unknown
2004-10-25 17:35:02 UTC
You Can't Be Serious!
Jon Stewart wants to treat politics as a joke-and still teach us a civics
lesson. He can't have it both ways.
By Ken Tucker
Fake news": Jon Stewart originally coined the term to put some distance
between The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and, say, The CBS Evening News With
Dan Rather or Meet the Press. With the jovial incredulity that makes him so
charming, Stewart started regularly reminding viewers and interviewers that
what he and his writing staff did was a "fake news" program, because there
was a great deal of media chatter about how lots of citizens were using The
Daily Show as their primary source of political information.
But because he keeps repeating the joke, and because the hard-news media is
so desperate to appear hip to the critique of conventional reporting that
Stewart lays out nightly, "fake news" has gone from wry mantra to annoyingly
pervasive cliché pretty fast. In fact, the notion of Stewart as the Joker
Who Speaks Truth to Power has now gotten away from the joker himself: His
cult success on Comedy Central has become bloated and excessively esteemed.
There is such free-floating goodwill toward Stewart at the moment that no
one wants to point out that, while the first ten minutes of The Daily
Show-Stewart's news-desk take on the day's events-contain reliably dandy
yuks, the rest of the show is increasingly wobbly. It's full of half-baked
taped bits relying on hoodwinking-the-rubes interviews that condescend to a
big chunk of the citizenry Stewart would like to mobilize (to judge from
serious comments he's made) as well as to entertain.
As for his interviews with politicians, it's unfortunate that Stewart
overthinks his questions into circular logic: He tries so hard to be the
anti-anchorman that he ends up being a disdainfully mediocre one, tossing
verbal Twinkies and Ho Hos at everyone from John Kerry to Ralph Reed, ending
up with sugary, jittery segments. (Oh, and y'know, Lewis Black has really
never been funny a second in his life.)
You may read this as mere contrarianism. After all, yes, Stewart endlessly
notes that his is a comedy, not a news show, and shouldn't be held to news
standards. Nonetheless, every time his staff books a politician, he's part
of the process, because by now, appearing on The Daily Show is the most
fashionable place to go to prove a pol's ability not merely to laugh at
himself but to impress the host and his doubting audience that the
office-seeker really means what he is saying on the stump.
His perch at Comedy Central and the number-one sales of America (The Book)
may enable him to be more pointed and lustily vulgar than David Letterman
(Stewart's only, often superior, competitor), but Stewart's persona implies
a more ferocious attack than he actually launches. No matter that his
Manhattan-liberal studio audience laughs harder at his ridicule of Bush; to
these eyes, Stewart has bought into network news' most pious belief-the
debilitating notion of "evenhandedness." As with most hip satirists, Stewart
's underlying message is that both sides are square (Bush = bumbling
warmonger; Kerry = garrulous equivocator). Thus, The Daily Show may actually
undermine the sober message Stewart seems intent on beaming out between the
lines of scripted jokes and in interviews: that this time, it's really
important to get off our asses and vote.
Every time his staff books a politician, he becomes part of the process.
It all comes down to the distinction between what Stewart does and what he
says. People who watch the show night after night can come away with the
same idea others get after watching Ted Koppel or Crossfire: that these two
candidates will say anything for my vote, so screw 'em both.
Stewart's July run-in with the taxidermic Koppel, who long ago devolved into
a robo-newsreader, coasting on Nightline's glory days, was instructive.
Stewart had been booked by producers patently eager to attract some of
Stewart's youth demo, and in response, Koppel shook off his dolor long
enough to bridle at the notion that what he and Stewart do is very nearly
analogous-i.e., informing the populace. He seemed most offended by Stewart's
Naomi Klein-like comparison of political campaigns to "product launches." If
Stewart had stayed serious about these matters, he might have scored points
with Ted's audience. But, of course, Stewart had to layer in some laconic,
just-chill-out-Ted shtick-a defensive position that gave Koppel an opening,
and left him free to dismiss Stewart's argument as nothing more than light
comedy.
Stewart has developed this bad habit of wanting it both ways: Hey, I just
tell jokes! and You can't handle the truth! Koppel would have none of it,
and hustled him off the air. The result? Media commentators, eager to align
themselves with the cable-channel cool kids, adjudged Koppel a fogey, when
for once the Man With the Meat-Loaf-Shaped Hair was doing something useful:
insisting on some clarity in the whippersnapper's argument. But Koppel's ego
was so threatened, he couldn't articulate the essential question: What,
exactly, are you trying to accomplish, young man?
