How seriously should we take Jon Stewart?
February 1, 2022 2:16 AM Subscribe
"Stewart built his reputation on using comedy to cut through the sanctimony of conventional journalism and politics to give his center-to-liberal audience the truth about the world. His was a coherent worldview: Politicians on both sides of the aisle are hypocrites corrupted by cash; everyone’s lying about their professed values but especially those idiots who aren’t even willing to follow the science; and the only rational response to all the dishonesty and stupidity of the world is to laugh at it.
Yet in the aftermath of the Trump administration, it’s no longer clear that the liberal landscape Jon Stewart helped construct was an unalloyed good. Even more crucially, it’s not clear that his continued assertions that he was just a comedian who happened to tell jokes about politics were ever all that honest."
Interesting that the pull quote uses the word sanctimony to describe conventional journalism, because in many of his post Daily Show appearances, I now tend to find his demeanour as bordering on sanctimonious.
posted by fairmettle at 2:53 AM on February 1, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by fairmettle at 2:53 AM on February 1, 2022 [17 favorites]
I remember being incredibly disappointed by the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. It really did seem like Jon Stewart had this opportunity, had this audience - and he whiffed it. He didn't want to take the responsibility for speaking the truth and taking sides - but his criticism of the media was that they didn't want to take responsibility for speaking the truth, which would lead to them taking sides. He reduced himself to what he was supposed to be fighting.
posted by Ktm1 at 3:05 AM on February 1, 2022 [76 favorites]
posted by Ktm1 at 3:05 AM on February 1, 2022 [76 favorites]
On one hand, I'm sympathetic to this article, because it summarizes many of the reasons why I never found Jon Stewart very compelling. On the other hand, I think even after all these years, his defense remains fair. He's a comedian first, and comedy helps people laugh at things, often by adding distant between the laugher and the laughee. But that's just a stance, and after a certain point, people have to decide to engage with things seriously of their own initiative.
What was he supposed to do with all his influence? Raise his hands and proclaim, "Everyone, be good!" Being a revered comedian doesn't mean he can effectively guide people to effective action. He tried to tell people over and over again that they have to do most of the work themselves (because he doesn't have the actual answers), but people are lazy, and that's not what they wanted to hear.
posted by Alex404 at 3:25 AM on February 1, 2022 [50 favorites]
What was he supposed to do with all his influence? Raise his hands and proclaim, "Everyone, be good!" Being a revered comedian doesn't mean he can effectively guide people to effective action. He tried to tell people over and over again that they have to do most of the work themselves (because he doesn't have the actual answers), but people are lazy, and that's not what they wanted to hear.
posted by Alex404 at 3:25 AM on February 1, 2022 [50 favorites]
Every criticism of Jon Stewart, and the article goes into many, applies 10x to the mainstream media of the Bush era. I think we need to restate how the country went god damn insane after 9/11, and how complicit the media was in starting two wars, one of which lasted for twenty years. It got to the point where literal torture became a mere "controversial issue" to be debated.
And it continues today. The media is rarely willing to even mention unions or socialism or other left-wing values, but gave billions of dollars worth in free media coverage to Trump. CBS Chief Les Moonves said, "[Trump's public behaviois may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."
The article is on point with criticism of Jon Stewart in the 2000s. But 2000s Jon Stewart took down Tucker Carlson, while 2000s media put Tucker Carlson on the air to begin with, followed by giving us 2010s Tucker Carlson.
posted by AlSweigart at 3:36 AM on February 1, 2022 [101 favorites]
And it continues today. The media is rarely willing to even mention unions or socialism or other left-wing values, but gave billions of dollars worth in free media coverage to Trump. CBS Chief Les Moonves said, "[Trump's public behaviois may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."
The article is on point with criticism of Jon Stewart in the 2000s. But 2000s Jon Stewart took down Tucker Carlson, while 2000s media put Tucker Carlson on the air to begin with, followed by giving us 2010s Tucker Carlson.
posted by AlSweigart at 3:36 AM on February 1, 2022 [101 favorites]
As someone who not only attended the Rally to Restore Sanity but wrote a long comment on MetaFilter about how much hope it gave me for the future, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize, and publicly state that every single whiff of optimism I had back then was wholeheartedly misguided.
I think the issue with Jon Stewart isn't that he's "a comedian," it's that his critique of the media and political partisanship studiously avoided talking about the, well, political agendas behind said dysfunctions. By isolating politics from political culture, he tried to blame the latter for the former, but avoided discussion of how the former intentionally cultivated the latter.
In retrospect, it's really symbolic that his most iconic speak-truth-to-power moment involved him getting Tucker Carlson booted off of CNN so he'd be free to go to Fox News.
posted by rorgy at 3:39 AM on February 1, 2022 [60 favorites]
I think the issue with Jon Stewart isn't that he's "a comedian," it's that his critique of the media and political partisanship studiously avoided talking about the, well, political agendas behind said dysfunctions. By isolating politics from political culture, he tried to blame the latter for the former, but avoided discussion of how the former intentionally cultivated the latter.
In retrospect, it's really symbolic that his most iconic speak-truth-to-power moment involved him getting Tucker Carlson booted off of CNN so he'd be free to go to Fox News.
posted by rorgy at 3:39 AM on February 1, 2022 [60 favorites]
From the article:
to give his center-to-liberal audience
Liberal audience. Liberal in a US context, but liberal. Stewart might not have been liberal enough for a lot of us, but the idea that the audience were a bunch of moderates is ... well, I'm raising my eyebrow at it.
I might be a little big grudgy, because Constance Grady also wrote that "Hamilton, Harry Potter and Parks & Rec are neoliberal* let-downs from the Obama era" piece that was both factually wrong (Harry Potter was during the Bush II administration) and also really stupid.
*this word, when used on the internet, generally means "liberal = moderate = more fascist than Republicans" aka always dumb
posted by pelvicsorcery at 3:52 AM on February 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
to give his center-to-liberal audience
Liberal audience. Liberal in a US context, but liberal. Stewart might not have been liberal enough for a lot of us, but the idea that the audience were a bunch of moderates is ... well, I'm raising my eyebrow at it.
I might be a little big grudgy, because Constance Grady also wrote that "Hamilton, Harry Potter and Parks & Rec are neoliberal* let-downs from the Obama era" piece that was both factually wrong (Harry Potter was during the Bush II administration) and also really stupid.
*this word, when used on the internet, generally means "liberal = moderate = more fascist than Republicans" aka always dumb
posted by pelvicsorcery at 3:52 AM on February 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
Underlying the media criticism from a media critic is the problem that it continues to address us all as consumers, who need to make better choices of the media we consume and then things will be better. The article is little different than Stewart in that regard, not a "both sides" take, but the same "those other people" are wrong, center and right now, rather than liberal/conservative as Stewart had it when the Obama era seemed to potentially signal some move towards rationality through belief in education and betterment.
He was wrong about how that would go, but as a celebrity, there was always going to be a problem in entertaining the country towards unity. Now that the media enivronment and politics have changed the same problem remains, just aimed at different outlets of common, but not shared, culture.
posted by gusottertrout at 3:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
He was wrong about how that would go, but as a celebrity, there was always going to be a problem in entertaining the country towards unity. Now that the media enivronment and politics have changed the same problem remains, just aimed at different outlets of common, but not shared, culture.
posted by gusottertrout at 3:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
In that Crossfire, he points out legitimately the manipulative theater of media and politics, and the systemic dysfunction that represents. What's problematic is that that criticism of the practice of politics got carried over without much reflection into the general public's perception of the respective parties' policies. In that there are hypocrisies and dysfunction there too, that perception ended up supporting pervasive bothsiderism. The problem is that while I can point to the Appalachians and Himalayas as mountain ranges, nobody dies from a lack of oxygen at the top of a peak in West Virginia.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 4:05 AM on February 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 4:05 AM on February 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
Frankly, that Crossfire is annoyingly to watch now in terms of every participant (though in particular screw Tucker Carlson)
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 4:09 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 4:09 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think that, more than anything, Stewart taught a generation some basic ideas about media literacy, which we are collectively astoundingly bad at. Like, to the extent that most millennials alive today with any sense of media literacy probably got some of it from watching The Daily Show or something directly inspired by it.
What he didn't teach is political literacy, which imo is still extremely difficult to find a single in-road into. And media literacy only goes so far—and what The Daily Show did there, frankly, didn't go far enough. Not that Stewart can be blamed for society radically changing after his show went off the air.
One reason that I think Chapo Trap House has caught on—I know a lot of zoomers who talk about it the way I talked about TDS when I was in college—is that they offer, in their ramshackle way, a similar kind of "let's talk about pop culture but apply a more serious lens to it." And theirs is more acutely political, albeit quite narrow in perspective. People feel it when something's missing, even when they can't articulate what isn't there. And, having seen an episode of The Problem, I think it's a far more studious show than TDS was, but it's still missing something that, in this decade, I think you can't afford to miss, because far more people notice it now than used to then. It's the same way I feel when I watch Last Week Tonight, though with LWT I feel it less, because Oliver is at least pretty pointed in discussing political machinations.
posted by rorgy at 4:34 AM on February 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
What he didn't teach is political literacy, which imo is still extremely difficult to find a single in-road into. And media literacy only goes so far—and what The Daily Show did there, frankly, didn't go far enough. Not that Stewart can be blamed for society radically changing after his show went off the air.
One reason that I think Chapo Trap House has caught on—I know a lot of zoomers who talk about it the way I talked about TDS when I was in college—is that they offer, in their ramshackle way, a similar kind of "let's talk about pop culture but apply a more serious lens to it." And theirs is more acutely political, albeit quite narrow in perspective. People feel it when something's missing, even when they can't articulate what isn't there. And, having seen an episode of The Problem, I think it's a far more studious show than TDS was, but it's still missing something that, in this decade, I think you can't afford to miss, because far more people notice it now than used to then. It's the same way I feel when I watch Last Week Tonight, though with LWT I feel it less, because Oliver is at least pretty pointed in discussing political machinations.
posted by rorgy at 4:34 AM on February 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
@AlSweigart -- yes to everything you're saying.
I tried TPWJS and it didn't work for me -- the credit sequence itself feels sort of like the show is apologizing for even being on the air, and it just felt not-quite-formed. Maybe it'll get better, but if it does, I probably still won't watch it, for the same reasons as I stopped watching John Oliver's show, which is excellent: it's fucking depressing. I've cut way back on my news consumption since 45 was in the White House, and I know that doesn't say great things about me, but the level of doom... I just can't fuckin' handle it anymore. I do need to textbank and phonebank more to make up for this.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. So, like a lot of liberals, I watched a ton of TDS during the Bush Administration and it was a really necessary antidote to feeling like I was going crazy.
Also, I don't think the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear did anything to suppress turnout.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 4:39 AM on February 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
I tried TPWJS and it didn't work for me -- the credit sequence itself feels sort of like the show is apologizing for even being on the air, and it just felt not-quite-formed. Maybe it'll get better, but if it does, I probably still won't watch it, for the same reasons as I stopped watching John Oliver's show, which is excellent: it's fucking depressing. I've cut way back on my news consumption since 45 was in the White House, and I know that doesn't say great things about me, but the level of doom... I just can't fuckin' handle it anymore. I do need to textbank and phonebank more to make up for this.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. So, like a lot of liberals, I watched a ton of TDS during the Bush Administration and it was a really necessary antidote to feeling like I was going crazy.
Also, I don't think the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear did anything to suppress turnout.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 4:39 AM on February 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
Our lazy embrace of Stewart and Colbert is a testament to our own impoverished comic standards. We have come to accept coy mockery as genuine subversion and snarky mimesis as originality. It would be more accurate to describe our golden age of political comedy as the peak output of a lucrative corporate plantation whose chief export is a cheap and powerful opiate for progressive angst and rage.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:50 AM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:50 AM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
rorgy: I hope you don't honestly feel bad. Your optimism was real and good, and if it was misguided, then what are all hopes, in the end?
I was never one for Jon Stewart; I liked him okay, but I never got into him. This was not prescience, so much as the same impulse that pushed me away from the West Wing and which I can only describe as "too much of a muchness." But I, too, used to share videos of fiery takedowns or snarky tweets that perfectly DESTROYED the right-wing viewpoint on this, that, or the other thing, and I gradually quit, because it never did. Arguments are great if the other person is in an argument, is listening, instead of viewing you as a dupe of a vast network of conspiracies ultimately controlled by "globalists" or by Satan, depending on the sort of right-winger you are dealing with.
