Irony and Outrage

The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States

By: Dannagal Goldthwaite Young

Narrated by: Rachel Perry

For almost a decade, journalists and pundits have been asking why we don't see successful examples of political satire from conservatives or of opinion talk radio from liberals. This book turns that question on its head to argue that opinion talk is the political satire of the right and political satire is the opinion programming of the left.

In Irony and Outrage, political and media psychologist Dannagal Goldthwaite Young explores the aesthetics, underlying logics, and histories of these two seemingly distinct genres, making the case that they should be thought of as the logical extensions of the psychology of the left and right, respectively. While the audiences for Sean Hannity and John Oliver come from opposing political ideologies, both are high in political interest, knowledge, and engagement, and both lack faith in many of our core democratic institutions. Young argues that the roles that these two genres play for their viewers are strikingly similar: galvanizing the opinion of the left or the right, mobilizing citizens around certain causes, and expressing a frustration with traditional news coverage while offering alternative sources of information and meaning. One key way in which they differ, however, concludes Young, is in their capacity to be exploited by special interests and political elites.

©2020 Oxford University Press (P)2020 Tantor

Great and biased

I would love to read a deconstruction of this book. I know it’s biased and I agree with all of it but I’d love to learn about the oppositional views.

Holy Sh*t Amazing, Informative, Challenging

I absolutely love this book. I found this author through watching TYT (Youtube Progressive News network) which then led me
Francesca Fiorentini (Activist, comedian, news network host, and youtuber who I recommend to everyone).
This book walks a line through brutal honesty. Psychology is not my subject and sometimes the essays I find hard to swallow, however Dr. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young is upfront with her own bias, critical toward the groups she sees herself in, and is not condescending of the comparative side in her conclusions.
This book helped me understand myself better, my family, relatives, neighbors, community, and the country at large. I'm still frustrated, because of course there are no easy solutions, but her conclusions both made me more tolerant, more self-critical, and left me with the sense that not everyone is beyond reach if we are able to set aside notions of how 'obvious' the truth is while being hostile toward people who have more action based perspectives.
If anyone is a fan of John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, or watches cable news networks, I would recommend this book. I would also further recommend this book to anyone in political science and enthusiasts or students of American History.
I am grateful to writer, researchers, and narrator of this book. Thank you! 10/10 read!