9 30 tomorrow so those watch tragic, good morning. As with past virtual lectures there will be time of the talk for our guest to answer any questions you might have. Feel free to ask a question by clicking on the q a icon and split them there 0 or vote for other commit submitted questions. Id like to introduce thomas bowman, class of 2013 who we introduce our spending are foe the evening. Thank you, jeremy. Steven farnsworth is professor of International Affairs and director of the center for leadership and media study at the university of Mary Washington. The coauthor or author of send books and a 201 recipient of the virginia outstanding faculty award from the state council of Higher Education for virginia. In addition, dr. Farnsworth has won three campuswide Teaching Award at Mary Washington. The alum anytime Association Outstanding young factually member bar. The married Teaching Award and the richard poll mary outstanding award. Dr. Farnsworth, american studies at umw has caught touters plate malkin, journalism and political education at georgetown university, George Mason University and methodist college. Now, dr. Farnsworth and i connected while i was at the university of Mary Washington, and its difficult to make personal connections in the covid era but one person that students should absolutely go out of their way to get to know is dr. Farnsworth. I was educated and came out in 2013 into a very tough job market and dr. Farnsworth reached out and placed me in an internship where he thought i would excel. Those people ran, barack obama, Hillary Clinton and joe bidens campaigned at one point or another. And i would not be where i am today in virginia if we had not built this personal connection. And that is something of value that this college can deliver in any format, digital or in person. And so it is now my honor to present tonights desk as he presents late night humor and the american presidency. Dr. Fortunateworth, the floor is yours, welcome to mary talks. Thank you so much, thomas. Its great to see you and roo mind how much success you have had and what you have made at your education. Im going to talk now about my book for a bit and then well have an opportunity to have a conversation about issues i would be glad to answer in response to the questions you offer. But first i want to offer up a few shoutouts. First to my coauthor, at george mason who worked with me on self of my books on media and politics. I also want to have a shoutout to some of my current and former students who have helped as Research Assistants on this project. It is very difficult to imagine the volume of political humor we have looked at over the years and it is requires a great del of help from students and so my thanks to jeremy engle, noah gardner and kate seltzer of mary wolk and those who worked with dr. Electricitier, and all these people were a wonderful help to this project and one of the things that we can too at Mary Washington is offer opportunities for students to work with professors on their research, and fortunately for me my current topic of political humor does have a certain level of interest for the students and hopefully for you folks here tonight. I want to give you a general sense but political humor. Im going to talk mostly tonight about recent late night come shows and the way in which theyve covered recent president s. Its important to know that political humor is something that has existed across the time of human existence. In a way i think humor offers up an opportunity to cope with life challenges, an opportunity perhaps for those people who dont have power to bring town a peg or two the people who do. And if we look across Human Experience in different cultures, western and nonwestern, we see that political humor has been one of the ways that ordinary people have coped with bad times and bad leaders and with centralization of power that often occurs in political systems. And so we look at the greenings the romans, the middle ages, youll see over and over dean there is political humor that is part of the way they cope. Also true that even in tote tow tall tear yap societies theres a lot of totalitarian seats thats theres a lot of political humor. The cia compiled a series of jokes that russians would tell to friends but stalin. So even in the worst, darkest days days days of a totalitarian rule, humor is still going on. In the United States, of course, we have had a lot of political humor from the very start of our days as an independent republic. Before independence, we were even making jokes about the crown and then after independence, we started making jokes about our political figures. And that occurs of course in ways dependent on the technology of the time. We had mark twain, 100 plus year ago, making joke put the political figure of his day. He was famous for saying that congress is americas criminal class. And we had will rogers 100 years ago, and then of course, Foreigners International comic have made fun of us as well so america is an ample supply of humor and were particularly attuned to political humor in the United States because of our political culture. Remember, we are at our core a political system that was built by revolutionary figures, people who were very concern but centralized authority and centralized power, and our revolution, which was a revolution against centralized power, and our political system itself, were developed in ways to make sure that nobody became too elevated, became to high. We separate church and state so that the political figures are not religious figures, theyre secular figures and they have all those human flaws. We