I am taking a real interest in how many guillotine jokes younger people are making. When I was with my mom, I laughed out loud at a picture of a gingerbread guillotine online, and showed her my phone when she asked. I explained about the guillotine jokes lately, and she was truly disturbed. She's a deep, good-hearted '60s-era liberal of the marketplace-of-ideas school, and the idea of guillotine jokes fills her with horror. But that is where we are at, emotionally, with a lot of younger people, and it's certainly a response (if obliquely) to a world that has produced political opponents that want to hang journalists.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:10 AM on February 1, 2022 [32 favorites]
I was never one for Jon Stewart; I liked him okay, but I never got into him. This was not prescience, so much as the same impulse that pushed me away from the West Wing and which I can only describe as "too much of a muchness." But I, too, used to share videos of fiery takedowns or snarky tweets that perfectly DESTROYED the right-wing viewpoint on this, that, or the other thing, and I gradually quit, because it never did. Arguments are great if the other person is in an argument, is listening, instead of viewing you as a dupe of a vast network of conspiracies ultimately controlled by "globalists" or by Satan, depending on the sort of right-winger you are dealing with.
I am taking a real interest in how many guillotine jokes younger people are making. When I was with my mom, I laughed out loud at a picture of a gingerbread guillotine online, and showed her my phone when she asked. I explained about the guillotine jokes lately, and she was truly disturbed. She's a deep, good-hearted '60s-era liberal of the marketplace-of-ideas school, and the idea of guillotine jokes fills her with horror. But that is where we are at, emotionally, with a lot of younger people, and it's certainly a response (if obliquely) to a world that has produced political opponents that want to hang journalists.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:10 AM on February 1, 2022 [32 favorites]
I'll cut Stewart some slack with his "just a comedian" refrain. There certainly was a "hey, what if this funny guy who tells it like it is and wants to get things done ran for President" current in the culture of the mid-2000s and Stewart/Colbert bumper-stickers were out there. Stewart is many things, but he is certainly not a demagogue and I think he understood the danger/responsibility of the platform he had and this pushed him (perhaps too far) into being hands-off when it came to actual political stands.
Compounding that hesitancy though, I do think at a certain point Stewart's wealth/connections/overall-insider-status afforded him the privilege to dismiss a lot of political rhetoric as mere kayfabe, and like a lot of other people in dubious across-the-aisle "friendships" I think he's lost sight of what politics-the-sport means for people who live outside in the real world and how it impacts them.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:15 AM on February 1, 2022 [19 favorites]
Compounding that hesitancy though, I do think at a certain point Stewart's wealth/connections/overall-insider-status afforded him the privilege to dismiss a lot of political rhetoric as mere kayfabe, and like a lot of other people in dubious across-the-aisle "friendships" I think he's lost sight of what politics-the-sport means for people who live outside in the real world and how it impacts them.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:15 AM on February 1, 2022 [19 favorites]
I know comedians support each other, sometimes more than they should. But my heart hasn't recovered from Jon Stewart supporting Dave Chappelle's hateful comments towards people who are trans.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:43 AM on February 1, 2022 [32 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:43 AM on February 1, 2022 [32 favorites]
This is why John Oliver and Amber Ruffin ring more true to me. They both operate under the ethos that comedy is important and laughter is a survival mechanism, but you should never ever kid yourself about how bad things are. Stewart always gave you the out that this is just how these politicians are, always gave "the reasonable middle" room to shake it off. Ruffin and Oliver want to entertain you, but they're fully prepared to leave you uneasy.
A person can make a rational argument that they don't go far enough either, that once you've had a gallows laugh about it all, really, the next thing to do is to build a fucking gallows.
But a show that took that the tack that you shouldn't go back to work in the morning, you should drop everything and pull this broken society crashing to the ground... Well, I don't know how that gets made as a product for AT&T or Comcast, so maybe Oliver and Ruffin are as good as commercial TV can get.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:47 AM on February 1, 2022 [34 favorites]
A person can make a rational argument that they don't go far enough either, that once you've had a gallows laugh about it all, really, the next thing to do is to build a fucking gallows.
But a show that took that the tack that you shouldn't go back to work in the morning, you should drop everything and pull this broken society crashing to the ground... Well, I don't know how that gets made as a product for AT&T or Comcast, so maybe Oliver and Ruffin are as good as commercial TV can get.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:47 AM on February 1, 2022 [34 favorites]
I get the sense that Stewart 1) is genuinely anguished by the massive problems in politics and media; 2) recognizes that he doesn’t have the tools to fix them, despite a lot of people asserting that he does; and 3) is personally a fairly unhappy and neurotic person.
I think he knows that he got out of his depth. He feels like he should do something with his platform but he doesn’t know what would actually do any good, and he resents being in a position where he can’t just make dick jokes in peace but also can’t actually do anything with the culturopolitical capital he’s accrued.
He reminds me of Monty Python’s Brian. “Oh fuck off!” “How shall we fuck off, O Lord?”
posted by saturday_morning at 5:52 AM on February 1, 2022 [82 favorites]
I think he knows that he got out of his depth. He feels like he should do something with his platform but he doesn’t know what would actually do any good, and he resents being in a position where he can’t just make dick jokes in peace but also can’t actually do anything with the culturopolitical capital he’s accrued.
He reminds me of Monty Python’s Brian. “Oh fuck off!” “How shall we fuck off, O Lord?”
posted by saturday_morning at 5:52 AM on February 1, 2022 [82 favorites]
Oh, is it time for a backlash against Jon Stewart and to blame him for where we are today? [Checks watch] Seems kind of late.
And what a coincidence that people should try to take down a liberal hero at the same time we have white supremacists marching and a general shift toward acceptance of far-right ideology in the media.
posted by papercake at 5:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [42 favorites]
And what a coincidence that people should try to take down a liberal hero at the same time we have white supremacists marching and a general shift toward acceptance of far-right ideology in the media.
posted by papercake at 5:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [42 favorites]
And what a coincidence that people should try to take down a liberal hero at the same time we have white supremacists marching and a general shift toward acceptance of far-right ideology in the media.
Is it unfair to critique literally anyone who's not a Nazi? What do you call that, Godwin's Anti-Law?
posted by rorgy at 5:59 AM on February 1, 2022 [13 favorites]
Is it unfair to critique literally anyone who's not a Nazi? What do you call that, Godwin's Anti-Law?
posted by rorgy at 5:59 AM on February 1, 2022 [13 favorites]
Is it unfair to critique literally anyone who's not a Nazi? What do you call that, Godwin's Nega-Law?
Funny, but I didn't say that. Just not surprising to read an article that is so sure in its blaming of Stewart and calling his liberal POV and everything it supposedly wrought a failure during this time of increased right-wing propaganda.
posted by papercake at 6:05 AM on February 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
Funny, but I didn't say that. Just not surprising to read an article that is so sure in its blaming of Stewart and calling his liberal POV and everything it supposedly wrought a failure during this time of increased right-wing propaganda.
posted by papercake at 6:05 AM on February 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
I think he knows that he got out of his depth. He feels like he should do something with his platform but he doesn’t know what would actually do any good, and he resents being in a position where he can’t just make dick jokes in peace but also can’t actually do anything with the culturopolitical capital he’s accrued.
That feels pretty spot on. Stewart is a comedian who has a pretty good bit he's developed about the phoniness and hypocrisy of politicians. It's not his fault more was projected onto him than that.
It's not really his fault that the Overton window is racing to the right or that the overall media ecosystem has largely failed to come up with a workable way to acknowledge and address this. He just wanted to be funny on cable, he wasn't asking to be the moral barometer for a wobbling empire.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:06 AM on February 1, 2022 [30 favorites]
That feels pretty spot on. Stewart is a comedian who has a pretty good bit he's developed about the phoniness and hypocrisy of politicians. It's not his fault more was projected onto him than that.
It's not really his fault that the Overton window is racing to the right or that the overall media ecosystem has largely failed to come up with a workable way to acknowledge and address this. He just wanted to be funny on cable, he wasn't asking to be the moral barometer for a wobbling empire.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:06 AM on February 1, 2022 [30 favorites]
My opinion is, there was nothing wrong with The Daily Show or Colbert at their height, except that they were just shows, and not even shows on Actual News Networks. Shared videos showing them "DESTROYING" or "SLAMMING" or "DEMOLISHING" right-wing viewpoints were not (and still do not) change anything, because while you may agree with them, the many fans of the people they are supposedly obliterating don't watch them, and even if they did, they have an entire alternate media industry cocooning them in a cozy blanket of loud-voiced groupthink, such as (then) O'Reilly, (now) Sean Hannity and Jeanine "DEMOCRATS = DEMON RATS" Pirro.
And, while it's true that the center-left is hugely complacent, and more than a little smug, it ultimately is the right that's the anchor tied around our collective legs, that make it impossible for any real change to ever happen in the U.S., even while millions of medical bankruptcies happen around us, while mental illness is treated largely by throwing sick people out into the streets, while the whole nation descends into poverty, while it becomes impossible for anyone not really well-off to buy a house. And they even provide cover for things that could be done, now, that would help millions, like writing off student debt.
Expecting Jon Stewart or classic Colbert to be able to do anything about those issues has always been foolish. They're not politicians, or even official members of the news media, they don't get to send people to White House press conferences after all. Their shows have always been important, in the sense that they helped keep things from sliding even worse, but what do you expect from comedians? Their main targets were always the media itself, the vast wasteland of cable news, not just Fox but CNN, who don't forget aired Crossfire. Someone above complained about Tucker Carlson leaving CNN to go to Fox, but they miss the point that Stewart's target wasn't Carlson specifically but Crossfire itself, that insipid lie that what they did was journalism. Carlson's natural energy state was always in orbit around Fox News. Him leaving CNN was destroying the fiction that it ever wasn't.
We're increasingly in an age where we have problems with definite, even obvious, solutions, but which even so there are many billions of dollars shrugging their shoulders at us and saying, "What u gonna do." The solution, then as now, is to counter the rhetoric of the right. That's been something Jon Stewart has always done, but he and Colbert were still, ultimately, just a couple of voices on the sidelines. It's never been enough.
posted by JHarris at 6:17 AM on February 1, 2022 [32 favorites]
And, while it's true that the center-left is hugely complacent, and more than a little smug, it ultimately is the right that's the anchor tied around our collective legs, that make it impossible for any real change to ever happen in the U.S., even while millions of medical bankruptcies happen around us, while mental illness is treated largely by throwing sick people out into the streets, while the whole nation descends into poverty, while it becomes impossible for anyone not really well-off to buy a house. And they even provide cover for things that could be done, now, that would help millions, like writing off student debt.
Expecting Jon Stewart or classic Colbert to be able to do anything about those issues has always been foolish. They're not politicians, or even official members of the news media, they don't get to send people to White House press conferences after all. Their shows have always been important, in the sense that they helped keep things from sliding even worse, but what do you expect from comedians? Their main targets were always the media itself, the vast wasteland of cable news, not just Fox but CNN, who don't forget aired Crossfire. Someone above complained about Tucker Carlson leaving CNN to go to Fox, but they miss the point that Stewart's target wasn't Carlson specifically but Crossfire itself, that insipid lie that what they did was journalism. Carlson's natural energy state was always in orbit around Fox News. Him leaving CNN was destroying the fiction that it ever wasn't.
We're increasingly in an age where we have problems with definite, even obvious, solutions, but which even so there are many billions of dollars shrugging their shoulders at us and saying, "What u gonna do." The solution, then as now, is to counter the rhetoric of the right. That's been something Jon Stewart has always done, but he and Colbert were still, ultimately, just a couple of voices on the sidelines. It's never been enough.
posted by JHarris at 6:17 AM on February 1, 2022 [32 favorites]
And what a coincidence that people should try to take down a liberal hero
If Stewart is a sacred cow, I think a critical eye towards his audience is worthwhile, at the very least. In a way, we in the US have basically been laughing ourselves a hair's width away from a fascist dictatorship for the last 20-odd years since TDS started.
