Trump's a Joke_ Satire Saved the Day

Show Transcript

Trump's a Joke: Satire Saved the Day

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: In a new poll, nearly 40% of respondents said the idea of a Trump Biden matchup in 2024 made them feel exhausted, and according to politics and satire expert, Dr. Sophia A. McLennan, the only way to cure this overwhelming political fatigue is through comedy. Specifically satire .Stay with us. 

[00:00:29] We have a former president who's under indictment for an obstruction and mishandling classified documents after his defeat, a violation of the Espionage Act.

[00:00:40] Now that certainly isn't funny. That same former president also is under indictment for hush money paid to former adult film star Stormy Daniels. And is the subject of investigations relating to the January 6th, 2020 attack on the Capitol and efforts to rig the Georgia election results. None of that is funny either. But Dr. McClennan believes that comedy, especially satire, can provide the antidote for the depression, anxiety, and frustration that we feel in having to pay attention to the politicians and issues that exhaust us. A Harvard and Duke University alum and founding director of Penn State's Center for Global Studies, she's the author of a new book, Trump Was a Joke, How Satire Made Sense of a President Who Didn't. Dr.. McLennan, thanks for joining us on the Lean to the Left Podcast. 

[00:01:40] Dr. Sophia McClennen: Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:42] Bob Gatty: We're happy too. Now, I understand that this isn't your maiden voyage in the book writing activity, right?

[00:01:51] Dr. Sophia McClennen: No. 

[00:01:53] Bob Gatty: Are you just gonna say no or are you gonna expand on that? 

[00:01:57] Dr. Sophia McClennen: Trump got lucky 13, so that seems good. Yeah. Trump, the book about Trump's satire was my 13th book. 

[00:02:04] Bob Gatty: Your 13th. And you've written, I think you told me that you've written three other ones about political satire. 

[00:02:11] Dr. Sophia McClennen: Yeah. I'm interested in the efficacy of political satire and advancing democracy.

[00:02:18] Bob Gatty: Okay. All right. Okay. So for many Americans, the Trump presidency in its aftermath have been exhausting and for many emotionally draining. My question is, how does political fatigue like that endanger our democracy? 

[00:02:34] Dr. Sophia McClennen: I think it goes without saying, right? If the electorate is exhausted, then it's less likely to, one, pay attention to the news and two, engage in the political process, whether it's contributing to campaigns canvassing and getting involved in, any of the various ways one can get involved prior to elections.

[00:02:57] And then finally, Perhaps the most important piece, voting itself. So when folks are depressed and fatigued, we see a reduction in turnout. 

[00:03:07] Bob Gatty: I, think what you said just then is just absolutely correct. I, in my own experience I was talking the other day to someone in a casual setting.

[00:03:20] We were talking a little bit about, about Politics and the news and so on. And that individual said, actually it was somebody I interviewed for another episode of this podcast. That individual said that he had stopped listening and watching the news a long time ago because he just got sick of it and it made him depressed.

[00:03:42] And my thought at the time was how can you possibly stay engaged if you, I. If you're not paying attention to what's going on. And he said I just can't trust any news source. What news source can I trust? And, I thought, man, you're just swallowing the Trump line.

[00:04:03] That's exactly what he wants you to think. 

[00:04:06] Dr. Sophia McClennen: Your friend has a point. One of the things that we have as an overarching element in US News is that the dominant vehicle for US news is corporate news. Sure. There's a distinction to be made between something like Fox News and CNN, but it's not as big as a distinction as we might like.

[00:04:28] CNN still wants to keep you glued, and it's still gonna give you a certain amount of hype, of fear and anxiety and breaking news, how often can the news be breaking to keep you tuned in? And so that exhaustion, when people know that they're being manipulated, which frankly they are. Folks want to keep them glued to the tv.

