Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” star Jordan Klepper has now produced seven of his “Fingers the Pulse” specials, with another one on the way. And if there’s anything he’s learned from his time out in the field, it’s that Americans love to talk to people with a camera.
“When you get out into the wild of America, you are constantly surprised by what people are actually talking about,” says Klepper, who has been with “The Daily Show” for more than 12 years. “Americans are a lot more creative than we give them credit for — as far as conspiracy theories go, logic for political beliefs. I don’t know if we’re evolving or devolving over the last 10 years of doing it, but I do get a pretty good sense of how the cultural norms have shifted pretty drastically since I began ‘Fingers the Pulse.'”
Klepper notes that before Donald Trump started spreading birtherism lies about President Obama, the idea was considered something racist that you wouldn’t say to a person with a camera.
“And within months, when Donald Trump started talking about this birther conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was a secret Muslim, I found us going from 1 in 10 people wanting to talk about birtherism to suddenly 7 or 8 out of 10 people wanting to talk about birtherism. It really just articulated that in this time that we’re living in, the cultural norms are dictated by the commander-in-chief. The person who gets all the attention. And people are taking their marching orders as what they can talk about, how they should talk about things and whether or not they want to fact check the reality of what they’re saying. That has fallen by the wayside. And now the most important thing is to articulate an opinion that you saw online that you’ve made a part of your identity — and feel no guilt or responsibility if that opinion is proved to be hypocritical or simply incorrect.”
