February 14, 2015
TIMES TEN?:
Waiting for the Conservative Jon Stewart : A unified theory of why political satire is biased toward, and talk radio is biased against, liberals in America. (Oliver Morrison, FEBRUARY 14, 2015, The Atlantic)
Soon after Jon Stewart arrived at The Daily Show in 1999, the world around him began to change. First, George W. Bush moved into the White House. Then came 9/11, and YouTube, and the advent of viral videos. Over the years, Stewart and his cohort mastered the very difficult task of sorting through all the news quickly and turning it around into biting, relevant satire that worked both for television and the Internet. [...]But six years in, Obama's party has been thoroughly trounced in the midterms and publicly excoriated by right-wing politicians, yet there's a dearth of conservative satirists taking aim, even though the niche-targeted structure of cable media today should make it relatively easy for them to find an audience.
The audience for his show topped out at something like 2.5 million. His predecessor, Rush Limbaugh, pulls something like 15 to 25 million. And the universally acknowledged best part of his show (confession, I've never seen it), was a Limbaugh clone : Steven Colbert.
The actual question is, why can the left only get laughs if it rips government and the media (just like the right does)? There's an insight to be had there.
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 14, 2015 2:32 PM
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