I can assure them they're not getting any journalism from us. We are, if anything — I do believe we function as a sort of editorial cartoon. That we are a digestive process, like so many other digestive processes that go on. The thing about you know, there's a lot of young people get this and you know, young people get that from me. People are very sophisticated consumers of information, and they're pulling all different things....
It's the same argument people say about the blogs. The blogs are responsible. No, they're not. The blogs are like anything else. You judge each one based on its own veracity and intelligence and all of that. And if you like, you could cherry pick only the things that you agree with from various things. Or, if you want, you can try and get a broader perspective, or you can find people who are absolutely out of their minds, or find people that are doing incredibly complex and interesting and urgent journalism. And the same goes for our show. It's a prism into people's own ideologies, when they watch our program. This is just our take.
I started writing this post three hours ago. Why couldn't I finish it? I had my usual instinct that there was good material here and set it up in my usual way, but then, reading it over, trying to think of a way to add a few lines of my own, I just couldn't get anywhere.
Stewart has a funny way of seeming direct and then circling around and trying out different angles as if he might get somewhere. Note how the first sentence is a straightforward denial. Then he tries two different metaphors -- cartooning and digesting -- and I think he indicates that he realizes that the second one creates the image that the show is shit when he says "like so many other digestive processes that go on." Then he starts to try to deal with another problematic implication, that young people are idiots. He gropes toward a way to say that that they somehow know how to understand what part of the digestively processed material can be understood as news. They're sophisticated! Like those blog readers, who do... whatever the hell it is they do... use the blogs as "a prism" to see what they actually believe or something.
But I like Jon Stewart. I've been watching his show again. I'm just saying he has a strange way of speaking that shows up in the transcript form. It's pretty charming and entertaining on the show, where he presents himself as sort of confused and troubled by everything. He's the interviewer there, searching for answers, so it all makes sense. But if he's being interviewed and he's the one providing the answers, it's weird and evasive.
(Via Memeorandum.)
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LOL I'm a Colbert fan myself. I love his smarminess. As for the two shows - Daily Show and Colbert Report -- it's where many younger Americans get an introduction to issues and politics because they're the ones who make it most entertaining and condense it for them. But, yes, they're comedians and not politicians, which is a shame since Stewart clearly talks in circles like one. I think he (and Colbert) are adorable, though.
Ann, I think that was the best description of the strengths and weaknesses of Stewart that I have read. It's interesting to think of evaluating someone differently based on whether they are the interviewer/interviewee, but it almost makes Stewart two different people.
In all truthiness, I apply a smoother layer of smarm than Colbert myself, so why pay a cable bill when I can trick uncountable numbers of photons -- and a mirror! -- into colluding into providing all the smarm one man can see and not want to run for office...
Stewart's comments sound like a blogger desparately trying to convince us that they aren't responsible for the content of comments.
Yeah, see, here's the thing: If you delete comments, then you are demonstrating that you review each comment's content (or, at least, you're giving a public appearance of such and creating a reasonable expectation that you do it.) So it doesn't fly for you to delete comments you don't like, and then turn around and say "oh well I'm not responsible for comment content, so it isn't appropriate for you to use them as examples of the community at my blog."
Uh, yeah. So. Anyway, where I'm going with this is to say that Stewart is kidding himself if he thinks people aren't getting their news from his show...or that his comments on the subject are going to stop that.
"But if he's being interviewed and he's the one providing the answers, it's weird and evasive."
His act is transparent. He wants the power, but not the responsibility - and doesn't want that to be known.
It would destroy his authenticity, don'tcha know?
For all Bill Moyer's self-importance, he is just a LBJ Flack like Jack Valenti who built himself an empire at PBS as "the august and wise master journalist" Mr. Moyers.
(And finagled a way to suck up much of the public broadcasting revenues as "The Great Bill Moyers personal income and cut of the action".)
I like Stewart, SNL, and Colbert because they have tapped into just how much journalists like Moyers are reviled by the public, the sham of Tabloid cable commentator shows like O'Reilly, Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Nancy Grace.
Stewart single-handedly destroyed "Crossfire" as a moronic talking heads shout-fest. SNL made Nancy Grace a national joke. Colbert makes a living showing O'Reilly, Geraldo, Olbermann as vain fools.
I would love it if the comedians began trashing the "Esteemed Bill Moyers" as a passive-agressive Leftist and master rip-off artist at PBS.
I'm no longer college age, but am also in the camp that believes I get a better sense of what's going on from Stewart than watching the big 3 MSM networks, CNN, or Fox.
Stewart might be good, but I can't tell. It's not as if I haven't tried to watch him because I have. I've tried several times in fact, but I just can't get past the part of him who is a smug self-important prick, thinking he's the smartest person in the room, but who is in truth no where near as smart as he thinks he is. At least The Simpsons knows it's a cartoon.
Funny, no more than an hour ago I read an article in either the Chicago Tribune or WSJ perspectives section that said TDS and CR viewers were second only to consumers of newspapers in terms of current affairs knowledge.
Whether or not it approaches journalism (I don't think it does, but it clues me in sometimes on things I should follow up on), at least the viewers are taking it upon themselves to get reliable information somewhere.
Looks like it was the Trib. They didn't have the nice table that they included in the print edition, but it's here on the Pew Research Center site.
Heh. I'm afraid I'm with The Zero Boss on this one. Ever heard of Freud, Ms. Althouse? Ever hear of his concept of "projection?"