also, though, created an environment where our political power is divided, where individual people, be they members of congress, part of the court system, part of the executive branch, only have so much control over political outcomes and so they have to work together. And we want to build a system as well in our founding that the people rule to the mask extent possible, and the maximum extent possible and we have elections to keep political figures responsible. Given how interested we are in limited power and government it should come as no surprise that we are focused intensely on bringing those political elites down to size. Nobody is more of a political elite than a president in our political system. Theres an old saying that good comedy punches up, and bad comedy punches down and theres so much attention to american president in american political humor. Aristotle, who wrote but political humor, more than 2,000 years ago, said that humor makes everyone worse than average when theyre the subject of political comedy and that makes sense i think from the way in which we cope with difficult environments. And to give you an example of how this works, i want to draw your attention back to 9 11, when the terrorist attacks of 2001 took place, the comedy shows all went off the air for a while and one of the first ones back was saturday night live, based in new york and really is a leading new york City Cultural institution but its a national Cultural Institution as well on nbc. Good the wanted to create a comedy environment where we can cope with tragedy bus theres also a saying that good comedy is tragedy plus time and part of our healing was starting to laugh again, and Loren Michaels of saturday night live asks the mayor of new york city, rudy giuliani, one of the heros of that moment of 9 11, can we be funny again . And giuliani offers up, perhaps the first joke of the post 9 11 environment and says, why start now . And that moment opens up the possibility for even those kinds of topics can something as horrific as 9 11 to be the subject of political humor, and so as we look at this process, we really do see that were talk about political humor that is designed to cope with tragedy, its tee signed to designed to offer up in kind of masked aggression with respect to political leadert or people who think theyre better than we and are that creates a significant way to bring political figures down to size because, remember, in america that is one of the things that we do. We dont like politics who think too much of themselves. I have a few slide is want to show you as part of this conversation to give you a sense how we built this Research Project and what we found. Im going to share the screen and give you an opportunity to look at the research we have done. One of the things that is important for us to discuss with yall is the sense the way we built this Research Project, and this is a collaboration between the center of media and Public Affairs at George Mason University and the center nor leeway and media studies at Mary Washington and we looked at all the late night night political jokes during the first year of the Trump Presidency and looked at the comedy during the campaign and we used the same shows. But what we did here was basically focus on the network shows, jimmy kimmel live, late night with Stephen Colbert and the coach show with jimmy fallon and then the daily show with trevor noah. We looked at all their jokes during that time and tried to make this as scientific a study as possible. We looked at the target, whether it was policy conversation, whether the jokes related to personal matters or political matters, and so on. But those shows i think only tell us part of the story of political humor in contemporary america and so we also engaged in a Qualitative Analysis of programs that run once a week. Saturday night live, full frontal with samantha bee and last week tonight with john oliver. And so as you look at this content, the content of the late night comedies were look for those who know these shows well, were looking at this in the cop text of the first ten minutes of the program. These programs have particular live with respect to the traditional format of the late show and the tonight show, those shows do have a lot of time spent talking with political figures, talking with guests and were looking at really is a monologue at the front but its a huge amount of political humor. Were looking at over 6,000 political jokes during the comedy programs leading during the first year of the Trump Presidency. And we looked at over 2300 jokes during the Campaign Season of 2016, which well also talk about as we make our way through the argument. Now, i think what is important to notice above all is the extent to which donald trump has become the center of political humor in america. If you look at this slide i have up now which look ted leading targets of late night how how manyyear you can humor you can see how much is connected to donald trump. The overwhelming number of jokes directed at donald trump. The stories that looked at the Trump Administration more generally, also rate very high as do some of the other people in the trump family or the trump orbit. Sean spicer was the first press secretary for President Trump. He got into troublealmost immediately when the talked but the crowd size being bigger for trumps inauguration over the obama inaguration, although the pictures show the inauguration for obama was much bigger. And then roy moore a candidate for the senate in alabama and about to in trouble with his interest in connecting with young women, sometimes women under the age of 18 