[00:04:52] And so because they want that it makes sense that viewers are becoming more savvy and recognizing that they're being pulled in sucked into a story. So there's a huge range in veracity across various sources of corporate news, but there is a through line, which is that the corporate news is fighting for your attention and it's going to do what it can to keep you tuned in.

[00:05:20] Bob Gatty: You're absolutely right, especially the advent of social media and the reliance on clicks. I know in my own case I have a blog site, and when I'm writing my headline for that, for whatever blog I'm writing that day, I'm thinking, okay. What is going to get the most attention here?

[00:05:41] What's gonna get me the most clicks because I need those clicks. And, that's just me. I'm just a one little guy. When you're talking about, about a major news operation, a major news network that just is magnified, I think it's clear that's what's going on and people are getting, like you say, people are getting more savvy about that.

[00:06:05] Dr. Sophia McClennen: That brings us back to Trump. Yeah. Because the Trump candidacy was somewhat unusual for us. The news whether it was Fox News or cnn couldn't take their eyes off of him, even though in the early days his polling numbers didn't substantiate it. And his donations. Those are usually the two numbers that sort of track the percentage of coverage a candidate will get.

[00:06:32] Trump didn't have either of those. Instead, what he had was a highly bombastic erratic style that viewers found compelling even either because they loved it or because they were disgusted by it, but they still kept watching it. And we saw that CNN's percentage right of viewers went up as they were covering Trump.

[00:06:55] And the joke is that CNN used to cover empty podiums that just said Trump. On the just the waiting for him to show up. And so the news in that campaign really didn't serve the electorate because it was so fascinated by the Trump Circus. And didn't cover the policy. For example, didn't cover the issues that were really critical for the voting public.

[00:07:25] Instead, just what is the crazy thing that Trump said today? That was the news again and again. 

[00:07:32] Bob Gatty: Yeah. They were just sucked in by Trump's craziness. And, he is very, savvy and probably the most savvy that I've ever seen in terms of being able to manipulate the news media. 

[00:07:49] Dr. Sophia McClennen: That's exactly right.

[00:07:50] And he had a lot of confidence. What's interesting about him though, is that he has both a lot of confidence and a lot of anxiety. So we saw him again, trying to suppress stories. That's what got him into trouble with the Stormy Daniels case. So as confident as he was that he could control the narrative, he had a lot of stress. And then those stories would come out because people would say, oh they tried to buy me off on this and that lets me get us back to satire because Seth Meyers had roasted Trump previously at the White House Correspondence Association Dinner. And it was a, the kind of roasting that Trump really, it had really stung him.

[00:08:32] And we fast forward and find out that at one point Trump is saying he will go on Seth's show, but only if Seth Meyers publicly apologizes to him. And there were always these rules. Trump didn't want to have these public appearances unless he had control over them.

[00:08:52] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Okay. What, are some ways that you think that satire helps to improve civic engagement and political knowledge and creates better, more informed citizens? 

[00:09:05] Dr. Sophia McClennen: So if we go back to the story we were talking about where the news media is really not doing its job. 

[00:09:11] It's, attracting viewers because more than informing them, it wants to keep them tuned in. That's the first thing. And so what happens is that the audience for the satirist doesn't expect the satirist to be held to these kinds of standards of information, civic commitment. So when the satarist start sharing news information and framing conversations about politics, the audience finds them more trustworthy. So we started to get this data. This happened during the John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, back to back on the Daily Show. During the George W. Bush years. We started to get this data that said, The public trusts Stephen Colbert more then it trusts cable news, so that doesn't make sense. And so we started looking into why is this the case that you have the public trusting the satarist more? And then the other piece is that there were studies done that asked viewers questions about their knowledge on public issues and what were the media sources they had.

[00:10:25] And we started to see that it was the case that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report had higher knowledge of contemporary political issues than viewers of almost anything else other than say NPR. And Rachel Maddow also ranked very high, but in similarly, at that time, viewers of Fox News had less knowledge than people who watched no news of any kind so, this was starting to tell us, there's something going on here that's different than what we've seen in US history or even global history on news and knowledge. So that's sort of the beginning of seeing what was it about satire that made not just viewers trust the satarist, but that they understood and knew the issues better when they were only getting them from satire.

