Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States by Dannagal Goldthwaite Young (review)

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Dannagal Goldthwaite Young's Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States is an interesting addition to the scholarship of political humor. Young, a professor of communication who has published widely on the effect of political humor on audience and who is also a member of an improv-comedy troupe, writes engagingly about the rise of televised liberal satire and its seeming opposite, conservative opinion programming. Her book is of particular interest for those working in the history and psychology of political humor.

Young begins her book with a brief prologue that asks a rather shocking question: "Are Samantha Bee and Glenn Beck the same?" (3). That is, are liberal satirists the same as conservative talk radio personalities? This question becomes the impetus for the book's larger argument: that televised political satire and conservative political opinion programming, what Young labels "outrage" programming or simply "outrage," are not the same but serve similar needs for their audiences. She advances the notion that liberal political satire and conservative "outrage" have parallel psychological effects on their audiences and concludes that they look different because of "the different psychological frameworks of liberalism and conservatism, which account for distinct psychological traits and aesthetic preferences among their creators and audiences" (5). Ultimately, she declares that both liberal political satire and outrage programming are necessary for a properly functioning democratic society and that outrage programming can mobilize its respective audience in a way that liberal satire cannot.

The book contains eleven chapters and a prologue. In the first three chapters, Young explores political satire and outrage in the United States in the 1950s-'60s, discussing the changes in media regulations, technologies, and political polarization and how these changes created the need for a second generation of satire and outrage at the end of the twentieth century. Chapters 4 through 9 investigate the psychological effects of irony and satire, covering how irony and satire are comprehended by the brain, how audience characteristics contribute to the appreciation of them, and the psychological roots of political ideology. Young connects the psychological characteristics and aesthetic preferences of liberals and conservatives to their affinity for (and production of) satire and outrage, respectively. Young ends this section by taking up the question of why people consume satire and outrage programming and how they perceive it. She argues that many of the functions and consequences of satire for people on the left are quite similar to those of outrage for people on the right, despite their obvious differences in both content and aesthetics.

Chapter 10 looks at two instances of liberals and conservatives engaged in "playing against type": the failed liberal attempt at outrage radio (Air America) and the failed conservative attempt at political satire (Fox's ½ Hour News Hour). Young also considers how political satire and outrage changed under the Trump presidency. The final chapter insists on rethinking these genres, their correlating ideologies, and the people who create and consume them. Young states, "Instead of hating or condemning the other side for holding contrasting views, one could think of these two ideologies and their accompanying psychologies as necessary subsystems that allow society to function as a whole" (6). However, Young also insists that conservative outrage is better at fostering elite social and cultural propaganda due to its internal logic and the nature of its audiences and that it is therefore better at mobilizing its respective audiences, while liberal satire remains a more efficient genre for subversion and rumination.

The biggest strength of Irony and Outrage is that it breaks complex subjects down into easily digestible chapters. For example...