The Jon is Gone

On Monday, we got our first glimpse of the new-look Daily Show with Trevor Noah.  The show, for the most part, was the same old Daily Show, right down to the dick jokes… about the Pope.

Noah, a South African stand-up and relative unknown to most U.S. audiences, did some solid material and plied his stand-up honed chops to great effect drawing out a few big laughs with little more than a sheepish grin (see above) in his opening monologue.  

What I find interesting about the monologue (see below), however, is that it was Noah’s first real opportunity to reach out to the Daily Show audience and attempt to fill the void left in the wake of the absence of one of the most influential public figures of the last decade—Jon Stewart.

In the monologue, Noah pays homage to Stewart by thanking him personally and accepting the challenge to guard against “bullshit” before turning his attention to anything topical or satirical.  The monologue, in this way, functioned a sort of transitional ritual whereby Noah introduced himself to his new (and now massive) audience, attempted to reunite those members of the audience who feel alienated by his presence behind the anchor desk—since he’s neither white, American, nor a woman—and begin the work of moving that audience back toward the goals and ideals of the Daily Show.  It was a kind of truncated inaugural address not unlike the ones given by newly elected Presidents.

Now, Trevor Noah is not the President and he was not addressing the nation for the first time as such—just imagine what the birthers would do with that image.  Nevertheless, he did step into a particularly important symbolic role for American political culture and it was his first official act as host of the nation’s favorite fake news outlet.  In this way, his three-minute opening bit was very similar to an inaugural address both situationally and, as mentioned above, functionally.

For rhetorical scholars of genre—or categories of public address—these characteristics (situation and function), together with form, may indicate generic participation.  Form, in this case, seems to be where the generic comparison breaks down.  After all, Noah was primarily just telling jokes and even though POTUS may deliver a one-liner or two to in January after being sworn in, they’ve never been side-splitters. 

Even so, Noah’s deference to his predecessor is particularly reminiscent of a newly installed President paying tribute to the previous administration.  This element of praise for the outgoing host situates the discourse squarely in the present, the here-and-now.  It marks Noah’s opening monologue as what we call epideictic rhetoric.  The same kind of rhetoric used in a Presidential inaugural.  So the style—the jokes—is clearly different, but the form, perhaps was more similar than it seems.

On its face, a comparison between the host of a late-night comedy show and the President may seem absurd, but the transitional and ritualistic nature of the monologue make a particularly good example of the inaugural genre.  Well, an inaugural with jokes, anyway.  If nothing, we were reminded on Monday to ask not what The Daily Show can do for us.  But to ask was The Daily Show can do for our country.

For more on generic criticism and presidential inaugurals I would encourage my reader to check out Karhlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson's book Presidents Creating The Presidency: Deeds Done in Words.  It doesn't suck.  Not one bit.