during his year as a prosecutor. Donald trump jr. , a member of the trump family, Jeff Sessions was trumps first attorney general, first lady melania trump, Vice President mike pence. Over and over gone the humor is very much directed at members of the Trump Administration or the trump orbit. Anthony scaramucci was the Communications Director for President Trump but only lasts of few weeks and rounded up the top of the list here. Hillary clinton is the first democrat in the conversation in terms of she volume of political humor and then a number of other folks connected to the Trump Administration and then Vladimir Putin, barack obama, and james comey, the fbi director at the start of trumps presidency becomes a major source. As you look at these voices of political humor, you see a significant orientation towards the Trump Presidency and towards trump personally. Now, part of this of course is the nature of news. If you think but what is in the news and what you are going to be talk about in late night comedy its very presidency focus. In my other research including my become on the mediated presidency, we looked at the newest content and found the conversation about washington is almost entirely presidency focused. If you look at the evening news or the leading news sites online or offline, the conversation focuses much more on the president and what the president is doing than what is happening in congress or any other place in washington. And that creates an environment that i think sets the stage for a president ial wherely focused conversation but humanyear. And its also important to recognize that humor has to have a little familiarity with the subject and that is one of the key impacts that political humor does have. It can be a vehicle for at least some measure of political learning. A joke about republicans senator Mitch Mcconnell, the majority leader in the senate, is only funny if you know who Mitch Mcconnell is, and you have in sense of what he looks like or the way he behaves because so much of this humor requires a certain level of knowledge but the figure. A joke but put pit is not funny if you dont have a sense of who Vladimir Putin is. Now, i want to talk about comparisons here. In the book i go into the differences among the individual late night shows and how hey approach things a bit differently. The one main distinction i would draw nat going to give you a slide with a lot of data but the one main distinction i draw is that jimmy fallon is a bit less critical. You thing of Stephen Colbert much more critical than other late night comes and gemmy fallon in particular has gotten some some trouble with respect to the way he treated President Trump. You may recall pressured was a celebrity on nbc, the apprentice, and celebrity aplenties before he was a president ial candidate and did appear on the fallon show before he was president , and during that campaign appearance, it was little more than that jumpy fallon playfully rubbed trumps hair. The question was is trump residents hair real and this friendly bantering interview with jimmy fallon and donald trump really had an impact on his ratings. If you think about the folks who are watching late night comedy they ten to be younger and Younger Voters skew more democratic and there was a significant imenact rates. After that incident jimmy fallon lost out as a top rateed late night show to Stephen Colbert and struggled to catch up with kolbert ever since. Now, repp when you lock how president ial candidate donald trump is compared to previous president s you see a powerful difference here. If you response upon a tim when you thought it late night comedy you thought no president would if be the subject of more jokes than bill clinton. He was an aging legislate that areow who was particular lay target of late night comedy during the 1990s. The lewinski seasonal, bill clinton sometimes inconsistent statements relating to his vietnam or inconsistent behaviors in other areas lends itself to comedy. The more seriously you take yourself as a political figure, the riper a target you are for comedy, particularly as a president or president ial candidate, and so if you look at the number of jokes told by during the Campaign Season about president s and president ial candidates you see donald trump stands alone. In 201, 3100 jokes about donald trump the president that is far, far more than any other president. Eight years earlier Barack Obamas first year as president , 936 jokes about him. If you look at donald trump the candidate, 1800 jokes about him during the 2016 campaign, and thats more than three times the number of jokes told about Hillary Clinton the democratic nominee that year but also far more than previous candidates. John mccain, who ranked second in terms of president ial candidates in the humor directed at them, 1358 jokes during the Campaign Season of 2008. When you look at the dynamic here, you can see that the rankings increase generally with time and i think that has to do with larger issues about our political moment and our political environment. Theres a market for political humor and that market has been growing. Theres more and more interest in these comedy shows and more and more interest in the comedy shows in taking attacks or taking making light of political figures. It isnt just the shows that air at 11 30 because one of things youll notice in our modern environment is these things get shared, peer to peer if you look at youtube, look at instagram and facebook, these clips make their way throughout the universe of social media, and so the impact they have is even greater i would argue than was the case wh