While Noah has grown more comfortable as host with the show increasingly hitting its mark, "The Daily Show" is a shell of the program that not only spawned numerous imitators, but also Young's career in the field of studying political humor.

"I think it's hard for him because this election is such an intimate experience in regards to America's relationship with race and Trevor Noah is from South Africa," she says. "He has said that his understanding of race is so different than an American understanding of race and race relations. I think it's a real challenge for him."

HBO's "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" 

While "The Daily Show" has sputtered since losing Stewart, Oliver has bloomed on his weekly show, now in its third season.

While Oliver steadfastly asserts that his program is a comedy show – not investigative journalism – his show does dive deep into a single subject for the second half of each show. And the segments are thoroughly researched by a staff that includes some with journalism backgrounds, blurring the line between entertainment and news even more than Stewart himself ever did.

When Oliver focuses on a subject, that subject suddenly gets plenty of attention.

"He pushes issues that most of the public never thought about right to the top of their agenda," Young says. "How much attention were people paying to net neutrality? Is that a sexy, big issue? He has certainly done something important with that show."

Young singles out "Last Week Tonight," "Late Night with Seth Meyers" and "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" as late night's top three shows when it comes to election coverage this year.

NBC's "Late Night with Seth Meyers"

If Meyers' 12:30 a.m. competition "The Late Late Show with James Corden" is best known for carpool karaoke, "Late Night" is now best known for its nightly Trump take-downs.

Meyers scrapped his opening monologue and now begins each show at his desk, "Weekend Upstate"-style. Trump is not only the target at the top of nearly every show, but an in-depth segment called "A Closer Look" also usually delves deeper into dissecting Trump's most recent news-making statements.

The result has been winning ratings and critical acclaim, eliciting stories like this one in The Washington Post earlier this month, headlined, "Seth Meyers needed to find his place in late night. Then Donald Trump ran for president."

Young agrees: "Comics often have some real world events or phenomenon that helps crystallize what they're here for, like for Jon Stewart there's 9/11 and the war in Iraq. For Seth Meyers, it was Donald Trump. He has found his voice."

TBS' "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"

With the United States on the verge of possibly electing its first female president, plenty of eyes have been on Bee, the lone female voice in late night television.

Much like Meyers, Trump has given Bee's "Full Frontal" a shot in the arm, with Bee mixing humor with pure disgust on a weekly basis.

And Bee's strength doesn't only lie within the boob tube.

When her network tweeted a short video comparing Clinton to a hyena, Bee shot back, "Delete your account." Soon after, TBS released a statement of apology: "This post was obviously a poor attempt at humor and has been taken down. Moving forward we'll leave political satire to professionals like Samantha Bee.”

"She is fierce and what she is doing is very exciting, especially if you're a female in comedy," Young says. "I've been surprised at how far they have let her go and I think the show is excellent because of that freedom."

Comedy Central's "The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore"

Comedy Central's replacement for "The Colbert Report" was canceled in August after less than two years on the air -- and three months before the election.

Wilmore, a former "Daily Show" correspondent, wasn't quite done with his reporting about "the unblackening" of The White House, a move lamented by Young.

"I was very sad to see him go. I think his show offered something really important," she says, admitting that Wilmore's ratings weren't very good. "I was disappointed they didn't let that show continue to evolve. It takes a long time for these shows to discover their identity.

"If you watch Jon Stewart's first year, it's good, but he wasn't who he became. It took a while to become that person."

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).