[00:11:20] And that then leads us into what is it about satire that. Makes it different from traditional news okay. I can tell you about that if you wanna hear. 

[00:11:29] Bob Gatty: Why don't you do that? Tell me that. 

[00:11:31] Dr. Sophia McClennen: So the, concept is that satire doesn't say what it means, right? That's the core thing.

[00:11:38] So you come to me and you're, being interviewed by me and I'm a satirist, okay? And I say George W. Bush. Great president. Or greatest president, and you laugh because that's just funny. And so I've made my point. But I said it in this creative way. That's right.

[00:11:59] Okay. So what it does is it asks the brain to process information in a different way. You, the other version is we're doing a straight, normal non comedic podcast and you come on and I interview and I say, what are we gonna do about this president? He's the worst president we've ever had. True. The brain isn't getting excited to hear that.

[00:12:22] No. So what happens is that you are asking the audience to process information through creativity. This is especially valuable when you're living in a news media landscape that's filled with fear, hype, spectacle, hysteria, and often in many, cases, misinformation and manipulation. 

[00:12:43] So the sadist is able to communicate truth creatively in a way that sort of helps counterbalance those other types of modes of information. 

[00:12:55] Bob Gatty: Was that thunder? I just heard?

[00:12:57] Dr. Sophia McClennen: It is. I'm, but it's a good thing where I'm living that we're getting some thunder cuz we are living in the smokey haze. 

[00:13:04] Bob Gatty: Oh, where do you live?

[00:13:06] Dr. Sophia McClennen: I'm in State College, Pennsylvania. Cause I'm a professor at Penn State.

[00:13:10] Bob Gatty: So, Oh yeah, of course. So you are you're getting that, smoke from Canada? Yeah. Oh, okay. Great. I hope you get a good storm and it wipes it all away. 

[00:13:25] Dr. Sophia McClennen: Yeah. Just not our internet connection. 

[00:13:28] Bob Gatty: Yeah, that's right.

[00:13:29] Okay. All right. Why is it that, that, I maybe answered this question, but anyway, why is it that more people are likely to remember and share information that's delivered to them with humor? 

[00:13:43] Dr. Sophia McClennen: Yeah, that's another, that's actually a piece of knowledge we've had about the power of comedy on the brain for a long time.

[00:13:51] Some of us will remember those high school teachers we had that had these silly, ridiculous acronyms and they would dance around the classroom as they were teaching us something. And the brain does remember. Like moments of mirth, right? Better than just flat. So if you teach through some humor, people will remember it.

[00:14:19] But similarly, the brain remembers things that they learn through fear, too. So what we find though is that it's not typically the case that you're getting information through the kind of level of fear that your brain would want for it to really sear into it. So comedy is, Yeah, it's just always there this this is something we've just known for a really long time.

[00:14:42] You remember things better when you learn them through humor. 

[00:14:47] Bob Gatty: With respect to political issues and political discussion do you really get the depth of knowledge that you need when you watch somebody like Colbert and, his doing his shtick about Trump or whatever, 

[00:15:05] Dr. Sophia McClennen: That's the perfect question because you have to think about the fact that for the most part a lot of news these days is a piece of information and then a panel discussing it. So you are not being asked to form your own opinion. You're just watching other people throw their opinions at each other, and then you'll be the person whose opinion you feel more attached to. So that's nice for you, but it doesn't help you think.

[00:15:34] Whereas satire, like I said, it doesn't tell you what to think. It presents these ideas, like I said in the example on George w. question, greater greatest. It's not telling you what to think. No. It's asking you to process the hubris of this president. It's asking you to process the sort of strange attachment say that the Bush supporters had again, this pales in comparison to what we see with Trump.

