THE NEW REFEUDALIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE

The idea of a “public sphere” where citizens can rationally and critically discuss public policy has captured the imagination of many scholars interested in democracy. Jürgen Habermas’s (1962/1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is perhaps the most important statement of this position. Although many scholars have found fault with Habermas’s historical description of the rise and fall of a public sphere, the ideal of open, accessible, substantive, and, most importantly, rational conversations among numerous and diverse participants is often listed as the prerequisite for a healthy democracy (e.g., Calhoun Reference Calhoun1992; Delli Carpini et al. 2004). In 1962, Habermas argued that the ideal public sphere, the “bourgeois public sphere,” appeared only for a brief time as early capitalism liberated men in cities from continuous work. They gathered in coffee shops, pubs, and salons in Europe in the eighteenth century to critically debate public policy. Here, he argues, the participants would listen, discuss, and argue, ultimately being persuaded, not by the status of the person arguing, but by the logic and evidence of the stronger argument. However, this didn’t last long. Soon the public sphere was “refeudalized,” morphing back to a type of “public” common under feudalism, where people were passive recipients of the political spectacle provided by the ruling classes. Specifically, the protected space of the bourgeois public sphere disintegrated in the rush to manipulate it for profit on the one hand and political power on the other; subsequently, “public opinion” began to lose both its rational-critical function and its autonomy (195). According to Habermas, instead of rationally discussing and debating political issues and, at least potentially, being persuaded by the better argument, “[t]he public sphere becomes the court before whose public prestige can be displayed—rather than in which pubic critical debate is carried on” (201). My claim here is that the “refeudalization” of the public sphere that Habermas described in 1962 is even more complicated today and the contemporary version of this “refeudalization” is a large part of what both comedians are critiquing in their election coverage.

INFOENTERPROPAGAINMENT AND MANUFACTURED PUBLICITY: STEWART AND COLBERT ON THE 2014 ELECTIONS

The first aspect of the “new refeudalization” has been discussed at length by many scholars across many disciplines: the contemporary media environment. Geoffrey Baym describes this environment as the combination of three mutually reinforcing neoliberal transformations that are often labeled as “post-modern”: (1) technological—ever increasing speed, ever decreasing economic/technical production thresholds; (2) economic—multiplication of outlets, consolidation of ownership, commodification of news, increasing market segmentation; and (3) cultural—blurring boundaries between long standing binaries like public/private and information/entertainment (Baym Reference Baym2005). With the blurring of the serious/non-serious and news/entertainment binaries, it would appear that the news parodies of Stewart and Colbert would belong happily in this new “post-modern” environment. Baym argues, however, that this is only true in format. The “underlying agenda” of both Stewart and Colbert is what Baym calls “neo-modern,” a harkening back to “a quite modernist agenda, a critique of news and an interrogation of power that rests on a firm belief in fact, accountability, and reason in public discourse” (Jones and Baym Reference Jones and Baym2010, 281). While the older “high-modern” news paradigm (e.g., Walter Cronkite and the perception that he was telling it “the way it is”) had many flaws, Baym argues that Stewart and Colbert use these modern principles as ideals to highlight and critique this new “post-modern” media form (Baym Reference Baym2010; see also Baym Reference Baym, Baumgartner and Morris2007).

As a political theorist, this somewhat quick and easy discussion of the enormously complicated terms, “modern” and “post-modern,” gives me pause. In fact, the discipline of philosophy has been parsing these exact terms for the past half century (e.g., Habermas Reference Habermas and Lawrence1987; Jameson Reference Jameson1991; Lyotard Reference Lyotard1984; White Reference White1991). If you go outside of philosophy, the terms are even more complicated. Baym, working within the context of communication studies and journalism in the United States however, defines the terms recognizably, but much more narrowly. He uses the term, “high-modern,” to denote the ideal journalistic paradigm coming out of the Progressive Era in which there was a deep faith that the job of a journalist was to disinterestedly and accurately represent reality (2010, 28). Journalists here were professionals trained to show citizens the “real world” without commentary (unless it was clearly marked as such) or hype (32). The Press was an indispensable part of a functioning democracy; their job was not to maximize profit or disseminate propaganda but to shine a “searchlight” on government that would enable the public to see the “truth” and thus ensure political accountability (167). In contrast, Baym argues, the contemporary “post-modern” media—because of the three transformations listed above—has shifted priorities. Competing for viewers and profit in the 24-hour news cycle meant presenting consumers almost instantaneously with what networks thought would sell (news neatly packaged as spin, spectacle, and/or speculation), rather than presenting information that journalists thought citizens needed to know to make political decisions in a democracy.

Enter Stewart and Colbert. To stay with Baym’s terminology, while the “modern” critique of the “post-modern” media is implicitly built in to the parodic format of both shows, the 2014 midterm elections provided many explicit examples of what Stewart derisively refers to as “infoenterpropagainment” (Caulfield Reference Caulfield, Baumgartner and Morris2008). In fact, Stewart’s critique of the media’s election coverage actually began the previous spring with the following video clips:

Spectacle and speculation, unencumbered by facts, are among Stewart’s and Colbert’s biggest pet peeves with the “post-modern” news media, coming up again and again in their segments. ^{Footnote 4} In this case, Stewart insinuates, how can one have a rational, factually informed discussion of an election two and a half years in the future? And notice that, while Stewart has definitely moved from the more moderate “everyman” persona earlier in his career to a more overtly left-leaning perspective, the news outlets listed above are not just Fox News. “Infoenterpropagainment,” Stewart implies with his choice of clips, is the norm across networks and political persuasions.