(And I mean that literally: from today's NYTimes, Trump had to be talked out of using the military to take over the election and the United States.)
As far as the TDS goes, part of that is the viewer not taking Stewart's more extreme right-wing guests more seriously, instead treating them as part of the joky nature of the show.
Part of that, too, is Stewart himself not taking his job as the showrunner of a media (yes, sorry) program seriously, and brushing off any criticism of his responsibilities every single time by playing the jolly buffoon card. It was infuriating and I decided I had enough of watching him a few years before he went off the air.
While the election of someone like Trump isn't Stewart's fault, of course, I do believe he and others in the media groomed the so-called left in the country to think it would be No Big Deal if a game show host, Russian mob debtee, and aspiring dictator were to be permitted into the White House. As much as there was likely Russian interference in the 2016 elections, apathy too helped that person get elected.
There are other causal elements, too, but shows like the TDS under Stewart's run also helped to create those conditions, to the extent that we deserve to have a Serious Talk about him and our own roles by watching his program, how that created the political and cultural environment that lead to Trump's ascension and near-subsequent fascist takeover of the country.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:17 AM on February 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
If Stewart is a sacred cow, I think a critical eye towards his audience is worthwhile, at the very least. In a way, we in the US have basically been laughing ourselves a hair's width away from a fascist dictatorship for the last 20-odd years since TDS started.
(And I mean that literally: from today's NYTimes, Trump had to be talked out of using the military to take over the election and the United States.)
As far as the TDS goes, part of that is the viewer not taking Stewart's more extreme right-wing guests more seriously, instead treating them as part of the joky nature of the show.
Part of that, too, is Stewart himself not taking his job as the showrunner of a media (yes, sorry) program seriously, and brushing off any criticism of his responsibilities every single time by playing the jolly buffoon card. It was infuriating and I decided I had enough of watching him a few years before he went off the air.
While the election of someone like Trump isn't Stewart's fault, of course, I do believe he and others in the media groomed the so-called left in the country to think it would be No Big Deal if a game show host, Russian mob debtee, and aspiring dictator were to be permitted into the White House. As much as there was likely Russian interference in the 2016 elections, apathy too helped that person get elected.
There are other causal elements, too, but shows like the TDS under Stewart's run also helped to create those conditions, to the extent that we deserve to have a Serious Talk about him and our own roles by watching his program, how that created the political and cultural environment that lead to Trump's ascension and near-subsequent fascist takeover of the country.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:17 AM on February 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
Is it unfair to critique literally anyone who's not a Nazi?
Perhaps not unfair, but most definitely poorly timed.
posted by wierdo at 6:22 AM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
Perhaps not unfair, but most definitely poorly timed.
posted by wierdo at 6:22 AM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
Was Stewart's "both sides are phonies, it's all ridiculous" viewpoint quietly pernicious and probably unhelpful? Well, yeah.
But it's hardly his fault that print media collapsed, TV news balkanized, and internet media flattened experts, real journalists, conspiracy theories and quacks into one messy landscape.
The Daily Show was supposed to be where smart people laughed about the bullshit they just saw on the news, not a place to get the news.
Is it even harder for him now? Well, yeah. Its one thing to make jokes about how Bush and Kerry are both rich bullshit artists. It's another thing to try and do a light, both sides bit about the butterfly museum having to close because people say they run a secret dock to smuggle in Mexican pedophiles.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:27 AM on February 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
But it's hardly his fault that print media collapsed, TV news balkanized, and internet media flattened experts, real journalists, conspiracy theories and quacks into one messy landscape.
The Daily Show was supposed to be where smart people laughed about the bullshit they just saw on the news, not a place to get the news.
Is it even harder for him now? Well, yeah. Its one thing to make jokes about how Bush and Kerry are both rich bullshit artists. It's another thing to try and do a light, both sides bit about the butterfly museum having to close because people say they run a secret dock to smuggle in Mexican pedophiles.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:27 AM on February 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
Just not surprising to read an article that is so sure in its blaming of Stewart and calling his liberal POV and everything it supposedly wrought a failure during this time of increased right-wing propaganda.
Less snarkily, I think the two most dominant attitudes in liberal/leftist (American) thinking are
I don't think that critiquing a media celebrity is going to help the fascists win, and on the productive/non-productive spectrum I feel like it's more productive than not (though pieces like this are so fundamentally powerless that I don't think arguing whether it's "useful" is itself all that useful). But I think that, beyond the critique itself, it's interesting as a study of: okay, back then we were dealing with that and felt that way, and now that we're dealing with this some people feel like this, and the story of how this evolved from that is always neat. Not because the line from then to now is nearly that straightforward, but because I think that the complexity of that progression tells an interesting story of where and who we are.
(Corey Robin wrote a lot about how, for all that Trump is the most conspicuously vile president we've had in years and the alt-right is openly nasty in ways that feel new, there's a lot of collective amnesia about just how batshit insane America was during the Bush years, to the point that even left-leaning media was hawkish and bigoted and dreadful. I feel like AlSweigart had it exactly right: Jon Stewart was cathartic in 2004 in a way that's hard to understand now, because on some levels half of our society is collectively much saner than it was then, even if the other half has taken another few leaps into the deep side of the pool. But at the same time, Stewart's catharsis did not anticipate where culture's gone, so it's an interesting case of something being of its time but not entirely prescient—and the critique that Vox makes, I think, is that Stewart's new show still feels a bit like it's emerging from that earlier era, rather than having the same cathartic cleareyedness today that TDS felt like it had two decades ago.)
posted by rorgy at 6:29 AM on February 1, 2022 [27 favorites]
Less snarkily, I think the two most dominant attitudes in liberal/leftist (American) thinking are
- Centrist inertia/refusal to engage with broader political projects is a huge part of our present predicament
- Nah, that's bullshit, right-wing fascist supremacy is hugely on the rise—stop blaming the people who are working the hardest to stop that
I don't think that critiquing a media celebrity is going to help the fascists win, and on the productive/non-productive spectrum I feel like it's more productive than not (though pieces like this are so fundamentally powerless that I don't think arguing whether it's "useful" is itself all that useful). But I think that, beyond the critique itself, it's interesting as a study of: okay, back then we were dealing with that and felt that way, and now that we're dealing with this some people feel like this, and the story of how this evolved from that is always neat. Not because the line from then to now is nearly that straightforward, but because I think that the complexity of that progression tells an interesting story of where and who we are.
(Corey Robin wrote a lot about how, for all that Trump is the most conspicuously vile president we've had in years and the alt-right is openly nasty in ways that feel new, there's a lot of collective amnesia about just how batshit insane America was during the Bush years, to the point that even left-leaning media was hawkish and bigoted and dreadful. I feel like AlSweigart had it exactly right: Jon Stewart was cathartic in 2004 in a way that's hard to understand now, because on some levels half of our society is collectively much saner than it was then, even if the other half has taken another few leaps into the deep side of the pool. But at the same time, Stewart's catharsis did not anticipate where culture's gone, so it's an interesting case of something being of its time but not entirely prescient—and the critique that Vox makes, I think, is that Stewart's new show still feels a bit like it's emerging from that earlier era, rather than having the same cathartic cleareyedness today that TDS felt like it had two decades ago.)
posted by rorgy at 6:29 AM on February 1, 2022 [27 favorites]
This Tom Lehrer quote comes to mind:
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:42 AM on February 1, 2022 [33 favorites]
“I don’t think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It’s not even preaching to the converted; it’s titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, ‘We need satire of them, not of us.’ I’m fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the ’30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War.”Not to sound nihilistic, but 2016 happened despite Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. I have a hard time accepting this, but it's true. We can either examine the disconnect between what we thought TDS accomplished and what it actually did, or we can just lionize Stewart for really sticking it to the man back in the day.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:42 AM on February 1, 2022 [33 favorites]
Validation and/or catharsis provide necessary psychological comfort.
posted by wierdo at 6:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by wierdo at 6:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
But Doctor, I am Pagliacci.
posted by Pot at 6:59 AM on February 1, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by Pot at 6:59 AM on February 1, 2022 [17 favorites]
He had a cause: the work he did to ensure that first responders to 9/11 got the care they needed.He saw it through.
That's more than most entertainers and even politicians can say.
this piece just seems aimed at tearing down Stewart's new show, which isn't the Daily Show, for not being the Daily Show.
Stewart owes us nothing. he was a voice we needed during his time, and if he chooses to come at issues from a different angle now, that's his prerogative. I admit I don't find his new show "must see" tv, but i'll also admit that I grew so very tired during the 45 years that I'm just recharging for the inevitable fights that will begin after the midterms. Maybe he is too.
posted by OHenryPacey at 7:11 AM on February 1, 2022 [26 favorites]
That's more than most entertainers and even politicians can say.
this piece just seems aimed at tearing down Stewart's new show, which isn't the Daily Show, for not being the Daily Show.
Stewart owes us nothing. he was a voice we needed during his time, and if he chooses to come at issues from a different angle now, that's his prerogative. I admit I don't find his new show "must see" tv, but i'll also admit that I grew so very tired during the 45 years that I'm just recharging for the inevitable fights that will begin after the midterms. Maybe he is too.
posted by OHenryPacey at 7:11 AM on February 1, 2022 [26 favorites]
> disconnect between what we thought TDS accomplished and what it actually did
As others have said, Jon Stewart isn't responsible for whatever we projecting onto him, and he sure as hell isn't responsible for whatever "what it actually did" stands for in this sentence.
I think saturday_morning and DirtyOldTown are on to something: Jon Stewart really was just trying to make jokes. A lot of what this article seems to be doing is demanding that he should have fulfilled our nebulous rescue fantasies, saved us from W. But he didn't wanna (didn't know how). People are allowed to have boundaries.
IMO part of what's happening here is that Jon Stewart "went viral" on the internet before we all knew what that meant and how to deal with it. It explains why we projected so much onto him: instead of treating him as a guy whose jokes are viral-today-gone-tomorrow, we treated him as The Great Liberal Hope. We're still doing it. We don't have perspective on who he is and what his job is.
The newness of internet viral-ness explains why *he*, too, got carried away and stepped outside his own boundaries of being "just a comedian" by taking on polemical and philosophical stances, by occasionally actively accepting some of the roles we were thrusting him into even though he had no clue and knew it. A Jon Stewart of today would be a lot less likely to make this mistake: folks who use going viral as a pass to pontificate on big issues these days are generally people who are ... greedy, shallow, bombastic, self-aggrandizing etc. Jon Stewart is a thoughtful, soulful guy who would likely stay in his lane and handle going viral with grace and humor and plugging a charitable cause. Which he actually ended up doing, he thoroughly reined himself in after those early fumbles.
posted by MiraK at 7:11 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
As others have said, Jon Stewart isn't responsible for whatever we projecting onto him, and he sure as hell isn't responsible for whatever "what it actually did" stands for in this sentence.
I think saturday_morning and DirtyOldTown are on to something: Jon Stewart really was just trying to make jokes. A lot of what this article seems to be doing is demanding that he should have fulfilled our nebulous rescue fantasies, saved us from W. But he didn't wanna (didn't know how). People are allowed to have boundaries.
IMO part of what's happening here is that Jon Stewart "went viral" on the internet before we all knew what that meant and how to deal with it. It explains why we projected so much onto him: instead of treating him as a guy whose jokes are viral-today-gone-tomorrow, we treated him as The Great Liberal Hope. We're still doing it. We don't have perspective on who he is and what his job is.
