John Stewart: The Use Of Satire

Satire is the use of comedic means to criticize real problems in the worlds. Examples include the Weeknight Update on Saturday Night Live, MAD TV, and late night shows with John Stewart, John Oliver, or Stephen Colbert. There are many more forms of media and writing that use the style of satirical writing to educate the public of current news while adding a comedic effect to it. While satirical writing is an effective way to express an author’s bias, it does not always change the way society thinks about a certain subject. It can be used to bring awareness, add comedic relief to serious events, or even to humiliate a certain subject or event. An excellent way of getting attention on a certain subject is to make fun of it. You can express your …show more content…
Stewart, like Oliver, is a political satirist who addresses issues that occur worldwide and in the United States. Also like Oliver, Stewart does not hold back when it comes down to having a comedic tone when it comes to serious occurrences or trivial events. In an episode of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”, the topic of hackers leaking nude photographs of celebrities was discussed. While hackers can be a serious threat to the privacy of everybody’s lives, Stewart makes light of it and makes fun of the celebrities. While informing his audience that nobody could find out how those pictures were being released, he makes fun of the possible culprits. ICloud, which is storage and computing service from Apple Inc., was accused of being an unreliable source of saving data. Stewart compared it to an actual cloud looking solid and stable while actually being a compilation of water and air. He then criticizes the people that thought the act of taking nude picture was pointless. Stewart mocks them for not realizing that human nature is to have sexual …show more content…
This makes this style of writing and informing very effective because they know when not to cross the line. When something can come off as extremely offensive to a majority of their audience, satirists tend to leave out comments that would upset them. However, they do tend to sneak in their powerful views and opinions. They do not want to lose their viewers, but they do want people to be educated and agree with they have to say. Unfortunately, satire does not always sway the public’s opinion. For example, in Johnathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”, he used satire to suggest the horrid idea of people eating their children in order to stay alive. Swift used a constructed argument to promote his idea to the public. Swift logically used statistics to suggest how many babies of each sex should be saved or eaten. The idea obviously was not taken seriously. Upon research, it was found that many people found the idea of cannibalism and infanticide extremely grotesque and revolting. Swift’s aim for the proposal was to show indifference to the state of Ireland’s society. At the time, Ireland was struck with poverty, overpopulation, and starvation. Swift used satire to bring light to the situation while coursing his viewpoint into the