Post by Cynthia Chris, City University of New York

Late in July, a lion named Cecil became an Internet sensation. Unfortunately, his global glory was posthumous: on July 1, an American dentist named Walter Palmer shot Cecil. News accounts report that a professional hunter and guide, who the dentist paid $50,000 or so, lured the lion out of a conservation park and onto private farmland. Both the hunter and the farmer have been arraigned on poaching charges, and Zimbabwe has launched extradition proceedings against Palmer. At this writing, Palmer, who returned to Minnesota after the hunt, appears to be in hiding.

By some accounts, Cecil was already a star at Hwange National Park. He was a handsome example of just the kind of charismatic megafauna that draws tourists on safari, and supporters to environmental causes (small, slimy, or scaly creatures, not so much). He was well documented by picture-taking tourists as well as by researchers from Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Unit. Since 2008, Cecil had worn a satellite-tracking collar for the group, which is studying the declining population of the Southwest African lion; Palmer’s guide seems to have tried to destroy the device after the animal’s death to hide evidence of the illegal hunt. So it should come as little surprise that when details of the animal’s death emerged—Zimbabwe officials made an announcement on July 25—social media lit up. What did this sudden burst of interest in lion poaching mean? Initial observations seemed to suggest that social media users’ engagement with political issues is fickle, and that privileged white Americans care more about one lion than they do about crisis-level racist violence that has been in the news steadily for over a year, since the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, July 17, 2014. I’m not so sure that a surge in Facebook shares is indicative of anything so dire; at worst, however, it might mean that most of what passes for politics on social media is direly superficial.

A first wave of responses to the news of Cecil’s killing was mournful, disgusted, and angry. When I posted an early Guardian story (which misidentified Cecil’s killer as a Spaniard) on the subject to Facebook, a friend posted the following: “What the hell, humanity?”; another, “People—especially wealthy people—are such shits.” Still another posted a link to Yelp, where people were commenting about the lion’s death on Palmer’s dental practice’s webpages. Some wished Palmer a death as gruesome as the one he had inflicted on Cecil. Animal rights activists and animal lovers alike gathered to protest at the Palmer’s shuttered dental practice in the suburban Minneapolis area, and dropped stuffed toy lions, leopards and bears at the doorstep, creating a makeshift shrine.

Within days, online petitions set agendas and garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures. One at whitehouse.gov called for Palmer’s extradition and quickly reached 100,000 signatures, a threshold that often leads to public comment by President Obama. By August 3, over 1.2 million people signed a call for the U.S. and E.U. to ban importation of animal parts taken as hunting trophies. Almost as many petitioned Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, to demand an end to the practice of issuing licenses to kill endangered species, and to implore the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize listing African lions under the Endangered Species Act and to enforce existing laws that would prevent hunters like Palmer from importing illegally obtained animal parts.

This is not to say that social media responded to Cecil’s death uniformly.

Some observers lamented all the attention paid to the loss of one big cat, while human injustices proliferate. On July 29, feminist writer Roxane Gay tweeted, “I’m personally going to start wearing a lion costume when I leave my house so if I get shot, people will care.” Later in the week, she wrote a more thoughtful, even wrenching op-ed for the New York Times, which pointed out that too many people have more empathy for Cecil—not only on social media, but on late-night TV, where Jimmy Kimmel shed tears for the lion—than for the victims of police violence, whose deaths are too often burdened with blame: “There are always those,” wrote Gay, “who wonder what the fallen did to deserve what befell them. He shouldn’t have been walking down that street. She should have been more polite to that police officer. He shouldn’t have been playing with a toy gun in park. We don’t consider asking such questions of a lion.”

She’s right, of course, as are other bloggers who wrote passionately last week on the necessity to keep police brutality and terroristic white supremacist violence at the top of the media agenda. While there is a sustained critique of police brutality, bolstered in part by the remarkable use of social media to build the #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName movements, there is also far, far too much indifference, and antipathy, toward the victims.

But a great deal of social media activity—all those easy retweets, shares, “likes,” and electronic signatures—is reactive, impulsive, and not necessarily indicative of a great deal of investment in any particular idea. Sure, clicktivism has its proponents, but tears jerked by news of Cecil’s death were quick to dry. By July 31, the lion was noticeably less visible, at least on Facebook. Follow-up stories (one erroneously reporting the death of the male expected to take over Cecil’s pride) barely registered. Nevertheless, the world’s best known conservationist, Jane Goodall, found a silver lining in the groundswell of opposition to poaching; indeed, legislation that would expand restrictions on trade in animal trophies was promptly introduced in Congress, and major airlines banned some trophies as cargo.

So, claims that “Cecil news” had pushed other issues off of electronic news feeds seemed premature. In the short run, social media trends are poor indicators of the greater zeitgeist (though tracking longer term trends may be informative), and that to make too much of a temporary blip on the screen may be to appear to suggest that good politics are single-issue politics. This can’t—and can’t be allowed—to be true. In fact, the outrage over Cecil’s death seems to be driven as much by rage against the “1 percent” as it is about animal cruelty or the sixth extinction. After all, the $50,000 or so that Palmer paid to kill the lion is more than three times what a person earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 earns in a year of 40-hour work weeks.

In other words, when social media buzzes with the latest lost dog story or dead lion, is not the case that one issue thoroughly displaces another. It is that there are too many tragedies, too many crises, and too much violence of many kinds to take in at a glance, on any screen or page.

