Sarah Silverman’s new series, I Love You, America, aims to turn the touchiest topics of the time, like mass incarceration and global warming, into discussions, not debates. According to Wired, Silverman wants to connect with people so that they can have a non-aggressive conversation about politics.
Silverman will do this through a mixture of field interviews and in-studio meet-ups. She wants to put “un-like-minded people” together and demonstrate human similarities, reports Wired. Series producer Adam McKay told Wired he wants to see the country “get back to a grounded place where we’re not looking at right versus left, but corruption versus honesty.”
But when all talk shows seem to be on one end of the spectrum or the other, is there room for a “political” talk show?
Talk shows are often limited by their own set up, Wired writes. The guests, the monologues, the jokes, can all be hit-or-miss. And in times like these, is tragedy really that funny? But those hosts who have stepped outside of the conventional guidelines, like Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert, seem to have struck a chord with their viewers, reports Wired, with their “raw, humorless commentary on healthcare and gun control.” Public discourse on topics such as these rarely end with any actual policy change, Wired writes, but Kimmel, for example, has been able to use “lucidity and compassion” to center the discussions around these topics on his show.
Wired writes that maybe Silverman hopes to reveal something similar with I Love You, America. Perhaps she is trying to just get some sincerity from people around the country that can go beyond a quick laugh.
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