Stewart happens to be one of the least smug, least evasive, least circular-in-his-reasoning public figures around. I wish I could say the same for you, as I typically find the logic of your arguments to be not like our Earth logic. Your attempted deconstruction of Stewart's comments here are a whopping case in point.
If you can't get what he was saying--and it seems a perfectly "gettable" and consistent point from a man who was thinking aloud--why do you watch his show?
I started writing this post three hours ago. Why couldn't I finish it?
No more wine in the box?
I would love it if the comedians began trashing the "Esteemed Bill Moyers" as a passive-agressive Leftist and master r--
ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
I've often suggested that people don't read blogs for information or 'news' - after all, everybody else has Google, too. People read blogs for a digested analysis of what that information means, in particular the news of the day. I think that's what Stewart is saying when he compares his show to bloggers or an editorial cartoon, and IMO the comparison is valid.
Well, yeah, that's in among the garble and we can guess he means something like that. "It's a prism into people's own ideologies, when they watch our program." Of course, you can translate that into something comprehensible, but it's not clearly expressed.
(A prism breaks light into its parts. So what is a "prism into" anything? What is a "prism into" ideologies? Presumably, the incoming news is the light, and the different blogs are the colors of the rainbow, but what's the prism?)
He used to be funny. Such a stitch Jon was. That is until he decided to plumb solely for bitter political irony and present it as insight and ersatz humor.
I can't click fast enough, and I'm a mother on the remote.
Now, people enter parties and substitute standard greeting with, "Did you see Stewart last night?" Still amused over something acerbically insightful that lodged.
He has a huge impact on people, and for the life of me I don't see the lasting attraction. Unending cynicism is not funny. I tell myself to shut up when I begin to sound like Stewart, an indulgence all to easy to slip into. Stewart is a large part of the debilitating enervating drone, the drone that inflates things that are insignificant and ignores things that are important. His unfunniness devolves to my misery because my friends take his sardonic sarcasm for imparted wisdom, matching their world view, delivered cutely, well-dressed, handsome, reasonable, and oh, so-oo-oo perceptive. He comic suppositions leave damaging inferences hanging, so everybody appears guilty. He describes incidences of cause and effect fallaciously willfully leading his audience to accept sophistry for syllogism, and suggests simplistic solutions to complex problems. Everything true, beautiful or good is left out of his comedy because that dilutes the impact of his disheartening message and vitiates the underlying narrative. Over-dosed, here.
"A prism breaks light into its parts. So what is a "prism into" anything? What is a "prism into" ideologies?"
Something that analyzes and reduces a complex situation into its components? This isn't that hard to understand.
Really, Ann, methinks thou doth overanalyze too much. Lose the lawyer-mind and apply a little more right-brained thinking.
Yeah, I know it can be translated, as I said. It's still poorly said and in need of translation.
And since the blogs are the rainbow, representing the different ideologies, what is the prism? It's metaphor that doesn't represent anything. Really, think about it before just coming out with what you know he meant to say.
And zero, artists and writers care about language.
Holy Hell, Ann. :) It was an interview. He spoke off the cuff. He didn't have the time to carefully think through all of the implications of the metaphor. Cut the dude some frigging slack. All you're doing is demonstrating that you're anal retentive, and will leave no hair unsplit.
Really - is this any different than the people who go hunting for Bushisms?
So blogs are like Skittles. Taste the rainbow! WITH YOUR BRAIN!
(1) I'll side with Chip Ahoy here. Stewart is funny, to be sure. But his relentless cynicism is ultimately degrading to the viewer because it's core message is mere adolescent alienation and nihilism.
Every day it's all, "Well, everything sucks, but at least I'm cool."
(2) Zero Boss has it wrong. Cut him some slack? His entire show is dedicated to splitting hairs and failing to give slack. Stewart tosses around terms meant to suggest he's conveying complex ideas, when all he's doing is bullshitting you. He doesn't know what a prism is?
Off the cuff? Hell, no. Moyers asked the most obvious softball question Stewart ever gets. He's answered it dozens of times. He's not a high school sophomore in history class making up flip sardonic quips to make his friends laugh -although that appears to be what he's doing- he's a grown man who has been asked this same tired question repeatedly. And this is his reply?
I have always enjoyed political satire from either side of the spectrum. With respect to Colbert and Stewart, perhaps by demonstrating the hypocricy of the political class, they are giving younger viewers the real lesson of politics--When the political class starts acting like adults, and removing the material that keep the Colberts and Stewarts in business, we might be better off.
Those guys are working with the material they get--they arent forcing politicians to be fools.
Isn't Jon Stewart the same guy who went on Crossfire to complain about the level of discourse in political debate, and then proceeded to call Tucker Carlson a "dick?"
I like the Daily Show, but you are right on that Stewart is very effective at diverting the subject when media criticism is directed at him.
But his relentless cynicism is ultimately degrading to the viewer because it's core message is mere adolescent alienation and nihilism.
Yeah, it gets a little tiresome, especially since it is so omnipresent in society as it is. My impression of The Daily Show is that it confuses ironic detachment with intelligent insight. Really, though, you don't need an IQ over 100 to sneer.
I remember watching part of his response to the 2004 State of the Union address. He showed edited-together clips of Bush's discussing both terrorism and the international sex slave trade to make it sound like Bush was lumping the latter in with the former. Good for a cheap laugh, I guess (hyuck hyuck, Bush is a moron, etc etc) but, um... there really IS a problem with sex slavery, especially in the third world.
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