The newness of internet viral-ness explains why *he*, too, got carried away and stepped outside his own boundaries of being "just a comedian" by taking on polemical and philosophical stances, by occasionally actively accepting some of the roles we were thrusting him into even though he had no clue and knew it. A Jon Stewart of today would be a lot less likely to make this mistake: folks who use going viral as a pass to pontificate on big issues these days are generally people who are ... greedy, shallow, bombastic, self-aggrandizing etc. Jon Stewart is a thoughtful, soulful guy who would likely stay in his lane and handle going viral with grace and humor and plugging a charitable cause. Which he actually ended up doing, he thoroughly reined himself in after those early fumbles.
posted by MiraK at 7:11 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
Waiting for the follow up piece "Wait, was Homeland Really Just Liberal 24/7"
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:16 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:16 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
The article dubiously asserts that “In 2004, YouTube didn’t exist”. This is a metaphysical absurdity, akin to talking about what “the universe” was like “before the Big Bang”.
posted by neuron at 7:23 AM on February 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by neuron at 7:23 AM on February 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
talking about what “the universe” was like “before the Big Bang”
It was overcrowded.
posted by Pot at 7:29 AM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
It was overcrowded.
posted by Pot at 7:29 AM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Less snarkily, I think the two most dominant attitudes in liberal/leftist (American) thinking are
Centrist inertia/refusal to engage with broader political projects is a huge part of our present predicament
Nah, that's bullshit, right-wing fascist supremacy is hugely on the rise—stop blaming the people who are working the hardest to stop that
I mean, the problem here isn't that one of these is right and one is wrong but that the interaction between the centrists and the fascists- specifically, that fascists have at their core the promise to forcibly restore the underlying power dynamics (bourgeoisie over proletariat, white over PoC, cishet over queer) of the system and centrists generally find that less threatening than the leftist proposition of undoing all those dynamics upon which the whole edifice of our society is built- is the serious problem. Fascists are horrible and dangerous and monstrous, but without collaborators within the "legitimate" political spectrum, from conservatives who see them as useful to centrists who see them as less threatening than then the left to liberals who just can't find it within themselves to see them for the danger they are, they're just random monsters. You can't only deal with the fascists or only deal with the center. You'd have to root out the underlying structures that make fascism arise and enable to grow, and it's pretty much only one part of the overall political spectrum that's not stridently, violently opposed to that.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:31 AM on February 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
Centrist inertia/refusal to engage with broader political projects is a huge part of our present predicament
Nah, that's bullshit, right-wing fascist supremacy is hugely on the rise—stop blaming the people who are working the hardest to stop that
I mean, the problem here isn't that one of these is right and one is wrong but that the interaction between the centrists and the fascists- specifically, that fascists have at their core the promise to forcibly restore the underlying power dynamics (bourgeoisie over proletariat, white over PoC, cishet over queer) of the system and centrists generally find that less threatening than the leftist proposition of undoing all those dynamics upon which the whole edifice of our society is built- is the serious problem. Fascists are horrible and dangerous and monstrous, but without collaborators within the "legitimate" political spectrum, from conservatives who see them as useful to centrists who see them as less threatening than then the left to liberals who just can't find it within themselves to see them for the danger they are, they're just random monsters. You can't only deal with the fascists or only deal with the center. You'd have to root out the underlying structures that make fascism arise and enable to grow, and it's pretty much only one part of the overall political spectrum that's not stridently, violently opposed to that.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:31 AM on February 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
Did Stewart think he was just telling jokes, or did he think he was a standard bearer of some kind?
Well, here is an (edited) bit from his famous Crossfire appearance:
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:33 AM on February 1, 2022 [20 favorites]
Well, here is an (edited) bit from his famous Crossfire appearance:
You know, it's interesting to hear you talk about my responsibility... I didn't realize that -- and maybe this explains quite a bit -- the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity... If your idea of confronting me is that I don't ask hard-hitting enough news questions, we're in bad shape, fellows... You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.It really sounds like even back then, he was struggling. He knew things were out of whack. And he didn't go on Crossfire to "annihilate" Tucker Carlson (in the parlance of viral clips). He went on because for his schtick to be in the lane he wanted to be in, traditional news needed to step up. They did not, obviously.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:33 AM on February 1, 2022 [20 favorites]
The Daily Show was supposed to be where smart people laughed about the bullshit they just saw on the news, not a place to get the news.
This. He frequently lamented the fact that corporate media was in such a bad state that people were coming to him for the actual news. This article reads as "why didn't Chris Rock's political jokes save America" or "the counterculture revolution of the 60s failed - should we hate Bob Dylan now"? I was watching TDS during most of its run and found it a nice piece of sanity and a confirmation of my intuition that, frankly, as soon as there are multiple heads in squares arguing or there's a chyron scrolling across the bottom all the time with a totally different story, it's not what I think of as news.
I'd also like to respond to the Chapo Trap House comment. I think we need more voices like that which are willing to question the basic underpinnings of everything (capitalism bad), but TDS wasn't trying to do that. Stewart generally reserved his most biting criticism for the big people (media, politicians) rather than for the people of the U.S. themselves. That is, he wasn't (usually) saying "this show is for cool liberals and what's with all you dumb red state people" - there was always the implied invitation that if you thought hypocrisy and lies were bad, you could watch and laugh along or get angry. Right-wing media are the main ones who divided America into a 50/50 us-versus-them hellscape. The problem I have with CTH and stuff like TrueAnon is they feel much more clubby than TDS and tend to carry a ton of unproven/non-obvious assumptions underneath the jokiness. Stuff like Epstein didn't kill himself, everyone knows the CIA killed JFK, etc. Which, some of that may be true, but putting that sort of stuff front and center is a big turnoff for Joe Republican Plumber if he's curious what you have to say. They also assume you have read Marx and know that liberal/progressive/leftist are not synonyms, whereas I would guess 95% of Americans don't know the difference.
Stewart (as shown by his 9/11 responder work) was not in it to demonize the 50% of the country he didn't agree with. He saw them as people and was mainly mad at the institutions. I haven't seen his new show and part of me feels like we are in full Idiocracy mode and it wouldn't help, but TDS definitely kept me sane.
posted by freecellwizard at 7:35 AM on February 1, 2022 [31 favorites]
This. He frequently lamented the fact that corporate media was in such a bad state that people were coming to him for the actual news. This article reads as "why didn't Chris Rock's political jokes save America" or "the counterculture revolution of the 60s failed - should we hate Bob Dylan now"? I was watching TDS during most of its run and found it a nice piece of sanity and a confirmation of my intuition that, frankly, as soon as there are multiple heads in squares arguing or there's a chyron scrolling across the bottom all the time with a totally different story, it's not what I think of as news.
I'd also like to respond to the Chapo Trap House comment. I think we need more voices like that which are willing to question the basic underpinnings of everything (capitalism bad), but TDS wasn't trying to do that. Stewart generally reserved his most biting criticism for the big people (media, politicians) rather than for the people of the U.S. themselves. That is, he wasn't (usually) saying "this show is for cool liberals and what's with all you dumb red state people" - there was always the implied invitation that if you thought hypocrisy and lies were bad, you could watch and laugh along or get angry. Right-wing media are the main ones who divided America into a 50/50 us-versus-them hellscape. The problem I have with CTH and stuff like TrueAnon is they feel much more clubby than TDS and tend to carry a ton of unproven/non-obvious assumptions underneath the jokiness. Stuff like Epstein didn't kill himself, everyone knows the CIA killed JFK, etc. Which, some of that may be true, but putting that sort of stuff front and center is a big turnoff for Joe Republican Plumber if he's curious what you have to say. They also assume you have read Marx and know that liberal/progressive/leftist are not synonyms, whereas I would guess 95% of Americans don't know the difference.
Stewart (as shown by his 9/11 responder work) was not in it to demonize the 50% of the country he didn't agree with. He saw them as people and was mainly mad at the institutions. I haven't seen his new show and part of me feels like we are in full Idiocracy mode and it wouldn't help, but TDS definitely kept me sane.
posted by freecellwizard at 7:35 AM on February 1, 2022 [31 favorites]
It was quite a shock to me to see Stewart come out as strongly as he did on COVID Escaped From That Chinese Lab. I tried really hard to read that bit as satire, but in the end I just couldn't.
Other than that I don't think I've ever seen him put a foot wrong, and I don't think anybody who has done less than he has to skewer the pitiful state of US news media can reasonably expect their largely carping criticisms of his work to be taken seriously.
posted by flabdablet at 7:47 AM on February 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
Other than that I don't think I've ever seen him put a foot wrong, and I don't think anybody who has done less than he has to skewer the pitiful state of US news media can reasonably expect their largely carping criticisms of his work to be taken seriously.
posted by flabdablet at 7:47 AM on February 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
I'm sure the 9/11 first responders work is very noble but as far as crusades go it does absolutely nothing for the country as a whole and there's something very provincially New York about holding it up as obviously redeeming.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 7:56 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 7:56 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
How many offs do I have to fuck? Or fucks to give?
These don't say the same thing: ...good people on both sides... and ...bad people on both sides...
Times now are starker, more black and white, not as nuanced. From B-43 through Obama, I was swamped with nuance. Pretty much overwhelmed. No matter.
Civil outrage, civil discourse, pointed humor all meet confused and snarling vindictive. Ha, ha. Jon, you, you old dog, you sure dodged a bullet, skipping all those Trump years.
Someone, lead us through these troubling times.
posted by mule98J at 7:56 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
These don't say the same thing: ...good people on both sides... and ...bad people on both sides...
Times now are starker, more black and white, not as nuanced. From B-43 through Obama, I was swamped with nuance. Pretty much overwhelmed. No matter.
Civil outrage, civil discourse, pointed humor all meet confused and snarling vindictive. Ha, ha. Jon, you, you old dog, you sure dodged a bullet, skipping all those Trump years.
Someone, lead us through these troubling times.
posted by mule98J at 7:56 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I feel like Seth Myers has tried to keep up the TDS vibe with his "A Closer Look" segments, which he also posts to YouTube every week. They primarily skewer the hypocrisy and evilness of the Republican Party. For what it's worth.
posted by valkane at 8:04 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by valkane at 8:04 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm sure the 9/11 first responders work is very noble but as far as crusades go it does absolutely nothing for the country as a whole and there's something very provincially New York about holding it up as obviously redeeming.
The VCF is a big operation and frankly I wish I could do something so minor as be a major advocate for a project that's distributed some $9b+ to 40,000+ people injured in connection with the worst terrorist attack on US soil in our history. Sorry if those numbers are too small for you, but then I have to wonder about the scale you're applying.
posted by praemunire at 8:28 AM on February 1, 2022 [34 favorites]
The VCF is a big operation and frankly I wish I could do something so minor as be a major advocate for a project that's distributed some $9b+ to 40,000+ people injured in connection with the worst terrorist attack on US soil in our history. Sorry if those numbers are too small for you, but then I have to wonder about the scale you're applying.
posted by praemunire at 8:28 AM on February 1, 2022 [34 favorites]
Sorry if those numbers are too small for you, but then I have to wonder about the scale you're applying.
That's 0.0001% of the US population and less than one thousandth of the number sickened or killed by Covid, and while I understand it seems big on a local scale it is not actually a large number.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 8:35 AM on February 1, 2022
That's 0.0001% of the US population and less than one thousandth of the number sickened or killed by Covid, and while I understand it seems big on a local scale it is not actually a large number.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 8:35 AM on February 1, 2022
The thing about Americans -- from the perspective of outsider -- is that you tend to rush from one potential hero to another, looking for a saviour. Some celebrity delivers a mic-drop or volunteers at a soup kitchen and a guerilla campaign breaks out on social media: Keanu For President! (But he can't run anyway because he's Canadian!) You guys don't have much of a tendency (notwithstanding plenty of notable exceptions) to look to yourselves or communities for solidarity and political solutions, you look for a Mr. Smith to send to Washington.
So, though I liked Stewart back in the day, I always thought Liberal Americans had just chosen him as the next great hope, in an age of hopelessness that began at the beginning and wasn't likely to have an end. And all he really did was reinforce that sense of hopelessness and make you feel alright about it.
What I always thought Stewart lacked was the perception that the political spectrum in America is left wing at one end and Liberal at the other. The right operates on an entirely different plane. Maybe he did and I just don't remember it, but Stewart should have recognized the nihilism of the right in the age of Newt Gingerich, Rush Limbaugh et al (shit, I should have...) Instead, he ducked for the easy convenience of both-siderism. He was brilliant at it, sure, but he never seemed to stumble on the realization that when one "side" is milling around the rule book and the other is lying its way into war and taking a sledgehammer to America's fragile networks of trust and collective identity, there is no "center."
posted by klanawa at 8:36 AM on February 1, 2022 [21 favorites]
So, though I liked Stewart back in the day, I always thought Liberal Americans had just chosen him as the next great hope, in an age of hopelessness that began at the beginning and wasn't likely to have an end. And all he really did was reinforce that sense of hopelessness and make you feel alright about it.
