The United States of America is known as one of the most important democracy around the globe. For many other countries, the American democracy is an example that they would like to implement. In each strong democracy, political satire is a manner to dissent and protest against politicians’ actions and behaviour. In the following paragraphs, we will try to speak a little about the political satire in the American society.

Role of political satire

Even if political satire is considered to be funny and is used as entertainment, the role of political satire is to correct those wrong behaviours of politicians and government. Sometimes it is difficult to consider if it is wrong or just it is our opinion, but political satire’s role is to highlight the errors that are made during the government process. Unfortunately, political satire may not provide solutions to these errors; it can only bring to the public attention these errors and create something funny for the audience. Another role of political satire could be education of the future politicians, in order to avoid the mistakes from previous politicians.

First political satires in the American society

The first political satires on the American continent appeared during the first political disputes. Because satire was present in the British society, it has been brought in America. One of the best political satirist was Benjamin Franklin in his work “Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One”. Other methods that were used as political satires of the beginnings of politics in America are cartoons. Cartoons were used at that times and are used even nowadays. An important aspect that supports political satire in the United States of America is that this kind of protest against the politicians is supported by the First Amendment.

How political satire looks like in the modern America society?

The American society has changed and the political satire in the United States has changed. The only thing that is similar is that democracy is still there, in the United States. Nowadays, political satire is strongly related with television. In the modern times, there were many films and televisions shows that have criticized politics by using political satire. The first American satires have been released on television in 1960’s and starting from then these satires have become more and more flourishing. Some of the best known American satires that have been released on television include shows such as “Saturday Night Live”, “Weekend Update” or “The Daily Show” and movies such as “Bananas”, “Bulworth”, “Wag the Dog”, “The Simpsons” or “Our Brand Is Crisis”. These are just part of the most important political satires that were done in the last twenty five years. But the shows that we have mentioned before have more than twenty five years of existences in the politics in the United States.

Mass culture satire on the rise, why?

American mass (pop) culture is full of satire websites dedicated to funny, and sometimes dead serious, issues. For example, in the year of 2017 – satire website of misbehaving nannies appeared on the web and it’s a perfect example of how Americans make joke of different parts of our lives. Be it nanny employment in this example, be it something totally different.

Nowadays, political satire is very used in the United States politics. But this is the proof of a healthy democracy and we are sure that political satire will remain part of the American society for many years to come.