As increasing economic inequality takes center stage in the American political theater, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert have not missed a single beat. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report utilize a unique synthesis of current issues and satire to provide informative and utterly hilarious programs. Unlike mainstream and established American media outlets, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report comically seek to expose the hypocrisy in media and politics, educating the public to see a different perspective- behind the curtain, if you will. Ever since the Occupy movement of 2011, their focus has been slightly narrowed. Chief among their repeated motifs is the ever-expanding gap between rich and the poor, and how our elected officials are rising to confront this issue. Although Stewart and Colbert are often criticized for a liberal bias, they believe that conservative policies and policy makers have an inherent discriminatory policy against the poor. Through sarcasm and humor, Stewart and Colbert both advocate for economic equality by countering the conservative dogma.
Occupy movement, “we are the 99%,” believes that there is an economic inequality between the wealthiest 1% and rest of the population in America. Jessica Williams from The Daily Show agrees and focuses on poverty and hunger in America in “The Real Hunger Games.” Americans suffer the real hunger games as Republicans, as Forbes Magazine columnist John Tammy, want to cut government spending on socially safety networks like Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, SNAP. Tammy believes “food stamps are cruel,” as people are not happy when they are reliant on someone. (Stewart, 2013) Tammy doubts that poverty in the United States is onerous enough to w...
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...ervatives are out of touch. Stewart and Colbert satirize this ubiquitous issue of the dichotomy that exists between the rich and the poor, and the injustices that come with it and the idiocy of those too petty to recognize this fact. Stewart and Colbert encourage the audience to question how we take for granted economic inequality and the discrimination again the poor.
Works Cited
Carvell, Tim. "Slumdogs vs. Millionaires." The Daily Show. Prod. Miles Kahn. Dir. John Stewart. Comedy Central. 9 Jan. 2014. The Daily Show. Comedy, 10 Jan. 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.
Colbert, Stephen, prod. dir. "Bug Protein." The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. Colbert Nation, 15 May 2013. Colbert Nation. Comedy, 16 May 2013. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.
Schlesselman, Daric. "The Real Hunger Games." The Daily Show. Prod. Miles Kahn. Dir. John Stewart. Comedy Central. 17 Dec. 2013. Television.
The film “Inequality for all” directed by Jacob Kornbluth, begins with Robert Reich asking students three questions to consider in a lecture when talking about the uneven distribution of wealth. First, what is happening regarding the distribution of wealth? He then inquires to why this is happening. Last of all, he asks the students if the distribution of wealth is a problem in America. He addresses these questions as well as many others in his lecture on the growing divide between America’s rich and poor. Robert Reich is an economist, author, and educator as well as public policy professor who served in the Ford, Carter and Clinton administration. He has dealt with this particular topic for over three decades and continues to spread his political views as a professor at the University of Berkley. Furthermore, he talks about the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor/middle class. He goes beyond the obvious facts to show us why this is happening and uses statistical data to display this growing problem. He gives concerning evidence that wages are declining, and that America’s weakening economy is based on consumerism.
Comedian Jon Stewart gives a speech on the Daily Show during the “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear”. He wants the viewers of the Daily Show to realize the difference between the real and fake threats and to take a humorous perspective on most of America’s “problems”. Stewart also emphasizes to his audience not to take every person on the media by his word and not to overreact to everything they hear. He uses metaphors, comparisons, and hypothetical examples to get his point across.
"Jim Cramer 14036." The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Comedy Central. 12 Mar. 2009. Television.
America has the highest overall and childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth. Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year, mostly because they lack health insurance and cannot get beneficial care. From an economic perspective and as the government tries to fight its way out of this terrible recession, it makes no sense that the United States ignores numerous citizens who could be of such great help (Sen. Bernie Sanders). Poverty in America is about a lack of basic necessities and an uncertainty as to where to get food, an uncertainty how to pay your most bills, and it's about a dependence on either imperfect government institutions or overwhelmed private charities. Even though the United States does not have starvation,...
“Women! What do they want?” John Oliver exclaims sarcastically as he begins his segment on the wage gap. John Oliver always begins his segments with sarcastic and witty comments in order to initially engage his audience which is largely young adults. His use of a news station background is what grabs the attention of news watchers. While he does discuss serious issues he does it with wit in order for his audience to come to the same conclusion as him. Knowing that the majority of his audience holds some college experience, “Last night tonight” expects the audience to be able to differentiate between the actual news and the host’s sarcasm. In his segment “Wage Gap”, host John Oliver uses statistics from the U.S Bureau of Labor, contradicting
“The O’Reilly Factor” which is aired on the Fox News Channel where he talks about political
...visions and relates to us a powerful social evolution based on the ever-widening gap between the majority of the American population (“the 99%”) and the wealthy minority (“the 1%”) (Zinn, p. 619-621, 1995). Zinn’s “prophecy” of a society where the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer” has been attacked time and again by conservatives and others. Considering the events of the last several years, the banking crisis, and the rise of the Occupy Movement in 2011, Zinn’s theories regarding the 99% are amazingly perceptive, even predictive of 21st Century times.
