A Rhetorical Criticism of Hillary Clinton in Political Satire and Political Parody

Abstract

Between the years of 1992 through 2016, Hillary Clinton was framed rhetorically by various forms of political humor, including political satire and political parody. These messages were disseminated across television and the Internet in ways that depicted Clinton as a “threat” to the myth of the cis-gendered, white male presidency. However, Clinton attempted to participate in mediated humor to blunt the negative characterizations of her in entertainment media. This dissertation examines how television humor and online platforms for humor contributed to the humorous, and often sexist, framing of “Hillary Clinton.”

More specifically, this project analyzes how Hillary Clinton’s personality, character, political ambition, and gender identity were rhetorically framed in mediated humor and how these frames circulated widely across these texts. I propose the concepts of the political killjoy and comedic grandstanding as humor strategies that comedians used to depict Clinton and that Clinton used in turn to boost her own relatability. In Chapter 1, I explore how late-night shows, including Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, made arguments about Clinton’s political image as first lady, senator, secretary of state, and presidential candidate. I focus on television programs that implement political satire and/or political parody for at least part of their humor. In Chapter 2, I trace various forms of online political humor that were created during Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns. These texts include parody articles and humor videos on the Onion, videos created for Funny or Die, humor articles on College Humor, and Internet memes posted to Reddit and KnowYourMeme.com. While sexism was present in many of the television texts in this study, the Internet humor texts often circulated more vulgar and misogynistic frames about Hillary Clinton. And in Chapter 3, I analyze examples of Clinton’s appearances on televised and online humor, beginning in 1992 and continuing through her televised and online humor appearances during her own 2016 presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton participated in mediated political humor to portray her marriage as stable, project her knowledge about policy, and frame herself as self-deprecating, especially when selling books and reinforcing her electability as U.S. president.