April 17, 2005
THE UNSPEAKABLE IN LOVE WITH THE UNWATCHABLE:
Why John Stewart Is All the Rage (Harry Stein, Spring 2005, City Journal)
To say Jon Stewart enjoys an adoring press is like saying Bill Gates has a few bucks. In story after glowing story, the boyish 42-year-old host of Comedy Central’s hit fake newscast, The Daily Show, and author of the best-selling fake history text America (The Book) comes off as a lighthearted, twenty-first-century Diogenes: a fearless truth teller in an age of shameless pandering.As Newsweek had it in a typically rapturous cover story, Stewart is a man “bravely battling pomposity and misinformation,” his TV show “a fearless social satire” and a “work of genius.” “When future historians come to write the political story of our times,” intoned Bill Moyers on his recently ended PBS show, “they will first have to review hundreds of hours of a cable television program called The Daily Show. You simply can’t understand American politics in the new millennium without The Daily Show.” “Mr. Stewart has turned his parodistic TV news show into a cultural force significantly larger than any mere satire of media idiocies,” chimed in the New York Times’s Frank Rich in a column entitled jon stewart’s perfect pitch, one of—count ‘em— 16 he’s written lauding the comedian. Along with such over-the-top encomia, The Daily Show has won multiple Emmys and even several prestigious journalism prizes, including a Peabody Award and the Television Critics Association Award for Outstanding Achievement in News and Information (beating out real news shows).
While all this is certainly heady for Stewart and his fans, what does it mean? After all, the fair-minded viewer might find the half-hour show intermittently humorous, but he won’t detect anything “fearless” or even especially original in it. In truth, Stewart’s elevation to near-iconic status says more about those doing the elevating than about the comedian himself. His “bravery” and much-vaunted grasp of political nuance consists mostly of his embrace of every reflexive assumption shared by every litmus-tested liberal holding forth at every chic Manhattan dinner party.
It's not his fault that all comedy is conservative. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 17, 2005 11:35 PM
I enjoyed it for a while, but stopped watching in the runup to the election when it seemed to become little more than the Humor Division of the DNC. Heavy-handed partisanship is the death of good humor.
Posted by: PapayaSF at April 18, 2005 12:21 AMGearing up to be the next Bill Mahr probably won't seem as headdy a career for Stewart or his supporters a few years from now.
Posted by: John at April 18, 2005 1:22 AMBill Maher is dreadful. He's a C-list comedian milking some controversy for all it's worth. His show is utterly humorless unless you're of the "Chimpy von Bushitler is the DEVIL!" mindset. He's like Michael Moore without the knack for self-promotion. At least Jon Stewart makes me laugh now and then. And watching his post-election broadcasts were really funny, although I suspect not intentionally.
Posted by: Governor Breck at April 18, 2005 8:27 AMWhen future historians come to write the political story of our times, intoned Bill Moyers on his recently ended PBS show, they will first have to review hundreds of hours of a cable television program called The Daily Show. You simply cant understand American politics in the new millennium without The Daily Show.
Ah, more noxious gas from Bill Moyers. Whenever I hear "new millennium" language, I feel like barfing.
I'll throw in a defense of Maher here. I've watched nearly all his shows this year, and he's had a good amount of conservatives/Republicans on and given them all a fair chance to speak. Ross-Lehtinen, Perle, O'Reilly, Gov. Murkowski, Tucker Carlson, Tommy Thompson, Whitman. He's openly liberal and hostile to religion, which is refreshing to hear from the left, and he's also admitted many times that the left may very well be wrong about Iraq and the Middle East (though he still wants to wait for history to judge) and he's argued with his (still mostly) lefty panelists on that matter.
Posted by: Matt C at April 18, 2005 10:25 AMBut Stewart is, on occasion, very funny. The story on the war protestor who chained himself to an unused door of the wrong building was laugh-out-loud funny.
Posted by: Mike Earl at April 18, 2005 10:27 AMThe Daily Show never appealed to me after 9/11, though it had previously been one of the few shows I made a point to catch. Its schtick of "The news is stupid" didn't quite sit right anymore with a world wide war to be waged. Even they knew times had changed when they dropped "The most important television news progam...EVER" from the intro.
I think the switch of administrations had a big effect as well. Before 2000, the "news" humor was about how ridiculous Clinton & the Dems were and the "culture" humor was about how stupid hicks & the religious are. After 2000, both the "news" and "culture" bits were ridiculing the same side of the political divide, so it necessarily became a much more partisan show.
Posted by: b at April 18, 2005 10:30 AM