Similarly, Stewart's October 15 drop-in on CNN's Crossfire was a media
mind-blow of conflicting cross-purposes. It was, to be sure, profoundly
satisfying when Stewart blithely called Carlson a "dick." To the startled
dismay of Carlson and co-host Paul Begala, Stewart tried strenuously to make
an earnest point-that there should be actual debating on a program that
advertises itself as a debate show, and that "you have a responsibility to
the public discourse, and you fail miserably." (My own dismay, I should
admit, was that Stewart made the umpteenth comedian's joke about Carlson's
bow ties-in his proudly Jewish soul, there's a lotta Jackie Mason in our
Jon, folks.)
But let's go to the videotape: After Stewart's "public discourse" remark,
Carlson whined, "Wait, I thought you were going to be funny. Come on, be
funny." To which Stewart retorted, "No. No, I'm not gonna be your monkey."
The following Monday, Stewart used The Daily Show in a way I'd never seen
him do: as a bully pulpit. "They said I wasn't being funny. And I said to
them, 'I know that, but tomorrow I will go back to being funny and your show
will still blow.' " Great cheers erupted, but, but: He didn't say that on
CNN's air. This was just nyah-nyah, can't-catch-me baiting. And I say this
as someone who agrees with Stewart that, as he also clarified on his October
18 show, "I think they're all dicks" on Crossfire. That parting shot,
delivered from within the fail-safe studio of The Daily Show, was so
atypical of Stewart, it made me realize something. All these months, Stewart
has been coming from a good yet naïve place; he seems to truly believe that
if his show so rigorously parodied and pilloried these ethically corrupt
news and analysis shows, the Crossfires and the Hardballs would have a
revelation-they'd do what Stewart was begging them to do: conduct true
conversations, without the squawk and the hyped-up false alarums. But now he
seems rattled by his own power, and unsure how to react. When he stepped
over the line, he demonstrated that the line still exists.
So this is the dilemma Jon Stewart now finds himself facing: Is he the
Emmy-winning "monkey," idol to millions of young couch-skeptics, or the
thoughtful partisan satirist who'd like to be a player in the national
discourse? It would take a genius comic to pull off both roles. But for the
moment-his moment; his make-or-break moment up until the election-I'm sad to
say, my money's on the monkey to win out.
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Jon Stewart wants to treat politics as a joke-and still teach us a civics
lesson. He can't have it both ways.
By Ken Tucker
Fake news": Jon Stewart originally coined the term to put some distance
between The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and, say, The CBS Evening News With
Dan Rather or Meet the Press. With the jovial incredulity that makes him so
charming, Stewart started regularly reminding viewers and interviewers that
what he and his writing staff did was a "fake news" program, because there
was a great deal of media chatter about how lots of citizens were using The
Daily Show as their primary source of political information.
But because he keeps repeating the joke, and because the hard-news media is
so desperate to appear hip to the critique of conventional reporting that
Stewart lays out nightly, "fake news" has gone from wry mantra to annoyingly
pervasive cliché pretty fast. In fact, the notion of Stewart as the Joker
Who Speaks Truth to Power has now gotten away from the joker himself: His
cult success on Comedy Central has become bloated and excessively esteemed.
There is such free-floating goodwill toward Stewart at the moment that no
one wants to point out that, while the first ten minutes of The Daily
Show-Stewart's news-desk take on the day's events-contain reliably dandy
yuks, the rest of the show is increasingly wobbly. It's full of half-baked
taped bits relying on hoodwinking-the-rubes interviews that condescend to a
big chunk of the citizenry Stewart would like to mobilize (to judge from
serious comments he's made) as well as to entertain.
As for his interviews with politicians, it's unfortunate that Stewart
overthinks his questions into circular logic: He tries so hard to be the
anti-anchorman that he ends up being a disdainfully mediocre one, tossing
verbal Twinkies and Ho Hos at everyone from John Kerry to Ralph Reed, ending
up with sugary, jittery segments. (Oh, and y'know, Lewis Black has really
never been funny a second in his life.)
You may read this as mere contrarianism. After all, yes, Stewart endlessly
notes that his is a comedy, not a news show, and shouldn't be held to news
standards. Nonetheless, every time his staff books a politician, he's part
of the process, because by now, appearing on The Daily Show is the most
fashionable place to go to prove a pol's ability not merely to laugh at
himself but to impress the host and his doubting audience that the
office-seeker really means what he is saying on the stump.
