White House Correspondents Research Articles

Laughing at Failure or Failing to Laugh: Humour as a Strategy for Dealing With Foreign Policy Failure?

The paper considers the role of humour in dealing with failure in foreign policy and brings insights together from the studies of policy failure, humour studies, customer service management and crisis communication. It investigates how research in customer service management and crisis communication points to the use of humour as an additional strategy for dealing with foreign policy failure. This research has provided valuable insights into the benefits of humour for dealing with minor service failure, reducing the level of damage done to the standing of the actor responsible for the failure. The paper transfers these insights into IR and investigates the benefits and drawbacks of self-deprecating humour by policy makers responsible for failure. To illustrate this, we consider the humour employed by US President George W. Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2004 when making fun of his administration’s inability to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. We argue that humour can be a tool to address policy failure only in front of a sympathetic audience when humour can be a means of addressing the cognitive tension between support for a policy and its empirical failure.

The Conversational Implicature Found while Trevor Noah Criticizes the Government in Stand-up Comedy Show

This research deals with conversational implicature and flouted maxim found in stand-up comedy. This descriptive qualitative research, analyzed 12 utterances of Trevor Noah from YouTube video entitled “Trevor Noah COMPLETE REMARKS at 2022 White House Correspondents’ Dinner (C-SPAN)” using Grice’s conversational implicature theory. The finding shows that from 12 utterances, every utterance can contain more than one type of flouted maxims, the details are as follows, 10 manner, 9 quality, 7 relevance, 6 maxims of quantity. The researcher also finds that, Noah applied Particularized Conversational Implicature more frequently than Generalized Conversational Implicature, with a ratio of 11:1. Noah has done this to make his satire is less offensive. This research also finds that flouted of maxims does not mean that a conversation has been failed, but that is intentionally done by the speaker to create an implicature effect in his utterance. As long as the speaker and the listener have the same knowledge about the context or background, the conversation will keep going well.

Satire as the Comic Public Sphere: Postmodern “Truthiness” and Civic Engagement

Satire as the Comic Public Sphere: Postmodern “Truthiness” and Civic Engagement

On Second Thought

On Second Thought

Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century United States

Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century United States

Mothers and Whores

ABSTRACT This article examines two public controversies that arose in quick succession in 2018 around the routines of two female comics: Michelle Wolf’s monologue at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and Samantha Bee’s segment on the policy of separating children from their immigrant parents at the border, which contained a crude insult about Ivanka Trump. Both incidents attracted attention and commentary far beyond the reaches of the performers’ usual audiences. In the wider conversation that myriad voices participated in, a much broader discursive struggle took place over ideals and norms. I argue that it was fundamentally a battle over conceptions of femininity and motherhood and, ultimately, over how to be a respectable woman in the public sphere. Not incidentally, defense of the jokes’ victims revolved around their status as “wives and mothers,” while disavowals of the joke tellers focused on the vulgarity of their use of profanity and sexual innuendo. Overall, these incidents ultimately drive home the way female performers have become hot spots in the “culture wars,” themselves sites of battle over ideals of gender, power, and public space.