We must recognize that environmental issues, from global warming to wildlife protection, are moral imperatives and human rights issues. It is not only possible but essential to fight for justice and against exploitation on multiple fronts. We must remember Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and Samuel DeBose. Sandra Bland and Raynette Turner. And others far too many others to mention in this short space. To name another victim of corrupt bloodlust—this time, a non-human one, Cecil—is not to claim equivalence between the animal and individual human subjects, and doing so doesn’t trade one issue for another. The Internet is big enough for more than one kind of rage. It has to be.

Post by Bradley Schauer, University of Arizona

Much of the press coverage of David Letterman’s retirement has framed it as the end of an era. According to this account, the traditional late night talk show – pioneered by Steve Allen in the ’50s, brought to its classical peak by Johnny Carson, and reaching its creative apex with Letterman’s baroque, ironic approach beginning in 1982 – has been rendered obsolete by a new emphasis on social media and viral videos. Even Letterman himself recently admitted that his show’s failure to embrace YouTube and Twitter was a problem: “What I’m doing is not what you want at 11:30 anymore… I hear about things going viral, and I think, ‘How do you do that?’”

Letterman in a suit of velcro, 1984.

On one hand, the differences between Letterman’s show and those of his youthful competitors are overstated. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and the rest still adhere closely to the traditional late night formula: monologue, desk piece, two guests and a musical act. And Letterman, particularly in the first 2/3 of his career, specialized in short remote videos (Dave works the Burger King drive-thru) and spectacle (Dave wears a Velcro suit) that would have lent themselves to online distribution. Much of Letterman’s declining ratings with young viewers can be simply attributed to his age: a 68-year-old who makes jokes about the Andrews Sisters and Lorne Greene is never going to win the 18-49 demo.

On the other hand, Fallon’s YouTube clips do receive exponentially greater hits than Letterman’s, and it is due to more than Fallon’s aw-shucks charm. Letterman’s inability to go viral is a byproduct of his unique approach to the talk show format, one rooted in traditional modes of viewership. Whereas the newer shows’ short, self-contained segments are constructed for easy accessibility and viral distribution, Letterman rewarded the dedicated viewer. It was not only funnier if you watched the entire program, it was funnier if you watched every night. Strange jokes that were barely funny on their own became hilarious as they were repeated, out of context, across an episode and for weeks afterwards. In this way, Letterman’s show was truly cult television, creating an insular community of viewers that prided themselves on their separation from the mainstream. It was no surprise (except apparently to Letterman) when the more accessible Jay Leno began beating him in the ratings after the honeymoon period of the mid-‘90s.

Along the same lines, Letterman’s funniest moments were rarely as funny when decontextualized from the show’s offbeat comic sensibility. More than anti-comedy, Letterman’s humor is typically a blend of two contradictory impulses: irony and sincere pleasure in the mundane. The purest example is “Will It Float?”, the recurring segment in which Letterman and Paul Shaffer would earnestly debate whether or not an item would float before two models threw it into a tank of water. The audience enjoys the overblown, ironic trappings associated with the skit (including a theme song and a hula-hoop dancer), but is also encouraged to take genuine pleasure in the question of whether or not the item will, in fact, float. Letterman satirizes the entertainment industry by valorizing the trivial. But the mundane does not make for effective YouTube clips – Stupid Pet Tricks can’t possibly compete when put up against the entire internet.

The newer shows’ heightened emphasis on celebrity guests is another important distinction. The usual observations about Fallon’s obsequiousness vs. Letterman’s disdain for modern Hollywood celebrity culture seem roughly accurate. The key difference, though, was that Letterman was the undisputed star of his show, his personality and sense of humor dominating and permeating every aspect. Fallon and the rest follow Leno’s example, acting as genial emcees who each night willingly take a backseat to their guests. And while Letterman was rarely as severe to guests as his reputation would indicate, it was usually clear whether or not he was interested in what they had to say. If he was, the interview had the potential to become a genuine conversation that revealed more of the guest than the faux-spontaneity of Fallon’s parlor games or James Corden’s skits.

On the set of NBC’s “Late Night with David Letterman,” 1982.

Letterman’s show at its best had a loose, improvisational quality that hearkened back to Steve Allen more than to Carson. Especially during the low production values of the NBC years, it was as though Letterman were hosting the funniest public access show of all time. He was unafraid to use a sense of duration as comic fodder: for instance, cold-calling a CBS executive and then waiting over a minute in awkward silence for the secretary to see if he was available. As the years went by, and Letterman stopped attending rehearsal, the spontaneity only increased, with the host showcasing his gift for language in rambling shaggy dog stories told at his desk. (In his excellent show, Craig Ferguson would take these qualities to their extreme, ensuring that he would never be considered for the 11:30 slot.) Again, this type of humor does not work when reduced to internet clips where viewers demand instant gratification.

The outlook for late night talk shows is grim, with ratings only about half of what they were 15 years ago. I remember my students in 2010 vehemently supporting “Team Coco” during Conan O’Brien’s ouster from The Tonight Show, only to admit that none of them actually watched the show, but knew O’Brien entirely from YouTube clips and Twitter. Networks seem to value YouTube hits, but it has never been clear exactly how they are monetized in any substantial way. Taking into account the fragmentation of the post-network era, and the relative interchangeability of this new generation of late night hosts, it seems as though David Letterman’s legacy will be as the last real star of late night television, and, in all likelihood, as one of the last great American broadcasters. If there is a new David Letterman out there, his or her type of comedy will not find a welcome home on network television.