What I always thought Stewart lacked was the perception that the political spectrum in America is left wing at one end and Liberal at the other. The right operates on an entirely different plane. Maybe he did and I just don't remember it, but Stewart should have recognized the nihilism of the right in the age of Newt Gingerich, Rush Limbaugh et al (shit, I should have...) Instead, he ducked for the easy convenience of both-siderism. He was brilliant at it, sure, but he never seemed to stumble on the realization that when one "side" is milling around the rule book and the other is lying its way into war and taking a sledgehammer to America's fragile networks of trust and collective identity, there is no "center."
posted by klanawa at 8:36 AM on February 1, 2022 [21 favorites]
while I understand it seems big on a local scale it is not actually a large number.
An overcompensating, faux-sophisticated desire to scoff at actual achievements in human welfare because they do not solve all the universe's problems is actually far more pernicious in the left's political culture than people's mistaking satire for direct political action could ever be. But, by all means, shrug it off and go back to distributing your tens of billions.
posted by praemunire at 8:43 AM on February 1, 2022 [34 favorites]
An overcompensating, faux-sophisticated desire to scoff at actual achievements in human welfare because they do not solve all the universe's problems is actually far more pernicious in the left's political culture than people's mistaking satire for direct political action could ever be. But, by all means, shrug it off and go back to distributing your tens of billions.
posted by praemunire at 8:43 AM on February 1, 2022 [34 favorites]
An overcompensating, faux-sophisticated desire to scoff at actual achievements in human welfare because they do not solve all the universe's problems is actually far more pernicious in the left's political culture than people's mistaking satire for direct political action could ever be.
Actual achievements in human welfare don't have to be dressed up in jingoism and reserved for "heroes" whose pain was pretty much only used to perpetuate illegal wars abroad and repression at home, so spare me the condescension.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 8:46 AM on February 1, 2022
Actual achievements in human welfare don't have to be dressed up in jingoism and reserved for "heroes" whose pain was pretty much only used to perpetuate illegal wars abroad and repression at home, so spare me the condescension.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 8:46 AM on February 1, 2022
For me, what's disappointing about Stewart's cause (though I do admire that he actually got things done) is less about the jingoism (though, yes, that) than the fact that it shouldn't have needed to be a cause. It's like, what a broken fucking country that a group composed symbolically of white male cishet citizens who ran toward the fire on that day, the day every politician then exploited for the next *ever,* could not get the benefits they were owed by basic decency.
It was yeoman's work, but the cause itself was not precisely heroic, I guess is what I mean.
What is wrong with us? (Ha. Never mind. I know the answer.)
posted by allthinky at 8:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
It was yeoman's work, but the cause itself was not precisely heroic, I guess is what I mean.
What is wrong with us? (Ha. Never mind. I know the answer.)
posted by allthinky at 8:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
The thing about Americans -- from the perspective of outsider -- is that you tend to rush from one potential hero to another, looking for a saviour.
Yep -- and the tendency to tear down those saviors comes from the same impulse as the one to build them up, and they're both equally silly. Thinking Jon Stewart *ever* had a chance to do anything that would have a lasting impact on the entire country is silly. Castigating him for failing to do something impossible just gives us a comforting target to attack that isn't ourselves.
posted by Galvanic at 8:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [20 favorites]
Yep -- and the tendency to tear down those saviors comes from the same impulse as the one to build them up, and they're both equally silly. Thinking Jon Stewart *ever* had a chance to do anything that would have a lasting impact on the entire country is silly. Castigating him for failing to do something impossible just gives us a comforting target to attack that isn't ourselves.
posted by Galvanic at 8:54 AM on February 1, 2022 [20 favorites]
(A small reminder that Constance Grady write that moderately viral column about how Lin-Manuel Miranda had lost all cultural cachet and was cringe now just as Encanto was coming out. It is a very minor form of pundit accountability, but it feels like an asterisk on the column.)
posted by Going To Maine at 8:58 AM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 8:58 AM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
Actual achievements in human welfare don't have to be dressed up in jingoism and reserved for "heroes" whose pain was pretty much only used to perpetuate illegal wars abroad and repression at home, so spare me the condescension
While Stewart (cannily) focused on first responders, VCF aid is available to any eligible people who were in the New York City Exposure Zone (and a few other places), which includes, among other places, Chinatown, home to some very economically distressed people indeed.
No one who knows me will accuse me of being a cop-worshipper, but if you find it easier to put scare quotes around the word hero for people who ran into burning buildings trying to save lives than to admit that you didn't know the scope and scale of the VCF, I guess we won't find common ground.
posted by praemunire at 9:09 AM on February 1, 2022 [17 favorites]
While Stewart (cannily) focused on first responders, VCF aid is available to any eligible people who were in the New York City Exposure Zone (and a few other places), which includes, among other places, Chinatown, home to some very economically distressed people indeed.
No one who knows me will accuse me of being a cop-worshipper, but if you find it easier to put scare quotes around the word hero for people who ran into burning buildings trying to save lives than to admit that you didn't know the scope and scale of the VCF, I guess we won't find common ground.
posted by praemunire at 9:09 AM on February 1, 2022 [17 favorites]
That's 0.0001% of the US population and less than one thousandth of the number sickened or killed by Covid, and while I understand it seems big on a local scale it is not actually a large number.
Need some help moving those goalposts? I just notice you're doing it a lot....
Stewart's personal, ongoing activism is about causes local to where he lives, that affect people around him, and if all of us did 1/1,000 of the local kinds of activism he does (and his wife, they own a farm animal rescue for goodness sake), our world would be a far better place. Criticize his work, sure, but to effectively say 'he didn't do anything' is just plain wrong, and to judge its scale is to make an ever-receding perfect the clear enemy of good.
The thing about Americans -- from the perspective of outsider -- is that you tend to rush from one potential hero to another, looking for a saviour.
This is our problem, we're a nation of armchair quarterbacks. We watch and discuss but only rarely actually do.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:10 AM on February 1, 2022 [21 favorites]
Need some help moving those goalposts? I just notice you're doing it a lot....
Stewart's personal, ongoing activism is about causes local to where he lives, that affect people around him, and if all of us did 1/1,000 of the local kinds of activism he does (and his wife, they own a farm animal rescue for goodness sake), our world would be a far better place. Criticize his work, sure, but to effectively say 'he didn't do anything' is just plain wrong, and to judge its scale is to make an ever-receding perfect the clear enemy of good.
The thing about Americans -- from the perspective of outsider -- is that you tend to rush from one potential hero to another, looking for a saviour.
This is our problem, we're a nation of armchair quarterbacks. We watch and discuss but only rarely actually do.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:10 AM on February 1, 2022 [21 favorites]
It was yeoman's work, but the cause itself was not precisely heroic, I guess is what I mean. What is wrong with us?
I'm going to cheer you up even further by telling you that a bunch of finance people then attempted to insert themselves between the victims and the money.
posted by praemunire at 9:13 AM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm going to cheer you up even further by telling you that a bunch of finance people then attempted to insert themselves between the victims and the money.
posted by praemunire at 9:13 AM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
criticizing Jon Stewart means you've never contributed to your community or been part of local disaster relief efforts or any number of things that are in fact at least 1/1000 as effective at a local scale as what Jon Stewart has done
Criticizing helping, in a purely altruistic way, to get $9b+ to 40K+ people as not really worth taking into consideration in evaluating a man's impact means, to me, that, regardless of what you've done yourself, you're severely lacking in perspective on what's worth doing. (In a way that often bedevils the further left.)
Criticizing Jon Stewart generally, I can barely care about. I agree with the people who say he suffered from being treated as a serious political analyst rather than a media satirist, which isn't really his fault; at the same time, I only watched the show sporadically, for the "much of a muchness"/Sorkin reason someone else mentioned, and parts of it haven't aged well; on the third hand, by considering how the show has aged you're inevitably abstracting it from the context of the early Bush II-era sharp swing towards insanity that gave it bite.
posted by praemunire at 9:28 AM on February 1, 2022 [10 favorites]
Criticizing helping, in a purely altruistic way, to get $9b+ to 40K+ people as not really worth taking into consideration in evaluating a man's impact means, to me, that, regardless of what you've done yourself, you're severely lacking in perspective on what's worth doing. (In a way that often bedevils the further left.)
Criticizing Jon Stewart generally, I can barely care about. I agree with the people who say he suffered from being treated as a serious political analyst rather than a media satirist, which isn't really his fault; at the same time, I only watched the show sporadically, for the "much of a muchness"/Sorkin reason someone else mentioned, and parts of it haven't aged well; on the third hand, by considering how the show has aged you're inevitably abstracting it from the context of the early Bush II-era sharp swing towards insanity that gave it bite.
posted by praemunire at 9:28 AM on February 1, 2022 [10 favorites]
I always loved Stewart and the Daily Show and especially Colbert in his prime. I think the problem was that liberals could look to Stewart and easily feel like they were winning the culture war and therefore all politics. He became sort of an emblem of a failed experiment/strategy that involved just trusting that if we can snark our way to the top, then the people will see - they'll all see! - how we are the smart side and they are the dumb dumbs and Intelligence and Logic and Reason will win the day. But as we saw from when he "took down" Tucker Carlson, he didn't really end up "taking him down" in any meaningful way in the end, did he? Tucker - and his ilk - are stronger than ever and I suspect much has to do with the fact that none of the actual conditions that drive people toward him and his rhetoric have changed much.
We can continue pointing out how disturbing it all is, how hypocritical these people are, how racist and disgusting they are...and then what? It's not that pointing them out is bad, or unneeded - but then what, really, what's step 2? #Vote, and it all resolves itself? The Obama era leading into the Trump era proved otherwise. In that sense, Stewart's political comedy became the face of a lot of feckless liberal critique that persists today. "Look at these freaks, everyone! We're not like them!" can not be the only ammo against the other side. I don't think Stewart intended that to be the case, but I think a lot of people at the time looked to him (and now resent him) in that way. Which is too bad because I do think all else aside he is a genuinely brilliant guy who had a brilliant show.
posted by windbox at 10:23 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
We can continue pointing out how disturbing it all is, how hypocritical these people are, how racist and disgusting they are...and then what? It's not that pointing them out is bad, or unneeded - but then what, really, what's step 2? #Vote, and it all resolves itself? The Obama era leading into the Trump era proved otherwise. In that sense, Stewart's political comedy became the face of a lot of feckless liberal critique that persists today. "Look at these freaks, everyone! We're not like them!" can not be the only ammo against the other side. I don't think Stewart intended that to be the case, but I think a lot of people at the time looked to him (and now resent him) in that way. Which is too bad because I do think all else aside he is a genuinely brilliant guy who had a brilliant show.
posted by windbox at 10:23 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
Thinking Jon Stewart *ever* had a chance to do anything that would have a lasting impact on the entire country is silly.
I wouldn't have asked him to save the world from damnation or any silly dramatics like that. I don't think anyone critical of him is asking for that, either. Maybe it is best to stick to what people are saying and not put words into others' mouths.
I would gently remind folks here that, like any position of real cultural, social, or political power, it is a fact that he had the kind of platform granted only to a handful of people in the country, and despite that he chose doing nothing much other than mugging in front of the camera.
Perhaps worse than that, he used every comedic and rhetorical trick to minimize the idea that he had influence. By doing so, further, he reinforced to the viewers that we, too, are basically powerless to do much about the elites who have put us on this timeline we are all on — so we might as well have a chuckle or two before going to bed.
That's a real problem, and until that is an acceptable part of the discussion, I don't know if there will ever be a full and fair accounting of his work or its contribution to the general situation we are all in.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:25 AM on February 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
I wouldn't have asked him to save the world from damnation or any silly dramatics like that. I don't think anyone critical of him is asking for that, either. Maybe it is best to stick to what people are saying and not put words into others' mouths.
I would gently remind folks here that, like any position of real cultural, social, or political power, it is a fact that he had the kind of platform granted only to a handful of people in the country, and despite that he chose doing nothing much other than mugging in front of the camera.
Perhaps worse than that, he used every comedic and rhetorical trick to minimize the idea that he had influence. By doing so, further, he reinforced to the viewers that we, too, are basically powerless to do much about the elites who have put us on this timeline we are all on — so we might as well have a chuckle or two before going to bed.