The Editor’s Drawers

Readers:We’re very happy to release StAH 8.1. Although we didn’t plan it, the four articles that make up the primary content are all authored by women scholars who have a strong interest in the role of women in humor, as creators and objects of that humor. Kirsten Leng’s personally framed essay, “Comedy as a Practice of Care: Restorative Laugher and Reciprocal Empathy in the Pandemic,” examines how the tone of late-night comedians shifted, along with its relationship to its audience, during COVID times. Applying feminist theory, Leng shows how comedy can generate a sense of communal solace and expand our understanding of how care can be practiced. In her essay “Mother’s and Whores: Female Performers and Comedic Controversies,” Amber Day analyzes the pushback on Samantha Bee’s critique of Ivanka Trump’s public posture and Michelle Wolf’s joke about Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Day argues that the criticism of the comedians was a conservative reaction couched in terms of feminist solidarity, a contortion that misrepresented both performers’ ethical critiques of the women in the Trump administration as unfair attacks on their motherhood. Both controversies, Day reminds us, reveal the ways in which women performers are targets of the “culture wars.” Also focusing on political humor, Marissa Spada’s “Incongruent Bodies: The Gender Politics of SNL’s Hillary Clintons” looks closely at differences in the Clinton caricatures performed on SNL by Amy Poehler in 2008 and Kate McKinnon in 2016. Despite the near decade between them, Spada shows how both performances are framed by the persistent assumption that presidents are men and by the idea that a woman seeking that office is perceived as an outlier, a perception that stunts the candidate’s performance and shapes the performers’ comic portrayals. Lisa M. Beringer looks at African American sketch comedy as a form of “resistance TV” that challenges enduring stereotypes of race and gender. Liberated from traditional forms of sketch comedy structure and performance, Beringer argues, Chappelle’s Show, Key & Peele, and A Black Lady Sketch Show deploy satire both to expose the entrenched assumptions of racism and sexism and to “assert a claim for Black humanity in self-defined terms.” We trust that you’ll find this lineup of insightful interrogations as provocative as we have.While these articles are the core of our issue, you’ll also find in “On Second Thought” an interesting set of responses to articles that appeared in our last issue on humor and empire, as well as an author’s response to a previous “On Second Thought” critique. And we’re very happy to include another article in our occasional “Recovery Room” series. Daniel Burge’s examination of the Whig humor of George Prentice in the antebellum Louisville Journal, of which Prentice was the editor, makes a case for Prentice’s role in the political wrangles of the period and outlines notable rhetorical differences in Prentice’s style from that which usually characterizes the antebellum Southwest tradition. Prentice’s scurrilous attacks on editors of newspapers aligned primarily with the Democratic party of the time show that the ridicule of and by actors in our contemporary political arena has a long genealogy. And of course, our first number of every issue contains the recurring feature “The Year’s Work.” The review essay of humor scholarship from 2020 is our first offering by a team of contributing editors, Gretchen Martin and Jonathan Rossing. We’re confident that you’ll continue to find this comprehensive review of scholarship to be an interesting survey of the breadth of our field and a useful tool in your own work.Last, we’d like to mention our upcoming special issue “Black Laughs Matter.” This project will fulfill our commitment to the Black Lives Matter movement, which the American Humor Studies Association articulated in its statement of solidarity after the murder of George Floyd. We’re very excited about the lineup of material that will be collected in the special issue, and we expect that you will be as well. However, as Lisa M. Beringer’s article in this issue demonstrates, our commitment to the analysis and critical appreciation of African American humor is ongoing and not simply an occasional focus in a special issue.Until then, we wish you good health and good humor. As always, we remainYr Obdt Svt,—LH

“Why the h**l is There a White House Correspondents’ Dinner?” Boundary Work in Political Journalism

ABSTRACT Political journalism is a pertinent part of newsrooms across the world. This study aimed to analyze the shifting role conceptions of U.S. political journalists, primarily in reference to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Researchers conducted 32 long-form phone interviews with political journalists from news outlets ranging from the Los Angeles Times to VICE. The study found most journalists uncomfortable with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, especially after the response to Michelle Wolf's speech at the 2018 event. This particular event helped journalists identify how the event works in opposition to their role conception. Through the lens of boundary work, this study argues the comedy format of the dinner, which ceased following 2018, pushed outside the boundaries of what is considered appropriate journalistic practice within the field.

“You Think I'm Joking”: Examining the Weaponized Comedy of President Obama's Stand-Up Addresses at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner

ABSTRACT Satire and stand-up comedy are forms of cultural examination generally perceived as tools used by everyday citizens against the powerful and not by the powerful themselves. This article examines the less-analyzed side of stand-up comedy and satire as malleable instruments of cultural interrogation when employed by powerful agents such as President Obama. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of carnival and Henri Bergson's concept of humor as a form of social corrective in my textual analysis of his stand-up addresses, this article interprets how Obama's on-the-offensive, comically insulting addresses provided a unique way for him to attempt to normalize political criticisms and controversies, such as the “birther theory” and his administration's drone program. In its interpretation of a substantial satirical and comic strategy within Obama's stand-up addresses, this article reflects on the nature of modern satire and stand-up comedy and their complex relationship with forms of American power.

Rhetoric, Humor, and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen Colbert

Rhetoric, Humor, and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen Colbert

The Agony of Flint: Poisoned Water, Racism and the Specter of Neoliberal Fascism

“Flint still doesn't have clean water.”1Michelle Wolf, White House Correspondents Dinner, April 28, 2018 “Neoliberal fascism, as a form of extreme capitalism, views democracy as the enemy.”2Henry G...

