My research was inspired by my class during my semester at Oxford, where I studied the effects of political correctness on comedy.

We are at a particularly polarizing moment in American history that is a potential breeding ground for demagoguery, especially considering it is an election year. Demagoguery is a polarizing, irrationally argued discourse that appeals to people’s prejudices by making promises to protect an in group and punish an out group through practices which violate proper democratic deliberation. A common misconception is that demagoguery is a lone individual that can seemingly come out of nowhere, but demagogues are a result of a culture of demagoguery which is actually an over-exaggerated form of democracy. 

Stephen Colbert’s place in my research is his status a politically adjacent comedian with a clear bias. He claims he is not, nor wants to be, a “player” in the political game, but his five-night-a-week, politics-forward talk show says otherwise. In the election years since The Late Show with Stephen Colbert started airing, he has performed live monologues after each night of the democratic and republican national conventions. Colbert paints very different pictures of each party when he covers essentially the same event on each side of the aisle. While he makes fun of everyone, his jokes during the RNC liken Republicans to Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members whereas his jokes during the DNC are more lighthearted and make fun of Joe Biden’s ice cream affinity and aviator sunglasses. This has made me curious as to whether he is a demagogue, the possibility of good demagogues existing, and if he may be a good demagogue.

Suzanne Leaptrot '25

Mentor: Maj. Adam Cody, Assistant Professor, English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies
Major: English
Hometown: McLean, Virginia

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