Saturday, August 19, 2017

One more lesson from Charlottesville: Our comedians are more ethical than our president; Salon, August 19, 2017

Sophia A. McClennen, Salon; One more lesson from Charlottesville: Our comedians are more ethical than our president

"This week we have now seen another key feature of satire: It offers ethical responses to unethical actions.
The ethics of satire is often hard to see, especially because comedy can so often be crass and crude...
This is all to say that comedians are unlikely moral leaders. And yet in the Trump era, when literally every value in our nation seems to have been turned upside down, we are now seeing comedians play an increasingly larger role as champions of good versus evil.
This is why as Meyers ended his monologue he directly went after Trump for failing to uphold his moral obligations as president of our nation:
The leader of our country is called the president because he’s supposed to preside over society. His job is to lead, to cajole, to scold, to correct our path, to lift up what is good about us and to absolutely and unequivocally and immediately condemn what is evil in us. And if he does not do that, if he does not preside over our society, then he is not a president. You can stand for a nation or you can stand for a hateful movement. You can’t do both. And if you don’t make the right choice, I am confident that the American voter will.
Meyers wasn’t just scolding Trump for failing at his job; he was also showing his audience what real leadership looks like." 

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