Herman Melville and the Emergence of Trumpism

Herman Melville and the Emergence of Trumpism James Noel, Chair Click for larger view View full resolution Participants in the "Herman Melville and the Emergence of Trumpism" panel at ALA 2018, from left to right: James Noel, Caitlin Smith Oyekole, Madison Furrh, Nathan Wolff, and David Blake. Photo courtesy of Meredith Farmer. In 2011, both Seth Meyers and President Barack Obama made several jokes about Donald Trump during the White House Correspondents' Dinner. From his involvement in the Miss USA pageant and reality television to his fragile relationship with communities of color, no area from Trump's brash and ostentatious lifestyle was off-limits that evening. However, by November 8, 2016, the concerns that the former president and Meyers satirized had become part of the reason that Trump had become the next president of the United States. Trump-ism is a term coined to capture the emergence of the radical branch of Republicanism responsible for Trump's unorthodox journey to the White House. Given the relevance of American political values in Herman Melville's major works, this panel sought to investigate whether Melville's publications could illuminate [End Page 145] some of the enduring issues that fueled Trump's presidency. Does his art speak to current discussions concerning America's polarizing landscape? Caitlin Smith Oyekole, Madison Furrh, David Blake, and Nathan Wolff eloquently answer this question, revealing some of the harrowing ways that Melville's publications capture fundamental aspects of what has been termed Trumpism. Trumpism and the Know-Nothing Party Madison Furrh Colorado State University-Pueblo The Know-Nothing Party—a radicalized, nativist, anti-Catholic wing of the disintegrated Whig Party—won a series of victories during the 1854 elections, but nowhere was the Know-Nothing ticket more successful than in Massachusetts, Melville's home state. In Melville's "The Piazza," the narrator and the unfortunate Marianna converse in the Berkshire Mountains on a host of topics, including her complete isolation, her orphan status, her seventeen-year-old brother who worked himself to death, her "dull woman's work," the sorry state of her cabin, and the narrator's attempts to assuage her suffering through romantic suggestions of nature as medicinal. Near the end of the conversation, the poor orphan echoes the philosopher Socrates, saying, "Is it that I live so lonesome, and know nothing?" The affluent narrator responds with the slogan of the Know-Nothing Party: "I, too, know nothing, and therefore cannot answer." Ultimately, socio-political divisions that define the tale become foregrounded and our Know-Nothing narrator's predilections for the Picturesque, Romanticism, and Transcendentalism make him vulnerable to sensational politics, conspiracy theories and, ultimately, social nihilism. I analyze how Know-Nothingism functions in Melville's "The Piazza" (I believe I am the first to do so) and address "Benito Cereno" as another text depicting Know-Nothingism. Both tales demonstrate how Know-Nothing ideology cherishes ignorance, depends on stereotype and racism, and puts the entire American experiment at risk. Indeed, the narrator's fantastical imaginings result in (as Melville later wrote in his copy of Emerson's Essays: Second Series) "gross and astonishing errors & illusions," while promoting social "blindness [that] proceeds from a defect in the region of the heart." "Crippled America": Trump, Ahab, and the Materialist Turn Nathan Wolff Tufts University In a series of recent roundtables, scholars have undertaken an important project: situating Melville in the context of an expanding "materialist turn" in the literary humanities. Panelists proposed that we attend to the radical [End Page 146] imbrication of the human and nonhuman in Melville's work—a corrective to a false view of humans in general, and the captain of the Pequod in particular, as autonomous agents. Positioned as a strong-willed dictator by "Cold War" critics, Ahab becomes newly visible as a permeable, fragile, "leaky," figure. My paper sounds a cautionary note for this otherwise generative approach. By positing an opposition between Ahab as dictator and Ahab as a subject marked by weakness and instability, such readings threaten to obscure a lesson we twenty-first-century citizens learn with each news cycle: that fragility and tyranny go hand-in-hand. This is so both because Donald Trump's cruelty is manifestly rooted...

Laughing or learning with the Chief Executive? The impact of exposure to presidents’ jokes on message elaboration

AbstractUsing the White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD) and the State of the Union (SOTU) as stimuli, our experiment (

Cracking Up Time

This essay theorizes how black feminist comedic performance queers white supremacist and heteronormative notions of time by centering Wanda Sykes's performance in her comedy special I'ma Be Me and her performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner—both in 2009. Sykes's jokes articulate how queer bodies of color experience temporalities that are in constant tension with dominant narrations of “coming out,” national heritage, and white nostalgia. I argue that Sykes uses comedic performance to: (1) reveal the limits of “progressive” coming out narratives for black queer women, (2) reinstate black subjectivity into US collective memory, (3) debunk myths of the United States as “post-” identity politics, and (4) challenge broader publics to think beyond linear and binary constructions of identity/ies, space, and time.