[00:16:03] So what it's doing is asking you to think about this in a critical way. So you're, you are being taught not just to work through nuance, but also often the target of satire is faulty logic. So when you're given false choices, satire loves to play with that. So it teaches you to think more logically.

[00:16:27] It teaches you to take pleasure in being clever, which is always good for democracy, and it teaches you to have nuance. And it also interestingly teaches you to get out of that political polarizing piece this side, that side way of analyzing issues. So usually folks are surprised, right? To hear how the satarist will be critical of say for example, the Biden presidency or Obama or things like that, because they will poke fun if they think there's a story there. 

[00:17:02] Bob Gatty: Oh, yeah. They're always poking fun at Biden. The other day the guy tripped. I don't know what he was doing, where he was going. He just tripped. Anybody can trip.

[00:17:13] But it's in the news. The poor guy trips in this picture is in the news because he tripped and, it's all over the place, and Fox News is making fun of him and all that stuff. Come on 

[00:17:24] Dr. Sophia McClennen: Oh yeah. Of course that's true. And, making fun of people's physicality, though that's generally never satire, that's just mockery.

[00:17:33] And that does tend to happen regardless of who's president. And it isn't helpful, but it's very common. Yeah. 

[00:17:42] Bob Gatty: It was part of the whole bullying thing, isn't it? That's a form of bullying I think. 

[00:17:49] Dr. Sophia McClennen: It is. I, think there's a, it depends on how we wanna zoom out of it. On the one hand, it's very easy to mock someone who is perhaps, arguably, the most powerful person on the planet.

[00:18:02] Who does something that makes them look vulnerable and stupid. So you can understand why that's appealing. Regardless, the emperor is naked. That's funny. Yeah. So that's why that happens. If Joe Biden were not, again, arguably the most powerful person on the planet, and he was just an average Joe and he tripped it, would nobody would care.

[00:18:26] So that's how, that, that's what he gets. No that's true. I think he understands that. My sense of his sense of humor is that he gets that. 

[00:18:33] Bob Gatty: Okay. Unlike Trump. Yeah, unlike Trump. So do you teach this stuff at Penn State? Is that what you do? 

[00:18:43] Dr. Sophia McClennen: I rarely get to teach satire. It's not the most common part of my teaching portfolio.

[00:18:51] In fact, most of my teaching is in things like human rights oh, okay. What I research is not directly correlating to what I teach. That's not that uncommon for faculty like me, I'm part of the professional school, the School of International Affairs, and I teach quite a few classes in human rights. In some cases we're doing things like looking at human rights activism that incorporates satirical elements, things like that.

[00:19:19] But that's this kind of thing, like what we're talking about with this book that comes up now and again, I get to teach an undergraduate class every other year here and, when I do that, class is on satire. 

[00:19:31] Bob Gatty: Okay. That's cool. We talked a little bit about social movements social, media.

[00:19:37] How, does social media use satire and in their tactics and, is that more likely to succeed? 

[00:19:44] Dr. Sophia McClennen: So you mean how do social media users use satire? Because 

[00:19:49] Bob Gatty: yeah, 

[00:19:49] Is it. Are you seeing that? Yeah 

[00:19:52] Dr. Sophia McClennen: we do I, think we see more just sort of snarky yeah. Yeah. I think you're right.

[00:20:00] Yeah. And sophisticated satire, that's not uhhuh, that's not always true, but it's. Okay. If you go back and you think about the history of the cartoon, the satirical cartoon, that's really the heart of that story. And the US, of course, has a really vibrant history of using satirical cartoons. Those were the first memes.

[00:20:23] A meme just means that it's very easy to reproduce it, and so you have the capacity through a quick image in a very perhaps no text or very little text to convey a message. And so social media is very it's very easy for folks to do it. In my in the class that I teach on satire, I have my students play with it practice creating satirical political memes..