That's a real problem, and until that is an acceptable part of the discussion, I don't know if there will ever be a full and fair accounting of his work or its contribution to the general situation we are all in.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:25 AM on February 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
My opinion is, there was nothing wrong with The Daily Show or Colbert at their height, except that they were just shows, and not even shows on Actual News Networks. Shared videos showing them "DESTROYING" or "SLAMMING" or "DEMOLISHING" right-wing viewpoints were not (and still do not) change anything, because while you may agree with them, the many fans of the people they are supposedly obliterating don't watch them, and even if they did, they have an entire alternate media industry cocooning them in a cozy blanket of loud-voiced groupthink, such as (then) O'Reilly, (now) Sean Hannity and Jeanine "DEMOCRATS = DEMON RATS" Pirro.
And that is exactly why he kept saying that he was "Just a comedian". It wasn't any kind of "I'm just saying!" faux-innocence, it was him pleading to the serious media to god-damn do your jobs already, and it was a plea to his viewers that they should actually take action ourselves and not expecting his show to magically fix everything.
Comedians, and musicians and actors and artists, exists to call our attention to things. And once our attention is called to those things, we actually have to act on them ourselves - and with a level of action that requires more than simply "like and share" or whatever.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:29 AM on February 1, 2022 [38 favorites]
And that is exactly why he kept saying that he was "Just a comedian". It wasn't any kind of "I'm just saying!" faux-innocence, it was him pleading to the serious media to god-damn do your jobs already, and it was a plea to his viewers that they should actually take action ourselves and not expecting his show to magically fix everything.
Comedians, and musicians and actors and artists, exists to call our attention to things. And once our attention is called to those things, we actually have to act on them ourselves - and with a level of action that requires more than simply "like and share" or whatever.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:29 AM on February 1, 2022 [38 favorites]
he had the kind of platform granted only to a handful of people in the country, and despite that he chose doing nothing much other than mugging in front of the camera
But he got the platform by mugging and for mugging. It's not like he was either a politician or a celebrity from another field who got a ton of attention for other reasons he could then readily redirect. He was a comedian who did/does political comedy. He wasn't going to found a widespread movement. Helping get significant charitable legislation passed seems about right as the limit of his direct impact. Surely his most ambitious and serious-minded counterpart is John Oliver, and he's basically a funnier ProPublica with less influence.
By doing so, further, he reinforced to the viewers that we, too, are basically powerless to do much about the elites who have put us on this timeline we are all on — so we might as well have a chuckle or two before going to bed.
This is a bit of a jump for me, and needs more support.
posted by praemunire at 10:32 AM on February 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
But he got the platform by mugging and for mugging. It's not like he was either a politician or a celebrity from another field who got a ton of attention for other reasons he could then readily redirect. He was a comedian who did/does political comedy. He wasn't going to found a widespread movement. Helping get significant charitable legislation passed seems about right as the limit of his direct impact. Surely his most ambitious and serious-minded counterpart is John Oliver, and he's basically a funnier ProPublica with less influence.
By doing so, further, he reinforced to the viewers that we, too, are basically powerless to do much about the elites who have put us on this timeline we are all on — so we might as well have a chuckle or two before going to bed.
This is a bit of a jump for me, and needs more support.
posted by praemunire at 10:32 AM on February 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
I think, also, that we have a faded memory of the US political climate in which Jon Stewart became famous. The two major parties were not so polarized, Republican politicians were not (to use a technical term) cuckoo for cocoa puffs, bipartisanship actually honest-to-goodness existed - which sounds to me today like we're recalling how dinosaurs once walked the earth.
(I'm not trying to suggest that bipartisanship is an inherent good, or that bipartisanship wasn't motivated by evil/corrupt interests, etc. Just noting the fact that politicians from various parties used to actually speak to each other and negotiate and propose policy together. This has changed.)
This change began with 9/11. The madness, the jingoism, the conspiracy theories, the Fox News & alt right tailspin, all started spiraling precipitously after the attack, and things used to be different before. This cusp of change was when Jon Stewart was catapulted into fame. His pleas for "why can't both sides just talk like humans" needs to be understood in this context.
Is it true that he never critiqued big structural issues that were driving the shift? Sure! It's absolutely true. He wasn't woke to those big structural issues yet, possibly because they weren't really as obvious back then as they are now. There's more diversity in the voices we hear in our media these days which inevitably makes us more informed of structural issues. We've also spiraled so fucking far out that these days the core structural problems are much more evident, whereas in Stewart's heyday a person might still reasonably be stuck at the stage of saying, "wait, wait, what the fuck happened, time out, we were all coming together saying I HEART NY two weeks ago and now we're enemies, what's happening??"
So that's why there's a difference between John Oliver and Hasan Minhaj etc. vs Jon Stewart. Comedians have had 20 years to learn to walk that line of politically activist-sounding COMEDY (emphasis on comedy). Jon Stewart was an old school comedian commenting on politics in an old-school-comedy sort of way... but the politics wasn't old school anymore because it had suddenly gone haywire, and merely by commenting on it, that caused all of us to anoint him as our political savior. He was the only one saying anything about it back then. Politicians had not caught up.
posted by MiraK at 10:39 AM on February 1, 2022 [23 favorites]
(I'm not trying to suggest that bipartisanship is an inherent good, or that bipartisanship wasn't motivated by evil/corrupt interests, etc. Just noting the fact that politicians from various parties used to actually speak to each other and negotiate and propose policy together. This has changed.)
This change began with 9/11. The madness, the jingoism, the conspiracy theories, the Fox News & alt right tailspin, all started spiraling precipitously after the attack, and things used to be different before. This cusp of change was when Jon Stewart was catapulted into fame. His pleas for "why can't both sides just talk like humans" needs to be understood in this context.
Is it true that he never critiqued big structural issues that were driving the shift? Sure! It's absolutely true. He wasn't woke to those big structural issues yet, possibly because they weren't really as obvious back then as they are now. There's more diversity in the voices we hear in our media these days which inevitably makes us more informed of structural issues. We've also spiraled so fucking far out that these days the core structural problems are much more evident, whereas in Stewart's heyday a person might still reasonably be stuck at the stage of saying, "wait, wait, what the fuck happened, time out, we were all coming together saying I HEART NY two weeks ago and now we're enemies, what's happening??"
So that's why there's a difference between John Oliver and Hasan Minhaj etc. vs Jon Stewart. Comedians have had 20 years to learn to walk that line of politically activist-sounding COMEDY (emphasis on comedy). Jon Stewart was an old school comedian commenting on politics in an old-school-comedy sort of way... but the politics wasn't old school anymore because it had suddenly gone haywire, and merely by commenting on it, that caused all of us to anoint him as our political savior. He was the only one saying anything about it back then. Politicians had not caught up.
posted by MiraK at 10:39 AM on February 1, 2022 [23 favorites]
he had the kind of platform granted only to a handful of people in the country, and despite that he chose doing nothing much other than mugging in front of the camera
And that is because - as he REPEATEDLY reminded us - he was a comedian. "Mugging in front of a camera" was literally his job description.
You sound like you have him confused with a politician or a newscaster, and that was always his point - he is neither of those things, so instead of expecting him to be those things, start holding the actual politicians or newscasters to the standard you are trying to hold him to.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:40 AM on February 1, 2022 [20 favorites]
And that is because - as he REPEATEDLY reminded us - he was a comedian. "Mugging in front of a camera" was literally his job description.
You sound like you have him confused with a politician or a newscaster, and that was always his point - he is neither of those things, so instead of expecting him to be those things, start holding the actual politicians or newscasters to the standard you are trying to hold him to.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:40 AM on February 1, 2022 [20 favorites]
Jesus, this thread.
"Sure Jon Stewart achieved the minor, meaningless feat of tirelessly working to get the 9/11 first responders (a tiny blip of a group!) the help they needed despite the powers that be fighting tooth and nail against it, but he didn't personally stop the rise of fascism in this country and has therefore not only contributed nothing to anyone but is actively a terrible person."
Never change, MetaFilter!
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:43 AM on February 1, 2022 [63 favorites]
"Sure Jon Stewart achieved the minor, meaningless feat of tirelessly working to get the 9/11 first responders (a tiny blip of a group!) the help they needed despite the powers that be fighting tooth and nail against it, but he didn't personally stop the rise of fascism in this country and has therefore not only contributed nothing to anyone but is actively a terrible person."
Never change, MetaFilter!
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:43 AM on February 1, 2022 [63 favorites]
Don't put words in other folks' mouths. He made it very clear that he believed that the political solution to the fundamental problems of this country could be solved with rhetoric and an appeal to the aw shucks let's come together spirit of the American people, and that in fact was a failure. I am not saying that his work for 9/11 victims was unimportant, but it has absolutely no bearing on his larger political project. I absolutely do not accept that he was "just a comedian", because at the height of his popularity he was a self-appointed arbiter of political morality as well as a funny guy on TV. He has every right as an entertainer to walk both sides of that line, and his advocacy certainly helped people in a local setting, but that doesn't mean that he didn't also do harm to American politics in the long run.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 11:10 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 11:10 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
he was a self-appointed arbiter of political morality
as are we all, assuming we even bother to pay attention, surely? I can't ding Stewart for doing that as well, just because had a huge megaphone. It's not like he was using it to spread misinformation the way Fox does 24x7.
Also, the idea that Stewart's media work did long-run harm to American politics is one I personally find completely ludicrous. But maybe that's because I'm old enough to remember Gingrich.
posted by flabdablet at 11:14 AM on February 1, 2022 [17 favorites]
as are we all, assuming we even bother to pay attention, surely? I can't ding Stewart for doing that as well, just because had a huge megaphone. It's not like he was using it to spread misinformation the way Fox does 24x7.
Also, the idea that Stewart's media work did long-run harm to American politics is one I personally find completely ludicrous. But maybe that's because I'm old enough to remember Gingrich.
posted by flabdablet at 11:14 AM on February 1, 2022 [17 favorites]
I absolutely do not accept that he was "just a comedian", because at the height of his popularity he was a self-appointed arbiter of political morality as well as a funny guy on TV.
Self-appointed arbiter? Or appointed-by-the-public?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:19 AM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Self-appointed arbiter? Or appointed-by-the-public?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:19 AM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Self-appointed arbiter? Or appointed-by-the-public?
Appointed by Viacom, at that point
posted by OverlappingElvis at 11:20 AM on February 1, 2022
Appointed by Viacom, at that point
posted by OverlappingElvis at 11:20 AM on February 1, 2022
Chapo
Matt is a treasure. His vlogs are the best 'Chapo' content (but really its own thing).
Felix is OK as a guest on other people's shows but gets tedious fast. The rest of them are occasionally funny but mostly just suck (which is part of the shtick, but ugggggh).
Stavros is probably funnier (and a more talented comic in the artistic sense) but as someone who could never stand Stern, I can take about five minutes of him--solo--before I'm good for months. (And I can't listen to Cumtown at all. He's amazing at roasts though.)
The Cool Zone Media (Robert Evans/@iwriteOK's thing) podcasts are mostly good, if you don't mind auditory doomscrolling (and all the iHeartRadio crap that gets inserted).
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:21 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Matt is a treasure. His vlogs are the best 'Chapo' content (but really its own thing).
Felix is OK as a guest on other people's shows but gets tedious fast. The rest of them are occasionally funny but mostly just suck (which is part of the shtick, but ugggggh).
Stavros is probably funnier (and a more talented comic in the artistic sense) but as someone who could never stand Stern, I can take about five minutes of him--solo--before I'm good for months. (And I can't listen to Cumtown at all. He's amazing at roasts though.)
The Cool Zone Media (Robert Evans/@iwriteOK's thing) podcasts are mostly good, if you don't mind auditory doomscrolling (and all the iHeartRadio crap that gets inserted).
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:21 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
John Stewart was the most publically known figure holding up a mirror to the bullshit going on in the early 2000s. Prior to him, The Daily Show was Craig Kilborne doing zany "your moment of zen" bits. Stewart and his writers actuallly exposed the absurdity of the "Shock and Awe" cable news pro-war mouthpieces. If he accomplishes nothing else in his life, he had the courage to do that when no one else was.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:28 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:28 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
“During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
posted by Going To Maine at 11:38 AM on February 1, 2022 [61 favorites]
― Kurt Vonnegut
posted by Going To Maine at 11:38 AM on February 1, 2022 [61 favorites]
but that doesn't mean that he didn't also do harm to American politics in the long run.
