#1603 Satire and the American Experience

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Guest host David Horton of Radford University and Clay Jenkinson discuss the origins and varieties of satire. With its roots in the ancient world and particularly Rome, satire exists in two broad categories: genial, bemused satire, identified with the Roman poet Horace; and biting, severe, take-no-prisoners satire best represented by another Roman poet Juvenal. The discussion explores satire in American history; Thomas Jefferson’s humorlessness and his immunity to satire; classical American satirists such as Mark Twain and Will Rogers; and satire of the modern age with Johnny Carson, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, and Garrison Keillor. David and Clay reflect on the silo effect and media echo chambers of our time, which have made it nearly impossible for all to meet in some form of the public square to laugh at human foibles and find ways to tolerate each other.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, my friends, I'm in Cooperstown, New York.
0:05.0	I drove from Middlebury, Vermont this morning,
0:10.0	on blue highways, really narrow back roads.
0:15.0	I've been to Albany, I've been to Mount Marcy in New York.
0:20.0	I've been to New York City, of course. I've been to New York City of course. I've been to Buffalo. I've been to Niagara Falls,
0:27.0	but I've never really spent time in Upstate New York in sort of the Adirondacks and the cat skills and so on.
0:35.0	And it's amazing how beautiful the state of New York is.
0:39.0	And we're drawn to the great city.
0:41.0	It's one of the greatest cities in the world. it might be the greatest city in the world in some respects.
0:46.0	But there's so much New York that's quite like Ohio or quite like Vermont or quite like
0:54.0	Indiana and beautiful at this time of you're in the rivers
0:59.0	it's just an astonishing place
1:02.0	and I'm in a campground now I'm really preferring the family
1:06.6	campgrounds the family-run campgrounds they're a little bit like Camp Run amok if you remember that old television series.
1:17.0	They're not as polished. They're more casual.
1:22.0	It's a different clientele to a certain degree. They're often
1:30.3	said in very beautiful places. I'm in this one now near Cooperstown that is just
1:35.3	fabulous. And they're friendly. And you know the facilities aren't quite what they are at the
1:42.0	majors, but there's less craziness and less of kind of the
1:45.9	rigidity of the corporate homogeneity of American life.
1:52.2	Every Starbucks is the same, every Pizza Hut is the same, every
1:56.4	Applebee's is the same, every Costco is the same, every Walmart is the same.
	...

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