back
22 comments
I didn’t read this but the answer should be that politicians ultimately created political satire by being ridiculous. From there satire flows naturally.
I feel like this blames the individuals rather than the systems. Ultimately all politicians are just reacting to their environment, those who get elected have been selected as "victors", while other personalities get pushed aside. But ultimately this is why most politicians seem very similar, it's just a selection process.
It seems like the question "who invented modern political satire?" can be refined to "at what point does political satire become modern?" Dante's Divine Comedy and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar both offered satirical perspectives on their politician contemporaries, but we aren't considering those to be modern. The article offers:

>differentiated from earlier political prints by iconography, audience, critical function, and the status of the satirist

As it continues we find that the late-17th-century Dutch satirist de Hooghe used a style that moves towards the modern political cartoon on some dimensions, but sticks to a stuffy didactic-prosaic formula in other ways. The conclusion can be inferred: nobody invented modern political satire; it slowly evolved from traditional humor-in-critique by innovations contributed from various people and at various times.

Yeah, I'm unpersuaded as to the definition of "modern" here. A lot of Aristophanes' work (c. 405-423 BC) still holds up today, if one understands the politics of the time.
You usually don't call the antique classicists modern, just after the resurrection of the antique in the renaissance and despisal of all unscientific myths, ghosts and religious rubbish you can call them so.
I do not get it. Ancient or modern the today's satire is still resorting on the same rhetorical strategies employed by Aristophanes, Horace, and Juvenal in the antiquity. Target changes; the need to poke fun – and invite the audiences to rethink those in power – stays.
Around 1500-1509 Hermann Bote invented Till Eulenspiegel, and was hereby the first modern political satirist. Far before de Hooghe 1688
Nobody invented it. The culture invented.
Easy: Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
In the UK, perhaps Armando Iannucci? - “The Day Today” in 1994 to “The Thick of It” and “Veep” 2005 onwards.
Very important. Chris Morris though the leading figure IMO.
Yes Minister is much older.
The early days of The Daily Show and then briefly The Colbert Report did pretty good political satire (at least in my recollection), but back then they were more absurd and satirical and less self-absorbed and preachy. I find Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and the like unwatchable these days.
I think, especially in the US, times have changed. Stephen Colbert used to have a sketch making fun how "even the Mexican Heritage Month is jumping the border" [1] . I can't imagine him making such joke today before being torn apart by his fans and having to do a public apology.

[1] https://imgur.com/tzyNY1L

That's hilarious. What changed? Online lynch mobs?
Less tolerance of casual racism
You're comparing satire to light entertainment. The "Colbert Report" was satire (on cable!), and Colbert's current show is a light entertainment talk show (on a network!). They have different forms, different audiences, and incommensurate goals.

As in South Park, satire even today seems to grant a license to the performer that isn't there in light entertainment.

Here's an example: there's a trope that Colbert, Bill Maher, SNL Weekend Update, and many others use that goes like this:

1. Unstated premise: Anti-$foo politician exists.

2. Premise of joke mentions something that is related to deplorable anti-$foo sentiment

3. Punchline is the comedian attributing an anachronistic anti-$foo street joke to said politician

The only person I ever heard complain about this trope was Norm MacDonald wrt anti-gay conservative pundits who had been outed as gay. (Though it's Norm, so I'm not sure if he was just trying to a get a rise out of a guest or really thought there was some bona fide double-standard going on here.) To be fair the comedian is in a way "laundering" the humor from the old street joke, but most people seem to understand the upshot as showing the object of ire as being out of touch/ignorant/etc.

The humor on the "Colbert Report" was similar, but more intense-- Colbert was publicly playing a homophobic/racist/narcissistic ignoramus built in the mold of a Bill O'Reilly. For years.

In the clip you linked, I'm guessing his character was a) reflexively lumping in the word "hispanic" with the topic of illegal immigration, and b) using that connection as a fear-mongering tactic to persuade his audience to be suspicious of hispanics even in the conceptual domain of a fucking calendar.

Colbert of the Colbert Report usually got away with that-- if a viewer from his audience switched to his show in the middle of it and saw him wearing that hacky getup, they'd likely assume it was satire, suspend disbelief, and look for the upshot of the joke.

But even given that, it didn't always work. Colbert did indeed get flak on "Colbert Report" for taking this approach with a recurring bit about Asians. The bit was built on a long-standing satire trope where a comedian/writer pretends to fix a racist logo, slogan, book, or even a slur itself by shifting it from that target group to an Asian ethnicity. The undertone would be that it's somehow less dangerous or problematic, with an implication that the Asian ethnicity in question is less likely to complain or fight back. You can see Sarah Silverman telling such a joke on an old episode of Conan (for which she was called out), so the trope has been around since at least the 90s. Turns out that people tend to look down on satire which tries to call out prejudice by unwittingly relying on other prejudice.

Regardless of whether you agree with the calling out of those particular bits, the following are true:

1. Sarah Silverman was called out for her satire on a light entertainment show in the 90s

2. Colbert was called out for his satire, even on a satire in the 2000s

3. Colbert of today runs a light entertainment show where the satire of #2 is much less prevalent, which likely explains why he doesn't do bits anything like what he did in the "Colbert Report"

In conclusion, on this particular topic: times have not changed.

Thank you for your time.

Colbert's mimicry of O'Reilly was legendary. Now colbert is O'Reilly. Turns out they all work for the same boss. It's just I was too young to understand that. Just like when you were too young to realize what the WWE was.
I think the article's argument of "...at a specific moment between 1688 and 1690" might be prior art.
Perhaps a parochial view. That sort of hilariously vicious unsentimental eviscerating of culture was predated by a couple of decades in the UK by Spitting Image and Viz.

I'm sure there are predecessors to them as well in UK and other cultures.

I can draw a line between Southpark and (the old) Stephen Colbert
Um fascists. Without them you don't get a movie like the great dictator which sets the tone for contemporary films like the producers and in turn leads to things like don't look up.

The world is ridiculous and satire is an often times an equal and opposite reaction to that absurdity.