[00:20:52] So they can see one. On the one hand, it's hard to do a really good one. On the other hand, it's really easy to get one out and so they play with 'em and, what you also see is there's a lot of sort of formulas for this. In any given time, there's maybe a very common set of five to 10 sort of structures for these memes.

[00:21:12] And so people are playing inside ongoing meme versus. So there's the classic one where you see a guy walking next to an attractive woman, but looking back at another woman who looks a lot like the woman he's with. And it's a, what is wrong with you? So people fill in different things for that meme, for example, that kind of thing.

[00:21:34] Or there's a really a Leonardo DiCaprio from the Wolf of Wall Street image and then, that image gets different captions and stuff like that. I suppose important for folks to think about as we enter a new election cycle is the fact that this sort of chatter is going to increasingly be part of the media landscape.

[00:21:56] Our job comes in, right? We're trying to teach media literacy. We're trying to teach people to learn how to make sophisticated decisions based on the information that they get. And it doesn't really matter in a way whether the information comes from them, something as simple as mean if they're doing the critical work on their end.

[00:22:14] And again, that's what makes satirical comedy valuable. Especially things like what we see on shows like John Oliver, ones where you have more long form intense and in depth satirical dives on issues. He teaches his audience how to think critically about the information that they get.

[00:22:33] They take those habits with them wherever they go. And so when they then encounter something absurd, they're much more likely to recognize it. 

[00:22:43] Bob Gatty: Okay. Do you feel like there are some common misconceptions about satire? That it's bad for democracy, that it undermines important institutions and that it's only aim is to distract and entertain?

[00:23:02] Dr. Sophia McClennen: That's absolutely right. And in fact, that's a big part of what I talk about in the book . I mention a piece Malcolm Gladwell did called the Satire Paradox, where he says it seems like satire is making you think, but really it's just a distraction. Or if anything, it keeps you from more significant political engagement except that he's a hundred percent wrong.

[00:23:32] And that's my job is to come out and explain that we just have really no studies, not a single study, not one that says, by watching satire, you're less informed. Or by watching satire, you're less likely to vote or to, again, become active as a member of democracy. There are political science scholars, communication studies, scholars. There's research on this from a range of, disciplines, and there's just no examples. Now, there are things that, that satire can do that don't necessarily help us.

[00:24:13] Okay. One of the things that satire does is it can increase political polarization and it can increase it because satire is what we call boundary heightening comedy. That sounds highly nerdy, but the bottom line is almost all comedy's boundary heightening, unless I make a joke that says all human beings are whatever we like, I like to say everybody poos jokes, right? So those kinds of jokes are about human beings and they can be funny. They don't create boundaries between us. Yeah. Most jokes though are I'm the insider. You are the butt of the joke, right? There's the group that's making fun of another group.

[00:24:57] Okay? And so when that happens, the boundaries between those groups intensify, especially for the group that thinks it's being made fun of. So that gets us back to Trump because the, not only Trump has right, extremely thin skin, but tell me his, entire constituency has a acquired the similar thin skin.

[00:25:24] And also like a defensiveness again, so let's say Seth Meyers makes a joke at Trump's expense. Okay. Trump's gonna whine about it, but then on top of it, his viewers will feel disparaged. So that's going to again, solidify that community in its defense of Trump. So if you're worried about political polarization, for example, that's an example where satire may not be helping.

[00:25:59] I would argue that sure, that's true, but that group is already so vehemently divided from the rest of this nation that there really isn't much that satire's doing to make it worse. But that is one of the things that satire can do to make an issue worse.

[00:26:16] Bob Gatty: There's another factor, at least in my opinion, I probably shouldn't say this, but There's also a certain level of intelligence that's required to get it when satire is used.

[00:26:32] Dr. Sophia McClennen: That's a hundred percent true. Yeah, no, that's a hundred percent true. Yeah. So the other reason why satire is again, good for democracy, is that you have to be smart and you have to be able to infer things, right? And you have to be able to make decisions on your own, right? You have to be able to hold, you basically have to do high order critical thinking, right? And not everyone who votes in this country can do that. 