Comedian‐in‐Chief: Presidential Jokes as Enthymematic Crisis Rhetoric

To understand how jokes have functioned as part of U.S. presidents' strategic communication, this project examined every available White House Correspondents' Dinner (WHCD) speech over the last century, documenting various presidents' approaches to humor. I argue that the ability to talk about difficult or taboo subjects through jokes' deeply enthymematic ways of communicating has offered presidents expanded rhetorical spaces during crises, providing insights into why they started using humor with such routine frequency. Working with multiple factors shaping the modern presidency, presidents have used the elastic and inventive nature of enthymematic joking in attempts to move pressing issues outside immediate lines of criticism. The use of jokes in presidential communication is charted through three periods of WHCD. Several implications are drawn from this analysis, including the risks of humor as a rhetorical strategy.

Just Communicating

Just Communicating

American and German Elite Journalists' Attitudes toward Election Polls

Opinion polls are a highly prominent feature in today’s reporting on election campaigns. But the relationship between journalists and opinion polls in the U.S. and Germany has been described as a rivalry in the past. This study presents results of two surveys that were carried out among American and German elite journalists. For the first time this study provides quantitative statements about the opinion of White House correspondents toward opinion polls and how they use poll results in their day-to-day business. Compared to results of a 2005 survey among members of the Bundespressekonferenz in Germany, this study reveals relevant similarities but also important differences between the attitudes of elite journalists in the two countries. In a nutshell, the findings lead to the conclusion that White House correspondents as well as members of the Bundespressekonferenz have a more confident than skeptical attitude toward scientific polling and the use of political poll results in their work. Even more, the results show that White House correspondents have a more confident attitude than their German colleagues.

Conveying Presidential News: The White House Press Corps Covers the President

On a daily basis, presidential news coverage comes from the work of a relatively small group of Washington reporters assigned to cover the White House. Although often treated interchangeably with the Washington press corps, the reporters at the White House focus solely on that beat. I identify which news organizations form the White House press corps and then focus on the practices of those organizations in assigning reporters to the White House. I also look at what current and recent White House correspondents view as the basic elements of a White House story. Although news organizations have long been committed to full coverage of the White House, the future is less certain for some of them as the growing financial pressures in the news industry have had an impact on their ability to cover the president in the same manner as they have in the past.

The natural: the misunderstood presidency of Bill Clinton

Natural: Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton. By Joe Klein. (New York: Doubleday, 2002. Pp. 230. Prologue, acknowledgments, index. $22.95.) Blinded the Right: Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. By David Brock. (New York: Crown, 2002. Pp. 336. Prologue, epilogue. $25.95.) These books retell previously told tales. But this time, the authors (both journalists but not White House correspondents) claim tell the truth. Natural, Klein reworks much of the material from his novel Primary Colors (1996) into a nonfictional evaluation of Clinton's presidency. He wants clarify misunderstandings about Clinton's record: solid policy and brilliant politics have been obscured the consequences of tawdry personal behavior (p. 21). Brock wants clear his conscience: Blinded the Right rectifies his treatment of troopergate and Anita Hill in American Spectator and his Real Anita Hill (1993). Brock explains, Like a playing with a loaded gun, I didn't appreciate the difference between a substantiated charge and an unsubstantiated (p. 99). He confesses that his epiphany came after receiving a $1 million cash advance write a second attack book, Seduction of Hillary Rodham (1996). When turned up no basis allege criminal wrongdoing or cover-up, was transformed: In finding Hillary Clinton's humanity, I was beginning find my own (p. 261). As a result, Brock wrote two essays for Esquire (Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man and The Fire This Time: A Letter the President) which are the basis for this scathing memoir of his disillusionment as a conservative who plotted in the shadows, disregarded the law, and abused win even greater power (p. xi). Brock apologizes, casting himself as the central character in a tawdry tale of money, ambition, and shoddy writing and editorial practices. He says was blinded by a conservative culture of corrosive partisanship, visceral hatreds, and unfathomable hypocrisy (p. xi). He regrets his contribution Clinton's impeachment: Had these conservatives not intervened in the way they did, [Paula] Jones might have sued the Spectator, rather than the president, and though I might have been in the dock, the catastrophic political consequences of her lawsuit might have been avoided (p. 180). Thus, Brock tells an admonitory tale, to illuminate for others the dangers that I see in an empowered conservative movement (p. xii). Klein's tale is updated but not much changed. As one of the first reporters promote Clinton's candidacy (they met in 1989; covered the campaign for Newsweek), became an early booster. He had less contact with Clinton during his presidency, until Clinton granted him an extensive interview after the 2000 Democratic convention. Klein wrote his first take on Clinton's legacy for the New Yorker that autumn. That essay plus several additional interviews provided the basis for Natural. Klein is still amazed at the comeback kid who was a serious, disciplined, responsible (p. 11) president with policy achievements that not inconsiderable and were accomplished against great odds (p. 216). Elsewhere, Klein characterizes Clinton's legacy more modestly, correctly noting that the record shows a mix of successes and failures. He reaches the same assessment as current political science scholarship: instead of one major domestic policy achievement, Clinton's legacy is one of incremental steps toward reform, which Klein aptly calls victories in dribs and drabs (p. 14). Klein suggests an explanation for Clinton's uneven record: he never received credit for the essential coherence of his vision because never found a way articulate it credibly, much less succinctly-no small irony, given his ability communicate (p. 13). This is a thoughtful insight about presidential rhetoric and the failure of Clinton's catchwordsNew Choice, New Covenant, Third Way-to capture the imagination of the public and the press. …

