Data collection – The Primary Text. Challenges and Results

I monitored 171 TDS episodes,⁵¹ slightly more than the number of episodes usually aired in any 12-month period of TDS cablecasts.⁵² This nonselective monitoring started on January 21, 2009 and ended on January 20, 2010, intended to cover all 161 episodes aired during President Obama’s first year in the Oval Office. For reasons explained below, I ended up adding ten additional episodes which had aired during the previous, George W. Bush, administration.

Each episode is stylistically organized in six

segments. They are aired in the following order: (1) The

Introduction, (2) The Monologue, (3) The Correspondents, (4) The Interview, (5) Jon Stewart Sharing Thoughts with

Stephen Colbert, and (6) The Moment of Zen. These segments are sometimes separated by a commercial break. Most shows, when aired, contain all six segments but occasionally one or more are omitted. Since Fall 2009, each original, taped,

51 150 from 2009 and 11 during 2010.

52 In 2007, TDS aired 138 episodes. In 2008, it aired 160 episodes and, in 2009, there were 150 episodes.

segment (not just the eventually cablecast portion of it) is uploaded in its entirety onto the show’s official

website.” The official site contains all the episodes aired since 1999, the year when Stewart became the host of the show. ⁵³ Thus, all original material is and has been

uploaded onto the show’s official site,

http://www.thedailyshow.com/, where the various segments

can be viewed in their entirety.

The episodes are archived in units which correspond to the segments mentioned above, with one difference. There is no introductory segment (Introduction -1) on the internet archive as there is in the cablecast show. On the other hand, on the internet archive there is a summary segment, which is made exclusively for the web, does not appear on air, and is entitled, The Daily Show in 60 seconds. It is nothing but significant clips from the episode, a kind of summary overview. For example, the episode aired on Tuesday October 5, 2010 was summarized in a segment entitled “Daily Show: 10/5/10 in :60 Seconds” which was tagged

Barack Obama apologizes to Guatemala, Lewis Black volunteers at a public school, and Jon compliments Bruce Willis on his well-sculpted skull.

53 http://www.thedailyshow.com/videos/?term=cluster&start=0.

All archived segments are searchable by date, and tag.

The tag contains the names of the personalities discussed or interviewed in that unit and the main issue covered within. This reliable archive mooted my earlier attempt to independently archive all episodes aired during the

researched period of time, and eased the research process considerably.

Any loyal viewer, or fan, of the show discovers that TDS uses topical themes which epitomize the show’s cultural, social, and political values to structure its cognitive and comedic content. Some of the more popular themes in the history of the show during Stewart’s tenure are Indecision 2000, Indecision 2004, or even Mess O’Potamia. Those are, respectively, a series of segments covering the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, and TDS’s coverage of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq.

This very topical comedic narrative individualizes the show and brought it the well-known journalistic awards

mentioned earlier. The topics signal both the liberal- populist and counter-cultural bent. The topical themes are usually covered in two segments of the show: The Monologue (2) and The Correspondents (3). They give the show its

tenor and thus those two segments contain the encoded meaning on which I decided to focus my analysis.

In view of this internal structure of the show, and how the segments are topically connected across several episodes, I decided to use a topical research sample.

Perusing the TDS’ online archive, it became apparent that the show thrives on a blend of populist, linguistically shocking identifiers. I found topical themes or headlines made up at least partially of gibberish as the result of bleeped expletives, such as 10 F#@king Years, which aired though 2006, when Jon Stewart was celebrating his first ten years on the show. In fact, a search of the official

archive showed that TDS used the term “clusterf#@k” as a topical identifier many times during its run.

Because the economy represented the most newsworthy event of late 2008 and the following two years (see

Appendix A), I considered a group of segments discussing it.

“Clusterf#@k to the Poor House” was the label for such a group, and I decided to find all segments under its banner.