Further arguments bolster the defense of this perception regarding income inequality. Writers, such as The New York Times Tyler Cowen, add wood to the fire in his articles written about this topic. As a proponent of this view, Cowen (2015) argues that income inequality should not be the main concern and rather than to try and bridge the gap between the wealthy and lower classes, the country should turn its' attention to the problem of economic mobility as the real issue. The argument made by Cowen slightly parallels the argument made by Garret in that income inequality will never cease to exist, but we as a nation can reduce it by defeating what Cowen (2015) believes the underlying cause to be; economic mobility. Instead of taking a communist approach to the situation with taking money from the wealthy class and distributing it to the less fortunate, Cowen (2015) proposes that by uprooting the financial instability of the lower class the government can thrust them into higher economic status. CNBC writer Carol Roth also provided another argument. Roth (2014) is very blunt and to the point in her article regarding the problem, or there lack of, income inequality in the United States starting by stating the harsh reality that life is not equal for many Americans in a variety of circumstances. Counteracting the argument of citizens that believe there is income inequality and that there needs to be a redistribution of wealth, Roth (2014) says,
“Inequality is evident when looking at the earnings of the people at the top compared to the ones in the middle” (Inequality for All). The larger share of the nation’s income goes to the top unfairly, and leaves the rest struggling to get to financial levels they may or may not ever reach. This is the unjust system that exists in the nation which people pretend not to participate in so the poor can be blamed for their own issues. Most people participate in this system often involuntarily or unknowingly through turning their backs, taking larger pay cuts than necessary, and participating heavily in consumerism. Statistics from the video proved that “Seventy percent of the economy is consumer spending” (Inequality for all). While many of the working poor do in fact spend unnecessarily and unwisely it is unfortunate that they cannot enjoy the same pleasures as everyone else. The inequality in America is very apparent and the responsibility should be given to the top one percent and the government. It would be great if every person would step up and help make the nation great again by taking responsibility/accountability, and by creating a culture of justice, equality, and wealth. The video reported that in the year 1978 compared to 2010, the income of the typical worker differed by more than $345,000 (Inequality
The issue of income inequality is a crucial piece of your upcoming re-election campaign this fall. Similarly to the Civil Rights Movement and the War on Poverty in the 1960s, a high level of inequality can hamper social cooperation, encourage intra-elite competition, and ultimately during wartime, as illustrated in the Vietnam War, can further exasperate the American people’s frustrations with income inequality.
In Janet Poppendieck's “Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger To Inequality” she argues that America puts excessive focus upon hunger issues among the poor when there are many other important issues that go unnoticed. Poppendieck believes that it is time to find a way to shift the discourse from undernutrition to unfairness, from hunger to inequality. In today's society, there are many food banks, food drives, soup kitchens, etc. Food is extremely abundant in America, therefore Poppendieck's statement is proven true when she states that there is too much focus on hunger. Throughout this text, she strongly supports her claims about hunger, equality, and poverty in general.
In the essay “Spare Change”, the author, Teresa Zsuaffa, illustrates how the wealthy don’t treat people facing poverty with kindness and generosity, but in turn pass demeaning glares and degrading gestures, when not busy avoiding eye contact. She does so by writing an emotional experience, using imagery and personification whenever possible to get to the reader’s heart. Quite similarly, Nick Saul writes, in the essay “The Hunger Game”, about how the wealthy and people of social and political power such as “[the community’s] elected representatives” (Saul, 2013, p. 357) leave the problem of hunger on the shoulders of the foodbanks because they believe “feeding the hungry is already checked off [the government’s] collective to-do list” (Saul,
In the year 2015, around 40 million U.S. citizens were food insecure (Randall para. 3). Food insecurity can be defined in paragraph 3 by “[having] difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. This 12.7% of American citizens also contains another group - children. Aged 10-17, 6.8 million adolescents struggle with a food insecurity. There have been several years of cuts to the social programs designed to help these people, along with the Great Recession continuing to leave an impact on the U.S. economy (para. 6). Under the Obama administration, $8.6 billion was cut from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps. From 1993-2001 under the Clinton administration, former President Bill Clinton’s administration “gutted the welfare system” (para. 15). Because of these budget cuts, the families who rely on food assistance from the government have been allotted less throughout the years. From a sociological perspective, the concepts of sociological imagination, class stratification, and social location are in effect when it comes to child hunger in the United States. Being hungry is an issue larger than any one individual can control.
Peyser, Marc. “The Truthiness Teller; Stephen Colbert Loves This Country Like he Loves Himself. Comedy Central’s Hot News Anchor is a Goofy Caricature of Our Blustery Culture. But he’s Starting to Make Sense.” Newsweek 13 February 2006: 50
Horsey’s veracious depiction of the distribution of U.S. wealth constructs a dismal, eye-opening reality as he portrays the uneven proportions of slices that is the U.S. wealth given to the rich, the middle class, and the poor and the added whipped cream called tax cuts presented to the affluent. In his political cartoon, reasonably named “ Dessert, American Style,” he paints the image of an elephant, who represents the Republicans, offering further tax cuts to the wealthy who already have a substantial portion of the U.S. wealth. While the rich are served the majority of the pie, the middle class only receives a single slice and the poor are given mere crumbs. This illustrates how the GOP favors the rich by giving them tax cuts while offering