Includes an anecdote about USDA information officer John Baker's response to U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy after receiving a letter questioning some of the statements Baker was assumed to have made, as supposed evidence he was sympathetic to Communism. Another anecdote involves food served in a USDA buffet.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
212 p., Examines writers, such as Louise Bennett, Aimé Césaire, Junot Díaz, Zora Neale Hurston, Derek Walcott, and Anthony Winkler, who engage humor to challenge representations of people of African descent within canonical Western texts and forms.
27 pages, via online journal, This study explored whether satire (an emotional blend of humor/indignation) can minimize the emotional tradeoffs researchers have documented for humorous appeals about climate change. Using a sample of U.S. young adults, we conducted a 2 (humor: present/absent) × 2 (indignation: present/absent) + 1 (control) experiment in which we manipulated a climate change segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live! Our evidence suggests that it is possible for a late-night host to affect young adults’ climate change risk perception and behavioral intentions under certain conditions. Moderation analyses indicated that avoiding humor helped close the partisan gap in risk perception between Republicans and Democrats.