The "First Rough Draft"?: Reflections on Presidential Politics, Journalism and History

Füm & History, Vol. XXI, Nos. 2&3, May/September 199177 The "First Rough Draft"? Reflections on Presidential Politics, Journalism and History Michael Cornfield I've been asked to talk about how media historians can make better use of declassified documents and other archival materials, as can be found at the nation's presidential libraries and in such widely distributed publications as the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. I'm going to start where Mary Ann Watson left off, with David Susskind. David Susskind and Merle Miller interviewed Harry Truman in the early 1960s for a documentary series. They were unable to sell the series to the networks, however, and Miller wound up publishing the transcripts a decade later as an oral biography, which he called Plain Speaking. The book became a best-seller. It served as the centerpiece for a Truman revival during the mid-1970s.1 Some criticized the book for perpetuating falsehoods beneath a mask of candor. I did my doctoral dissertation on feature stories about President Truman, and when I visited the Truman Library in 1986, I knew there were more oral transcripts in existence. Edward R. Murrow also interviewed Truman after his presidency for television. These interviews took place at Key West a few years before the SusskindMiller interviews. Truman's memory was probably clearer then, and who better to elicit the truth from him than Murrow? The Truman-Murrow conversations were aired in a one-hour program, condensed from nine hours of transcripts. I asked the librarian for the Murrow transcripts, and out came a slender file folder with the script from the one-hour show. "No," I said to her (Elizabeth Safly, I believe), "I've read that there are nine hours' worth of transcripts. Could you please check again?" I sat and waited and a half hour later my heart began to pound, because she rolled out this cart upon which sat a big box that evidently had never been opened. I had found a treasure. I was going to be the first person in who knows how long to revisit a record of a dialogue between the nation's most famous broadcaster and a former President of the United States. I plunged inside-and there was nothing there, except some banal comments about Adlai Stevenson and a few other 1950s figures. Michael Cornfield is Assistant Professor in the Department ofRhetoric and Communication Studies at the University of Virginia. 78 Michael Cornfield The experience taught me two lessons. One was that journalists may be better editors than political scholars think. The other-reinforced by the hundreds ofpress texts I sifted through during a week in Independence-was that journalism alone provides few clues to the interplay of forces about which political scientists seek general knowledge. I returned home with material that made little sense to me except as a collection of news stories and commentaries that belonged to the same genre of popular literature. The idea that genres exist in a culture's news just as they do in a culture's fictions became the core of my dissertation.2 But I hadn't learned anything about the powers of the press in relation to those of the presidency. And I had no scoop, no discovery that revised or confirmed Truman's current reputation as a "near-great" president. Five years later, I remained curious about the contrast between public affairs as the news represents it-call that "current events coverage"~and public affairs as it is depicted by participants and scholars in works of political history. Surely there was something to learn in the contrast of descriptions. I started out again, and I chose as my starting point an aphorism coined by a man who used to own a newspaper in this town. Phil Graham once said (and journalists at the Post and elsewhere love to repeat it) that journalism is "the first rough draft of history."3 White House correspondents endeavor to narrate current events with limited access to presidential thoughts and activities, under severe deadline constraints, and in the shadow of the mystique the office casts over their readers. Given these imperfect conditions, what kinds of polishing gets...