[00:26:55] Bob Gatty: That's an understatement. That's the point I was leading to because of the certain level of intelligence is required to not support Donald Trump, I think, I guess you could say. And, so those folks who don't make it on that intelligent quotient. They may be the ones that. Don't get it when satire is used. 

[00:27:27] Dr. Sophia McClennen: There's a lot of research on this too, which shows that sort of Republican brain right wing brain, left wing brain. What are they, what is the one type of brain what is the other type of brain like?

[00:27:42] That's not tell, that's not work. I do tell, I can tell, But what we know. Yeah. What we know is, for example Satire is much more attractive to the left in general. And we also know that there's other important factors. Like hierarchical structures, the right wants hierarchy, want certain kinds of authority maybe is less attached to democracy and more attached to strong leaders.

[00:28:16] There's been some interesting studies on this in a variety of ways. There's also research that suggests that the right wing brain is uncomfortable with nuance. An indecision wants things to be black and white. Things like that. I'm not sure that's helpful in a way, because these are situational.

[00:28:37] And contextual. And we don't have long term studies that say 50 years ago this was a difference between the left and the right, but it's certainly the case that you can see that today. When you analyze the differences between what people on the left like to do with their minds and what people on the right like to do with their minds. On the left, we see folks enjoying what we call effortful thinking.

[00:29:02] I e, I want to be mentally challenged. I want a dilemma that I have to think and sort through, and in fact, I feel good when I do that. That's something we don't see happening on the right in the same way. They, tend to have come to a quick conclusion and they hold onto it and there's almost nothing you can do to change their mind stuff.

[00:29:21] Bob Gatty: Yeah. I don't understand. It's the people on the right that are always complaining about Democrats calling them communists for whatever they do. They're communists, but it's the communist form of government that's autocratic and they are the ones who are autocratic. So is it the Democrats or the Republicans who are communists?

[00:29:52] Dr. Sophia McClennen: I don't think we are seeing any communists, but yeah the critique such as it is, has to do with social. Social. Yeah. 

[00:30:01] Bob Gatty: That was a stupid question probably, but 

[00:30:03] Dr. Sophia McClennen: yeah, the social safety net doesn't carry with it a necessary association between whether, 

[00:30:10] Bob Gatty: yeah, it just always for those people or not.

[00:30:12] It just always gets me. I understand why they're, why they are so enamored with, autocratic responses. And yet they criticize Democrats who are opposed to all of that very, strongly. I just don't, I just don't get it. So you're, not teaching satire that much.

[00:30:34] Are, you known in, among your circles your friends and family. Are you known as a funny person, a satire and loving person? Or is just, cuz you wanted to write a book and just a good topic, 

[00:30:49] Dr. Sophia McClennen: which, so you're asking me if I'm funny, right? 

[00:30:53] Bob Gatty: Are you've been pretty serious on this, my kids on this discussion.

[00:30:58] You've been pretty seriously talking about professor stuff and everything and stuff and all that. 

[00:31:05] Dr. Sophia McClennen: But no, I am not a comedian. I just studied them. I was on the Harvard Lampoon when I was an undergrad. Are you aware that was the same era as Conan O'Brien was a year. Huh. Older than I was.

[00:31:19] A number of folks that I worked with went on to work for David Letterman. Yeah. The Simpsons, things like that. So I, certainly like being around people like that, but I am not a content creator. I just analyze it. 

[00:31:34] Bob Gatty: You just analyze it. That's what I do. Yes. 

[00:31:36] Dr. Sophia McClennen: All right. Okay. It's a good job though. I like what I do.

[00:31:40] All right. You got 

[00:31:41] Bob Gatty: kids. Do you have kids? 