His perch at Comedy Central and the number-one sales of America (The Book)
may enable him to be more pointed and lustily vulgar than David Letterman
(Stewart's only, often superior, competitor), but Stewart's persona implies
a more ferocious attack than he actually launches. No matter that his
Manhattan-liberal studio audience laughs harder at his ridicule of Bush; to
these eyes, Stewart has bought into network news' most pious belief-the
debilitating notion of "evenhandedness." As with most hip satirists, Stewart
's underlying message is that both sides are square (Bush = bumbling
warmonger; Kerry = garrulous equivocator). Thus, The Daily Show may actually
undermine the sober message Stewart seems intent on beaming out between the
lines of scripted jokes and in interviews: that this time, it's really
important to get off our asses and vote.
Every time his staff books a politician, he becomes part of the process.
It all comes down to the distinction between what Stewart does and what he
says. People who watch the show night after night can come away with the
same idea others get after watching Ted Koppel or Crossfire: that these two
candidates will say anything for my vote, so screw 'em both.
Stewart's July run-in with the taxidermic Koppel, who long ago devolved into
a robo-newsreader, coasting on Nightline's glory days, was instructive.
Stewart had been booked by producers patently eager to attract some of
Stewart's youth demo, and in response, Koppel shook off his dolor long
enough to bridle at the notion that what he and Stewart do is very nearly
analogous-i.e., informing the populace. He seemed most offended by Stewart's
Naomi Klein-like comparison of political campaigns to "product launches." If
Stewart had stayed serious about these matters, he might have scored points
with Ted's audience. But, of course, Stewart had to layer in some laconic,
just-chill-out-Ted shtick-a defensive position that gave Koppel an opening,
and left him free to dismiss Stewart's argument as nothing more than light
comedy.
Stewart has developed this bad habit of wanting it both ways: Hey, I just
tell jokes! and You can't handle the truth! Koppel would have none of it,
and hustled him off the air. The result? Media commentators, eager to align
themselves with the cable-channel cool kids, adjudged Koppel a fogey, when
for once the Man With the Meat-Loaf-Shaped Hair was doing something useful:
insisting on some clarity in the whippersnapper's argument. But Koppel's ego
was so threatened, he couldn't articulate the essential question: What,
exactly, are you trying to accomplish, young man?
Similarly, Stewart's October 15 drop-in on CNN's Crossfire was a media
mind-blow of conflicting cross-purposes. It was, to be sure, profoundly
satisfying when Stewart blithely called Carlson a "dick." To the startled
dismay of Carlson and co-host Paul Begala, Stewart tried strenuously to make
an earnest point-that there should be actual debating on a program that
advertises itself as a debate show, and that "you have a responsibility to
the public discourse, and you fail miserably." (My own dismay, I should
admit, was that Stewart made the umpteenth comedian's joke about Carlson's
bow ties-in his proudly Jewish soul, there's a lotta Jackie Mason in our
Jon, folks.)
But let's go to the videotape: After Stewart's "public discourse" remark,
Carlson whined, "Wait, I thought you were going to be funny. Come on, be
funny." To which Stewart retorted, "No. No, I'm not gonna be your monkey."
The following Monday, Stewart used The Daily Show in a way I'd never seen
him do: as a bully pulpit. "They said I wasn't being funny. And I said to
them, 'I know that, but tomorrow I will go back to being funny and your show
will still blow.' " Great cheers erupted, but, but: He didn't say that on
CNN's air. This was just nyah-nyah, can't-catch-me baiting. And I say this
as someone who agrees with Stewart that, as he also clarified on his October
18 show, "I think they're all dicks" on Crossfire. That parting shot,
delivered from within the fail-safe studio of The Daily Show, was so
atypical of Stewart, it made me realize something. All these months, Stewart
has been coming from a good yet naïve place; he seems to truly believe that
if his show so rigorously parodied and pilloried these ethically corrupt
news and analysis shows, the Crossfires and the Hardballs would have a
revelation-they'd do what Stewart was begging them to do: conduct true
conversations, without the squawk and the hyped-up false alarums. But now he
seems rattled by his own power, and unsure how to react. When he stepped
over the line, he demonstrated that the line still exists.
So this is the dilemma Jon Stewart now finds himself facing: Is he the
Emmy-winning "monkey," idol to millions of young couch-skeptics, or the
thoughtful partisan satirist who'd like to be a player in the national
discourse? It would take a genius comic to pull off both roles. But for the
moment-his moment; his make-or-break moment up until the election-I'm sad to
say, my money's on the monkey to win out.
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