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Jon Stewart’s America
by Timothy Egan |
Feb. 12, 2015
Since the golden era of fake
news is over, does this mean that what passes for real news and real politics
are also over?
If only. Tune into one of the
Sunday interview shows, if you can, and you’re bound to find the inevitable
Senator Lindsey Graham talking about all the places we need to bomb now.
Senator Ted Cruz will do an impression of the Tin Man without a
heart or a brain, and Nancy Pelosi will demonstrate that humor
impairment is bipartisan.
Throughout the week, the
morning shows will be stuffed with viral pet videos, diet and makeup tips and
— hey, Taylor Swift said what? They will do follow-ups on listicles
and assorted click-bait from blogs, and someone will take Donald Trump
seriously.
Sadly, it’s gotten only worse
since Jon Stewart built a secular church around the nightly ritual of mockery
of the deserving class. So, while more people are in on the joke, more people
continue to offer a steady stream of material for the jokes.
“If he’s shooting fish in a
barrel, we don’t always have to provide the fish,” said a Fox News personality,
Greg Gutfeld, in a moment-of-Zen acknowledgment this week, following Stewart’s
announcement that he’s stepping down from “The Daily Show” after more than 16
years as host. “And we provide a lot of fish.”
For Stewart, a gifted clown
with wide-ranging curiosity, Fox News was not just a house of hypocrisy and
endless source material. It was part of what made a great democracy harder to
govern, and less likely to share a common narrative. He understood exactly what
they were up to, even if some of their teleprompter readers never did.
“I think that Roger Ailes’s
great gift was mainstreaming that nativist, paranoid streak in American
politics, and putting it on television in a much prettier, shinier box,” he
told Rolling Stone last year.
Critics would say Stewart is
a liberal apologist, a sop for President Obama. Certainly, Stewart is a lefty
without a cause. Still, he’s skewered the president for his regular failings,
from broken promises to veterans to not appearing in a free-speech moment in Paris.
But his politics are beside
the point. Conservatives, in general, are not funny, outside of the
missing-in-action P. J. O’Rourke. The best comedians do not back the status
quo, or get paid to make the Koch brothers laugh.
When Stewart leaves later
this year, he will walk away from an audience that will no longer take the
theater of media-driven politics seriously. And as a promoter of serious books,
he leaves his fans better informed. He’s been a public service — Consumer
Reports, by way of the long-dead National Lampoon. And for many in the press,
he says what they’ve always wanted to say, using an unprintable word as noun,
verb and adjective.
After his takedown of Glenn
Beck, writing crazy talk on a chalkboard between bursts of discordant tears,
nobody except those with a radio embedded in their molars could listen to Beck.
Can anyone act on a
stock-buying tip from Jim Cramer, the CNBC host, after Stewart showed him
promoting garbage before the financial collapse on a show that tries to make
funny with your money, barking “buy, buy, buy!” while banging a gong?
And “Crossfire,” the original
shout-fest on CNN that tried to prove there are no 50 shades of gray in cable’s
view of politics, only one dimension of wrong, was left exposed and shamefaced
for what it is after Stewart told the hosts to “stop hurting America.”
Stewart didn’t degrade
politics and the press. He walked through a degraded landscape, the tour guide
who’s also a smartass. In the cheerleading phase of the Iraq war, when
dissident voices were labeled traitors, Stewart called out the lies on which
the invasion was built, long before most Democrats, and most reporters, ever
did. It shouldn’t take a comedian, obviously, to do that.
“Where will I get my news
every night?” asked Bill Clinton, in a tweet following Stewart’s announcement.
He could start with the
existing newscasts, mostly operating as platforms for new pharmaceuticals. He
could consider holding anchors riding through the streets of Manhattan in “blizzard-mobiles” to higher
standards. Or force them to ask, “What’s the matter with Kansas?” That’s what Stewart did Wednesday
night, in a bit on an executive order from Gov. Sam Brownback that now allows
people to legally discriminate against gay and lesbian state workers.
“It being Kansas, I guess Brownback clicked his heels
three times and said, ‘There’s no place like homophobia.’ ”
Stewart owes something to middle-aged
“Saturday Night Live.” A brilliant comedian once appeared in a skit as a
one-man mobile news unit, complete with a parabolic antenna mounted to his
head. That comic is a United States
senator now, Al Franken, of Minnesota.
A role model for Stewart? Not likely. Franken left his humor at the Capitol
entrance. Stewart would never get past the door.
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