Over the years, live election coverage has continually provided fodder for both comedians, and the 2014 midterms were no exception. While Stewart makes fun of cable news channels’ reliance on pundit panels to fill time with speculation as election results come in (“great American panels, all woman panels, all woman panels with one dude, whatever that is, panels of people nobody cares about, and, of course, CNN’s thirty-six body multi-panel” (Stewart Reference Stewart2014b)), Colbert’s live coverage of election returns pointedly addresses one of the media’s “post-modern” transformations: the competition of news channels for advertising dollars. His 2014 election night program opened with a flashy “Midterms ‘014: Detour to Gridlock” logo filling the screen, only to quickly flash to “Wait! Don’t change the channel! Look at this video of a duckling following a cat dressed like a shark riding a Roomba!” the video of which then spectacularly explodes—to sustained audience applause (Colbert Reference Colbert2014b). The competition across news networks for the flashiest, glitziest, most technologically advanced, edgiest election night coverage is fierce, although probably not yet to the point of literally telling viewers not to change the channel before exploding. How else can they still the thumb on television remotes, especially those in the hands of the coveted 18–39 year old demographic so desired by advertisers? This push to spectacle, Colbert implies through his ironic exaggeration, is a problem. Without explicitly critiquing the media, Colbert is implicitly arguing that the media is not fulfilling its “modern” responsibility to disinterestedly and accurately present election information to the public.

The second, related aspect of the new refeudalization—the rise of political consultants and the completely staged, affect-driven, and manipulated nature of contemporary campaigns—is also a constant feature on both shows in general and one of the most prominent aspects of the 2014 midterm coverage because of constant stream of political ads. Interestingly, the objects of Jon Stewart’s scorn most often were hapless ads by Democrats trying to distance themselves from unpopular President Obama. Instead of showing ads providing information on his policy positions or detailing his political philosophy, even perhaps how his differed from the President’s, Senator Mark Begich (D-AK), for example, accused his opponent of letting murderers out of jail to murder again. Senator Mark Prior (D-AR), ran ads that painted his challenger as pro-Ebola and anti-baby, while Democratic Senate challenger Natalie Tenant’s (WV) campaign created ads showing her flipping a switch and turning off the lights at the White House—because, as West Virginians know, “coal keeps the lights on.” When showing these ads, Stewart often doesn’t even comment. He simply presents them to the audience and shakes his head sadly, assuming his audience will understand that these ads are created not to provide accurate information about policy positions—no candidate is pro-Ebola—but to invoke fear or to change the subject (Stewart Reference Stewart2014b). All three Democrats lost.

Stewart’s often implicit critique of both aspects of the new refeudalization (the “post-modern” media and the affect-driven, hyper-manipulated nature of political campaigns) became very explicit the night before the 2014 election: He started by showing several news clips with pundits discussing campaign ads:

And if that doesn’t work, Stewart then opines, well at least Republicans have a “back up plan”: tough voter ID laws. “Ah yes,” said Stewart, “the party that never met a gun purchase restriction they thought was not onerous wants to make sure no one ever walks in a school and unleashes a wanton spray of ballots” (Stewart, Reference Stewart2014c). Neither side, according to Stewart and Colbert, even attempts to present rational argumentation during an election.

Colbert discussed campaign ads less prominently than Stewart in 2014. One prominent segment, however, featured a unique ad promoting, according to Colbert, a “demonized minority”: “Did you know?” the ad asked through scrolling words with cheerful music and smiling people in the background, “Republicans drive Priuses,” “Republicans recycle,” … “Republicans put together IKEA furniture,” and, in quick succession, Republicans are white (black, Hispanic, Asian; are grandmas, daughters, and moms; have tattoos and beards). The ad ends with “Republicans have feelings,” “Republicans are people who care,” and finally, the kicker: “Republicans are people, too.” Except they’re not, at least not in this ad, which, as Colbert points out, uses stock photos. The model in front of the Prius is actually “not a Republican” and “lives in Sweden.” This is not a weakness, however. The fact that the ad uses models rather than actual Republicans just adds to the theme of the message: “Republicans can be people that they’re not, as long as we can find the right stock photo” (Colbert Reference Colbert2014a; see also www.republicansarepeopletoo.com).

Like Stewart and Colbert, this type of “manufactured publicity” is also a problem for Habermas, who argues that it creates what he calls “nonpublic opinion” (1989, 211). For an opinion to be “public,” according to Habermas, it must be formed rationally, in contrast to pre-formed, knee-jerk, gut-level, often focus group tested opinions, like those encouraged by political ads featuring scary diseases or smiling stock photos. Relatedly, “public” opinion also must be formed through discussion, “in the pro and con of a public conversation” (221). Most political advertising, then, is directly working against Habermas’s ideal of a rationally debating public. In effect, the self-interest of the political consultants who create these ads (winning the election for their paying client) is not simply a necessary evil in contemporary politics, it is actually antithetical to rational-critical discourse. If one is working correctly, the other is, by definition, diminished. This is not to say that emotions, especially negative emotions, aren’t effective at mobilization or that political learning cannot take place within the context of manufactured publicity, but for Habermas – as for Stewart and Colbert – the core democratic process is broken, regardless of the outcome. An uninformed, untested, unexamined vote is a problem. Period. And the refeudalized public sphere lamented by Habermas in the early 1960s has evolved even further from the “modern” ideal because of the neoliberal “postmodern” media on the one hand and the neoliberal, consultant-driven political atmosphere on the other.

While their methods of presentation couldn’t be more different, Habermas, Stewart, and Colbert are motivated by similar concerns. All three argue—sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly—that we have perhaps abandoned “modern” ideals, like those present in the bourgeois public sphere, too quickly. While none of the three would advocate a naïve, unexamined acceptance of these ideals and all would concede that there is always power hidden in their definition and implementation, without recourse to some shared conception of notions like “truth,” “rational argumentation,” or “accountability,” the very idea of democracy becomes impossible.