It sounds like you're confusing "didn't give us the right solution" with "did harm".
Like, let's agree for the moment Jon Stewart did indeed have the responsibilities that you think he had - whatever comes with taking on the role of "arbiter of political morality" on late night TV. Let's agree for the moment that he tried to carry out his responsibilities by peddling the "let's just talk to each other, both sides are human, why can't we get along" line. Let's even agree that this was the wrong line to take.
Even if everything you contend is true (which is a huge even if!), that still doesn't make Jon Stewart responsible for any harm that occurred, just like a doctor isn't responsible for the harm caused by a novel disease just because the treatment they tried didn't work. The harm to us was done by giant media corporations, by newscasters who let themselves be bought by powerful interest groups, by corrupt politicians, etc. Not Jon Stewart.
If your charge was that Stewart was corrupt, colluding with special interests for personal gain, pushing a certain political agenda in order to enrich himself or empower his cronies, advancing hateful agendas against oppressed groups to benefit his own privileged demographic, etc. then it would at least be understandable that you'd hold him responsible for causing harm. But even by your wildly high levels of responsibility foisted on him, all he did was make failed but sincere, honest, non-corrupt efforts to the best of their ability. You don't hate on people like that, ffs! It's perverse.
posted by MiraK at 11:48 AM on February 1, 2022 [26 favorites]
It sounds like you're confusing "didn't give us the right solution" with "did harm".
Like, let's agree for the moment Jon Stewart did indeed have the responsibilities that you think he had - whatever comes with taking on the role of "arbiter of political morality" on late night TV. Let's agree for the moment that he tried to carry out his responsibilities by peddling the "let's just talk to each other, both sides are human, why can't we get along" line. Let's even agree that this was the wrong line to take.
Even if everything you contend is true (which is a huge even if!), that still doesn't make Jon Stewart responsible for any harm that occurred, just like a doctor isn't responsible for the harm caused by a novel disease just because the treatment they tried didn't work. The harm to us was done by giant media corporations, by newscasters who let themselves be bought by powerful interest groups, by corrupt politicians, etc. Not Jon Stewart.
If your charge was that Stewart was corrupt, colluding with special interests for personal gain, pushing a certain political agenda in order to enrich himself or empower his cronies, advancing hateful agendas against oppressed groups to benefit his own privileged demographic, etc. then it would at least be understandable that you'd hold him responsible for causing harm. But even by your wildly high levels of responsibility foisted on him, all he did was make failed but sincere, honest, non-corrupt efforts to the best of their ability. You don't hate on people like that, ffs! It's perverse.
posted by MiraK at 11:48 AM on February 1, 2022 [26 favorites]
I kinda want to stick Jon Stewart and Bill Maher in a room and see who survives. When they both were funny, they were very fun to watch, but their descent into angry old commentators is sad to watch. Kind of like seeing Dennis Miller, but I don’t miss him much anymore.
For the record, I hope it would be Jon Stewart, but it’d probably be Bill Maher, sadly.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 11:48 AM on February 1, 2022
For the record, I hope it would be Jon Stewart, but it’d probably be Bill Maher, sadly.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 11:48 AM on February 1, 2022
"Sure Jon Stewart achieved the minor, meaningless feat of tirelessly working to get the 9/11 first responders (a tiny blip of a group!) the help they needed despite the powers that be fighting tooth and nail against it, but he didn't personally stop the rise of fascism in this country and has therefore not only contributed nothing to anyone but is actively a terrible person."
Never change, MetaFilter!
Reducing a thread that offers repeated multiple, nuanced perspectives to a shallow, negative hot take and then snarking about it is really quintessentially Metafilter, actually.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:53 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
Never change, MetaFilter!
Reducing a thread that offers repeated multiple, nuanced perspectives to a shallow, negative hot take and then snarking about it is really quintessentially Metafilter, actually.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:53 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
Bill Maher has never been funny and seems like a dick. He has the same arrogant affect that Trump has - just super snide. Religulous somehow made me empathize with fundamentalists, which I wouldn't have thought possible.
On a different note, I think this thread is going fine even though we all have different opinions about what responsibilities an entertainer has. I just happen to believe that if you are doing any good at all, there's no need to pick you apart until we've focused on the people and systems doing active harm. Otherwise if I adopt a cat you can say I should have sent the adoption fees to starving people in Afghanistan. This way lies madness.
posted by freecellwizard at 11:56 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
On a different note, I think this thread is going fine even though we all have different opinions about what responsibilities an entertainer has. I just happen to believe that if you are doing any good at all, there's no need to pick you apart until we've focused on the people and systems doing active harm. Otherwise if I adopt a cat you can say I should have sent the adoption fees to starving people in Afghanistan. This way lies madness.
posted by freecellwizard at 11:56 AM on February 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
Ew, Bill Maher is an outright misogynist who goes on long rants shaming women who breastfeed in public, calling them attention wh*res. AFAIK Jon Stewart hasn't ever been that kind of garbage.
posted by MiraK at 11:56 AM on February 1, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by MiraK at 11:56 AM on February 1, 2022 [13 favorites]
But the Emperor has nothing at all on!
posted by Kettle at 11:57 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Kettle at 11:57 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
But the Emperor has nothing at all on!
The real problem is that there shouldn't even be an Emperor. What has Kettle actually done to address that issue except help to prop up the status quo by treating empire as a legitimate yardstick to measure the current Emperor against? Maybe the Emperor didn't have clothes on to start with, but Kettle has surely dressed him now in weak observation and faux outrage. Kettle is not the hero we deserve!
posted by Pot at 11:57 AM on February 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
The real problem is that there shouldn't even be an Emperor. What has Kettle actually done to address that issue except help to prop up the status quo by treating empire as a legitimate yardstick to measure the current Emperor against? Maybe the Emperor didn't have clothes on to start with, but Kettle has surely dressed him now in weak observation and faux outrage. Kettle is not the hero we deserve!
posted by Pot at 11:57 AM on February 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
I think an interesting question is what's the value of pointing out political hypocrisy anymore? At their core, what The Daily Show, at the time the Colbert Report, and now the nightly monologues from Colbert and Seth Meyers (I don't ever watch Fallon or Corden or Kimmel at all, but I get the impression they're much less political) spend almost all of their time doing is making jokes about the news headlines, which mostly comes down to pointing out when someone (usually a politician) does or says something stupid or hypocritical. I have grown a bit tired of this level of discourse because it seemingly doesn't accomplish anything; GOP politicians are utterly immune to shame, and while some Dems haven't quite obtained that level of immunity they also don't put their feet in their mouths as frequently (b/c they still care about not being shamed). Manchin and Sinema are the obvious exceptions, but if either of them lived in a blue state they'd be Republicans.
Like, I get that for some people, this sort of "look at how wrong and stupid these guys are" message is important, but then my problem is where do we go from there? And obviously looking to late night shows to form any sort of cogent political theory or progression is on some level silly, but I think also that the problem is that's all many people do in terms of engaging with the state of the country. There is a huge swath of America that tunes in for the nightly headline-based jokes and then goes to bed and never thinks past that point. And a scary thing about that realization is that those are probably the above-average folks, in terms of political engagement.
So, what is it we expect from these people? On one hand I understand these shows are pablum, and maybe that's fine since what else should we expect? They're owned by giant media corporations and have to try to engage in ratings combat which in many ways necessarily means aiming square at the middle of the road. If that's true, then what the hell kind of nonsense question is it to ask why Stewart (or Colbert, or ____) didn't do more to influence the political reality we find ourselves living in? On the other hand, if you're going to set foot in the political arena, even as a self-styled disenfranchised centrist, what you may find happening is that you're not as centrist as you thought you were, and furthermore a failure mode of America's media landscape of the last 20 years ends up being that it dumps a ton of power into the laps of folks like Stewart, and whether you wanted it or not you've got it now so what are you going to do with it? The answer seems to be to just continue making jokes, and I think that answer increasingly sucks, even if it is for reasons not entirely within the control of late night hosts individually or as a group.
posted by axiom at 11:59 AM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
Like, I get that for some people, this sort of "look at how wrong and stupid these guys are" message is important, but then my problem is where do we go from there? And obviously looking to late night shows to form any sort of cogent political theory or progression is on some level silly, but I think also that the problem is that's all many people do in terms of engaging with the state of the country. There is a huge swath of America that tunes in for the nightly headline-based jokes and then goes to bed and never thinks past that point. And a scary thing about that realization is that those are probably the above-average folks, in terms of political engagement.
So, what is it we expect from these people? On one hand I understand these shows are pablum, and maybe that's fine since what else should we expect? They're owned by giant media corporations and have to try to engage in ratings combat which in many ways necessarily means aiming square at the middle of the road. If that's true, then what the hell kind of nonsense question is it to ask why Stewart (or Colbert, or ____) didn't do more to influence the political reality we find ourselves living in? On the other hand, if you're going to set foot in the political arena, even as a self-styled disenfranchised centrist, what you may find happening is that you're not as centrist as you thought you were, and furthermore a failure mode of America's media landscape of the last 20 years ends up being that it dumps a ton of power into the laps of folks like Stewart, and whether you wanted it or not you've got it now so what are you going to do with it? The answer seems to be to just continue making jokes, and I think that answer increasingly sucks, even if it is for reasons not entirely within the control of late night hosts individually or as a group.
posted by axiom at 11:59 AM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
At their core, what The Daily Show, at the time the Colbert Report, and now the nightly monologues from Colbert and Seth Meyers (I don't ever watch Fallon or Corden or Kimmel at all, but I get the impression they're much less political) spend almost all of their time doing is making jokes about the news headlines, which mostly comes down to pointing out when someone (usually a politician) does or says something stupid or hypocritical. I have grown a bit tired of this level of discourse because it seemingly doesn't accomplish anything; GOP politicians are utterly immune to shame, and while some Dems haven't quite obtained that level of immunity they also don't put their feet in their mouths as frequently (b/c they still care about not being shamed).
The thing is, though, is that this is what late-night TV hosts always were doing. Johnny Carson also made jokes about the news headlines and pointed out dumb stuff Reagan did. The difference was that we also had Walter Cronkite to give the more serious, informative, clear-eyed take on the same news, and we weren't expecting Johnny Carson to do anything except make jokes.
So I don't think that it's the late night talk show host's jobs that have changed at all. I think what has changed is that the Walter Kronkites of the world have left the field and left the Johnny Carsons of the world to both jobs. Which....is a bad state of affairs. But is not the fault of the Johnny Carsons of the world, to my mind.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:28 PM on February 1, 2022 [19 favorites]
The thing is, though, is that this is what late-night TV hosts always were doing. Johnny Carson also made jokes about the news headlines and pointed out dumb stuff Reagan did. The difference was that we also had Walter Cronkite to give the more serious, informative, clear-eyed take on the same news, and we weren't expecting Johnny Carson to do anything except make jokes.
So I don't think that it's the late night talk show host's jobs that have changed at all. I think what has changed is that the Walter Kronkites of the world have left the field and left the Johnny Carsons of the world to both jobs. Which....is a bad state of affairs. But is not the fault of the Johnny Carsons of the world, to my mind.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:28 PM on February 1, 2022 [19 favorites]
I remember a dizzying lurch in public discourse after 9/11, where the unthinkable was suddenly normalized. Torture went from "24" to sympathetic Dershowitz interview overnight. It wasn't just the Limbaugh/Fox hate-o-sphere, it was everywhere. The Patriot Act passed the senate 98-1. The wars were being pushed by Republicans, but plenty of Democrats voted for Iraq. If anyone was against war in Afghanistan they were very effectively silenced. I think the both-sides, mainstream-news-sucks part of Jon Stewart's commentary was right on point for the W. era.
America has been fundamentally broken in many ways since before it even started, and feeling that something got more broken is mostly just privilege talking. But people weren't flying "Fuck Clinton" flags or wearing "McVeigh did nothing wrong" shirts or scrubbing literal shit off the walls of congress 25 years ago. Even conspiracy theory voices were dominated by Art Bell or Weekly World News "I was abducted" stories instead of Alex Jones "(((Leftists))) eat babies" spittle-flecked screaming. I don't know if Trump is a cause, symptom, or both, but the right wing has lost its mind. They have an alternate set of facts that aren't going to be changed by calling something "the big lie" no matter how loudly or consistently.