[00:31:42] Dr. Sophia McClennen: I do, I have a 20 year old and an 18 year old. Oh, yeah. They don't think I'm that funny either. I, don't. 

[00:31:48] Bob Gatty: Okay. So ladies and gentlemen, we are talking to a person who has written a book about satire and comedy and how that affects politics and people, how people think about politics and everything like that.

[00:32:01] But she admits she's not funny at all. Something wrong with that picture. I'll betcha she is. I bet she is. 

[00:32:08] Dr. Sophia McClennen: Tell us. But I'm very sarcastic. Us. 

[00:32:11] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Are you really? You probably are. Tell us more about your book. 

[00:32:17] Dr. Sophia McClennen: So I, the book really wanted to try to understand how Trump changed US satire. I'd been studying the role, the increasing role of satire in US politics.

[00:32:29] That really shifted after nine 11. And I did a book on Stephen Colbert and then I did a book called The Satire Saving Our Nation. That really took a broader view and I knew that Trump had changed things and I thought, The book that it was worth doing an entire book about it. One of the things about Trump himself was that he was already so absurd and he already was sort of a caricature. And so if you think that the satarist has classic tools in their toolkit and the hammer is exaggeration. And the screw is invective and all of these things that they use to make their point. What I try to describe in the book is that Trump already took most of the tools out of the toolkit.

[00:33:22] So now you were left with the satarist using the mallet. And the Allen wrench. So on the one hand they were more aggressive and a little more blunt and a little more caustic than they had been. But then they also were more creative and more nuanced and more sophisticated in their satire than we had ever seen.

[00:33:45] So I walk through some really good examples of that. I talk about the role, as we mentioned before, of how the US media really created. Trump and how it then became the case that the satarists were trusted even more. Because the cable news was such a disappointment in how it was letting Trump cut control everything all the time.

[00:34:10] Those are some of the big ideas in the book. Okay. Like I said that, Trump really changed satire in a way that was somewhat unexpected. And one of the biggest changes was that usually satarists sort of comment on the system. And often if you think about someone like George Carlin, they don't have a lot of faith the system's ever gonna get itself together. Under Trump, you suddenly saw whether it was Jimmy Kimmel defending healthcare, Seth Meyers explaining to Trump what it means to be a President, Hasan Minaj defending the First Amendment. You had example after example, a satirist that were defending US institutions and defending US democracy, not just commenting on its flaws. So that was something that we had never seen before and I argue that it was the complete failure of the Trump administration to even understand the jobs they were trying to do. That caused the satarist probably the least likely heroes of our democracy to step up and become what I call like the ministry of satire there to defend our nation from these combination of like idiots and evildoers.

[00:35:29] Bob Gatty: Okay. All right. And people can find your book where 

[00:35:34] Dr. Sophia McClennen: They can find it pretty much anywhere. Anywhere. Okay. It's from Rutledge, but you can find it on all the, regular outlets. Okay. 

[00:35:43] Bob Gatty: All right. Good. And it's there now, right? It's done, yes. It's published. It's along with all of your, other dozen books that you've written.

[00:35:53] Yeah. Yeah. So you're, teaching these courses at, Penn State. That's a full-time job, I presume. When do you find time to write all these books? 

[00:36:05] Dr. Sophia McClennen: I like writing. And so you you find the time for the things you love and you do. That's true. Isn't it true things you have to do? Yeah. That's why I do this.

[00:36:15] I luckily love teaching too. So that helps. I won't say I love every single part of my job because that wouldn't just not be true. That's great. Okay. Few faculty members we don't like grading and we don't like meetings, and there's a lot of work as you can imagine. 

[00:36:33] Bob Gatty: You got Anything else you wanna tell me about?

[00:36:36] Dr. Sophia McClennen: No. I think this has been fantastic. I appreciate the chance to talk to you. 

[00:36:40] Bob Gatty: I enjoyed it very much. I learned a lot. 

[00:36:43]