This particular TDS Clusterf#@k segment contained 21

segments and predated the Obama Administration, because the economic meltdown predated it. The segments were aired

during the worst part (to date) of the current economic

meltdown: 2008 through 2010. Ten segments aired from

September 25, 2008 through December 2008,⁵⁴ during the Bush II administration. Eleven segments aired in 2009 and ended in January 2010.⁵⁵ In addition to its newsworthiness, this topical cluster was the largest, despite the show’s topical diversity. After identifying all topical groups during the time I monitored the show, I found that TDS did not

allocate a larger number of segments, whether they referred to the Fox News coverage of the Tea Party movement or

whether it were health care reform.

Moreover, the 21 segments entitled “Clusterf#@k to the Poor House” constitute a representative research sample for the primary text of the show, for at least two additional reasons. First, linguistically, the segment’s identifier shares the show’s counter-cultural attitude. Its obscene sounding ending, “f#@k” can be easily construed as

provocative.

However, at the outset it should be noted that

“Clusterf#@k” is not a term of art TDS made up out of whole cloth. In addition to “sexual orgy,” OED defines

54

http://www.thedailyshow.com/videos/?term=Clusterf%23@k+to+the+Poor+Hous e+&start=0. See also,

http://dneacsu1.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/clusterfuck-page-p1.pdf , http://dneacsu1.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/clusterfuck-page-p2.pdf, and http://dneacsu1.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/clusterfuck-page-p3.pdf

55 dneacsu.info/calendar.htm.

“clusterfuck” as a military term, meaning, “A bungled or botched undertaking; (also) a situation, state of affairs, or gathering (esp. a military operation) that is

disorganized or chaotic.”

It was first used in a report of the Vietnam War in 1969:

“1969 B. E. HOLLEY Let. 12 Mar. in Vietnam 1968-9:

Battalion Surgeon's Jrnl. (1993) 143 These are the screwups that the American public rarely hears about.

They happen often enough over here that we have a term for them ‘cluster-fuck’!”

Since then the term has evolved to cover such

expressions as “It was a tabloid clusterfuck. Every network, newspaper, local news station, and wire service sent

troops.”⁵⁶ TDS first used it in 2006. Each time it

designated a chaotic situation. TDS’s decision to start the Clusterf#@k segment about how the government mishandled the economic meltdown seemed auspicious.

Second, semantically, the segment shares the show’s liberal-populist bent. The forth word, “poorhouse” in

“Clusterf#@k to the Poorhouse” is the very concept which designated the centerpiece of American welfare in the 19^th

56 K. WALKER & M. SCHONE 2001. Son of Grifter xxxv., 351

century. The history of welfare in the United States shows the institution of the poorhouse once occupied a central place. Michael B. Katz presents this position persuasively when he states that during the

century before the New Deal, the poorhouse dominated the structure of welfare […] relief. Although

despised, dreaded, and often attacked, the poorhouse endured as the central arch of public welfare policy.

Even in the twentieth century it did not disappear.

Instead, through a gradual transformation it slid into a new identity: the public old-age home. Its history shows clearly how decent and compassionate care of the poor has always remained subordinate to both low taxes and the other great purposes that have guided relief. American welfare has remained within the shadow of the poorhouse. Poorhouses, which shut the old and the sick away from their friends and relatives, were supposed to deter the working class from asking for poor relief. There were, in fact, the ultimate defense against the erosion of the work

ethic in early industrial America (Katz, 1986, p. 3).

Additionally, because I did not know how much

audience-authored texts these topical segments produced, I included in my topical sample of 21 segments, two

additional segments to use for my audience research. They were chosen from a previously discarded group of randomly selected segments, described in Appendix B. From that sample I selected the episode aired on March 12, 2009,

which contained the Interview segment with CNBC personality Jim Cramer, and which became the most-watched interview Stewart ever conducted as of that date. The second episode

aired on July 22, 2009 and contained the monologue when Stewart went head to head against Lou Dobbs, and CNN’s coverage of Obama’s birthplace, the so-called “birther”

issue. Those two segments, due to their content had the most audience response and allowed a comparison of my

textual interpretation of the primary text with that of the audience’s reading of the text, as shown in Chapter 8.