Book Review: The Daily Show and Rhetoric: Arguments, Issues, and Strategies, edited by Trisha Goodnow

Abstract

The Daily Show and Rhetoric: Arguments, Issues, and Strategies. Trisha Goodnow, ed. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011. 259 pp. $80 hbk. $32.95 pbk.If you weren't already burning through enough of your time watching The Daily Show on Hulu between meetings, Trischa Goodnow's edited volume The Daily Show and Rhetoric promises to make sure that you are getting your necessary dosage of Jon Stewart's comedic commentary. The volume positions Stewart as a master rhetorician, and contains thirteen essays on various rhetorical aspects of The Daily Show that provide a unique and valuable discussion of an especially complex, and deeply rhetorical, media text.Goodnow, an associate professor in the Department of Speech Communication at Oregon State University, organizes the essays in four sections. The first three chapters deal primarily with a description of The Daily Show as a rhetorical phenomenon exploring host Jon Stewart's ethos, the problem of the real versus fake news labels, and the program's thoroughly intertextual construction. The second section of the book addresses the process of argument as performed by Stewart and company. The four chapters make a case for the inherently argumentative nature of satire, the capacity of political humor to model agonistic argument, the role of self-parody in carnivalesque purification, and Stewart's use of a dialectical vernacular to encourage Downloaded from responsibility in the public sphere. The third section of the book concerns itself with the rhetorical strategies employed on the show including the use of an overtly comic frame, the use of inter- and intra-textual parody, and a visual aesthetic that mirrors traditional news coverage with a healthy dose of composite imagery. The fourth, and final, section explicates three key topics and issues at which Stewart and his team of comedic correspondents regularly take aim: LGBTQ concerns, religion, and race. While each of these essays is strong in its own right, these final chapters are merely teasers for what could be an entire book on the various issues that The Daily Show and other kinds of political satire engage with on a regular basis.The most notable strength of this book is its examination of a great variety of the show's components using a vast array of the rhetorical tools available in the critic's tool chest. This is due partly to the broad conception of rhetoric, evidenced by the juxtaposition of the classical approach taken by Jonathan Barbur and Trischa Goodnow in the first chapter and the Post-Modern attitude adopted by Aaron Hess later in the book. This inclusive conception of rhetoric opens spaces for inventive critiques that push and pull rhetoric into places where it may not have otherwise been expected or welcome. In fact, some of the approaches towards rhetorical theory and criticism fall well outside of my own preferences, but that is precisely where their contributions to both the fields of media studies and rhetorical studies can be found. For example, Penina Wiesman's discussion of framing takes a detour into what might be more traditionally classified as media studies, drawing more on Robert Entman's understanding of framing than the more rhetorical Burkean version-which is utilized quite effectively in C. …