It was great timing for Stewart and Colbert to leave their shows in 2015. Stewart had a couple of months of laughing at and celebrating a Trump candidacy, but it did seem laughable at the time. I think a lot of people underestimated how corrosive a generation of right-wing talk radio, a decade and a half of Fox, and a half-decade of social media manipulation was. I don't think Jon Stewart could have ever stopped that decay, and certainly there's no way to heal it now.
posted by netowl at 12:51 PM on February 1, 2022 [18 favorites]
America has been fundamentally broken in many ways since before it even started, and feeling that something got more broken is mostly just privilege talking. But people weren't flying "Fuck Clinton" flags or wearing "McVeigh did nothing wrong" shirts or scrubbing literal shit off the walls of congress 25 years ago. Even conspiracy theory voices were dominated by Art Bell or Weekly World News "I was abducted" stories instead of Alex Jones "(((Leftists))) eat babies" spittle-flecked screaming. I don't know if Trump is a cause, symptom, or both, but the right wing has lost its mind. They have an alternate set of facts that aren't going to be changed by calling something "the big lie" no matter how loudly or consistently.
It was great timing for Stewart and Colbert to leave their shows in 2015. Stewart had a couple of months of laughing at and celebrating a Trump candidacy, but it did seem laughable at the time. I think a lot of people underestimated how corrosive a generation of right-wing talk radio, a decade and a half of Fox, and a half-decade of social media manipulation was. I don't think Jon Stewart could have ever stopped that decay, and certainly there's no way to heal it now.
posted by netowl at 12:51 PM on February 1, 2022 [18 favorites]
So I don't think that it's the late night talk show host's jobs that have changed at all.
Well, I'm not so sure, in the sense that the perception of older talk shows as being more apolitical might be a little flawed. Here's Jim Brown discussing segregation with Lester Maddox (the segregationist Georgia governor) on Dick Cavett in 1970. Can you imagine Brian Kemp and Colin Kaepernick sat next to each other discussing the issues of race that confront the country today for almost 15 minutes on any late night show in 2022?
As you say, it's true the rest of the world has changed around the talk shows. There's probably some question as to how much of the change is on the part of the talk shows and how much is on the part of the media landscape around them. Are Kemp and Kaepernick not on the same show today because the show won't book them, or because one or both wouldn't agree to be? I think if they were to appear at the same time, now, you'd be more likely to see that on a show on CNN than CBS.
I have some sympathy for the "hey that's not supposed to be my job" reaction. But it seems to come from a pretty privileged place (on the part of say Stewart), too, don't you think? As I said, the fact of the matter is that they're not just sat along the sidelines cracking jokes (anymore if they ever were), regardless of whether that's what they want to be doing. I don't want to be having to deal with a rising tide of right wing fascist lunacy, either, but here we all are. Now what? Well, I think either we all start doing better at pushing back against that tide or we're fucked, and inasmuch as the topic to hand is late night hosts, that's true for them too.
posted by axiom at 12:51 PM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Well, I'm not so sure, in the sense that the perception of older talk shows as being more apolitical might be a little flawed. Here's Jim Brown discussing segregation with Lester Maddox (the segregationist Georgia governor) on Dick Cavett in 1970. Can you imagine Brian Kemp and Colin Kaepernick sat next to each other discussing the issues of race that confront the country today for almost 15 minutes on any late night show in 2022?
As you say, it's true the rest of the world has changed around the talk shows. There's probably some question as to how much of the change is on the part of the talk shows and how much is on the part of the media landscape around them. Are Kemp and Kaepernick not on the same show today because the show won't book them, or because one or both wouldn't agree to be? I think if they were to appear at the same time, now, you'd be more likely to see that on a show on CNN than CBS.
I have some sympathy for the "hey that's not supposed to be my job" reaction. But it seems to come from a pretty privileged place (on the part of say Stewart), too, don't you think? As I said, the fact of the matter is that they're not just sat along the sidelines cracking jokes (anymore if they ever were), regardless of whether that's what they want to be doing. I don't want to be having to deal with a rising tide of right wing fascist lunacy, either, but here we all are. Now what? Well, I think either we all start doing better at pushing back against that tide or we're fucked, and inasmuch as the topic to hand is late night hosts, that's true for them too.
posted by axiom at 12:51 PM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Criticize Jon Stewart if you wish, but even if he'd done everything the people in this thread wish he'd done I'm not sure it'd have made a slight bit of difference. And I have my doubts that the folks who're so disappointed would have done better in his shoes.
But I'm so very sick of the circular firing squad when Stewart is tasked with shoveling out the Augean Stables that Rupert Murdoch and others have filled with shit. He didn't put the shit there, and he's armed with a small shovel vs. an ever-growing deluge of shit - and most of society is fine with the shit until it starts overflowing into their yard.
posted by jzb at 1:00 PM on February 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
But I'm so very sick of the circular firing squad when Stewart is tasked with shoveling out the Augean Stables that Rupert Murdoch and others have filled with shit. He didn't put the shit there, and he's armed with a small shovel vs. an ever-growing deluge of shit - and most of society is fine with the shit until it starts overflowing into their yard.
posted by jzb at 1:00 PM on February 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
If you're looking for an earlier comparison to The Daily Show, I'd suggest The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and Laugh-In over Johnny Carson. This article from Smithsonian discusses politics on both shows including Nixon's 1968 appearance on Laugh-In (meant to help him appeal to younger voters - Humphrey and Wallace were also asked to appear on the show, but declined).
From the article: "Laugh-In" writer Chris Bearde recalled receiving a call from President-Elect Nixon in the writer’s room two weeks after the election thanking the show’s cast and crew for helping him get elected.
posted by FencingGal at 1:11 PM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
From the article: "Laugh-In" writer Chris Bearde recalled receiving a call from President-Elect Nixon in the writer’s room two weeks after the election thanking the show’s cast and crew for helping him get elected.
posted by FencingGal at 1:11 PM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
Tough crowd.
posted by whatevernot at 1:16 PM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by whatevernot at 1:16 PM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Tough crowd.
That's a different Comedy Central show. Much funnier, though.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:49 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
That's a different Comedy Central show. Much funnier, though.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:49 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Reading through this thread—which imo has a lot of good comments opining across all sides of this, which is lovely and a little rare—something that occurs to me is that, oftentimes, when we critique a famous icon like this, we're using them as a sort of metonymy* for either their philosophy or their audience.
Critiques of Stewart, in other words, either become critiques of his ideas—his approach to making media or the worldview he articulates within that media or both—or critiques of his audience. Does this way of looking at the world still hold up? Is this an effective means of using media to reach people, to have an impact on them? Did the culture that appreciated his work go on to do something with it, or about it?
I think that these are questions with different answers, and none of those answers have to do with questions of whether the man himself meant well, whether he did good, or the quieter questions of whether his work gave people solace in hard times, how many different ways it spoke to different people, etc. Reading through this thread, I found myself very interested in how different people seem to be responding to different interpretations, not just of Jon Stewart, but of the point of a critique like Vox's in the first place. (Personally, I know that I'm biased towards media rhetoric, political philosophy, and the ways in which culture engenders movements, but those are also abstracter and perhaps colder ways of thinking of this stuff—often fun and sometimes thought-provoking, but also definitely a place where you can wind up grandiosely handwaving your way through some not-entirely-robust arguments.)
I don't have a particular takeaway beyond that, but it's interesting to watch the ways in which we're all assessing him, and assessing this take on him. I find myself agreeing with a lot of what different people are saying here, even when those things seem to be contradicting one another on their face.
* (not positive that's the word I want, but it seems slightly more accurate than "synecdoche"; apologies for the off-ness here)
posted by rorgy at 1:50 PM on February 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
Critiques of Stewart, in other words, either become critiques of his ideas—his approach to making media or the worldview he articulates within that media or both—or critiques of his audience. Does this way of looking at the world still hold up? Is this an effective means of using media to reach people, to have an impact on them? Did the culture that appreciated his work go on to do something with it, or about it?
I think that these are questions with different answers, and none of those answers have to do with questions of whether the man himself meant well, whether he did good, or the quieter questions of whether his work gave people solace in hard times, how many different ways it spoke to different people, etc. Reading through this thread, I found myself very interested in how different people seem to be responding to different interpretations, not just of Jon Stewart, but of the point of a critique like Vox's in the first place. (Personally, I know that I'm biased towards media rhetoric, political philosophy, and the ways in which culture engenders movements, but those are also abstracter and perhaps colder ways of thinking of this stuff—often fun and sometimes thought-provoking, but also definitely a place where you can wind up grandiosely handwaving your way through some not-entirely-robust arguments.)
I don't have a particular takeaway beyond that, but it's interesting to watch the ways in which we're all assessing him, and assessing this take on him. I find myself agreeing with a lot of what different people are saying here, even when those things seem to be contradicting one another on their face.
* (not positive that's the word I want, but it seems slightly more accurate than "synecdoche"; apologies for the off-ness here)
posted by rorgy at 1:50 PM on February 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
Bill Maher's shows (mostly PI) have had some role in pushing back against conservative culture war stuff, but Bill Maher himself is one more guy who would've been a lot less successful if Bill Hicks had lived.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:56 PM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:56 PM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
setting aside the issue of what the responsibilities of a comedian are, let's just agree he is a public commentator. then all that remains is the question of what his commentary actually was. i dont think it's fair to call stewart a "both sides" media person. he made pretty clear over the years, and still does, that right wing propaganda and hypocrisy is the main problem in america. that doesnt mean he cant also believe the people the right wing elites pander to cant be reached or persuaded. he obviously thinks they can. but in recent years, we've seen how hard that is to do and how strong the cult of trump has become. so maybe he was wrong, or partly wrong, or wrong for now, under these circumstances. and that shows in his pathos and obvious discomfort with where the country is at.
i think what the left critiques of him really want to say is that "we should stop trying to reach anyone who doesnt already agree with us, and if you disagree with that impulse then you're naive at best." which, ok, that's a viewpoint. but then that is the real argument, not that stewart was/is a both-sideser.
posted by wibari at 2:10 PM on February 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
i think what the left critiques of him really want to say is that "we should stop trying to reach anyone who doesnt already agree with us, and if you disagree with that impulse then you're naive at best." which, ok, that's a viewpoint. but then that is the real argument, not that stewart was/is a both-sideser.
posted by wibari at 2:10 PM on February 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
I think Jon Stewart has evolved somewhat, since his new Apple show my YouTube has been spammed with clips and so I saw his story of having dinner with the Obamas and Jeff Bezos at the White house, and then his interview with the current Secretary of Treasury. So he is basically a Social Democrat.
The fact is a Social Democrat will never be able to tell leftist jokes. Leftist as in the European kind, from Adorno to Zizek. They are a different politics. And that conflation what this consternation is all about.
posted by polymodus at 2:23 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
The fact is a Social Democrat will never be able to tell leftist jokes. Leftist as in the European kind, from Adorno to Zizek. They are a different politics. And that conflation what this consternation is all about.
posted by polymodus at 2:23 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
..Metafilter, I appreciate the spirit,
please be nice to John Stewart.
posted by firstdaffodils at 2:30 PM on February 1, 2022
please be nice to John Stewart.
posted by firstdaffodils at 2:30 PM on February 1, 2022
I like Jon Stewart, but I think the article makes good points that a lot of comments here seem too eager to wave away.
Personally, I lost some respect for him when he, questioned about sexual harassment by Louis C.K., chose to minimize the issue and ridicule the question rather than take it seriously.
posted by splitpeasoup at 2:37 PM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
Personally, I lost some respect for him when he, questioned about sexual harassment by Louis C.K., chose to minimize the issue and ridicule the question rather than take it seriously.
posted by splitpeasoup at 2:37 PM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
..ugh, great.
Makes it sound as though he knows CK and wants zero involvement.
Rather than completely dismissing Stewart (I don't know if I want to dismiss his positive work?), in combination with other notes here, he may just be someone who works in media and in some cases, attempts to be a very neutral party when any force is attempted to draw hardlines.
I would not know.
posted by firstdaffodils at 2:49 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Makes it sound as though he knows CK and wants zero involvement.
Rather than completely dismissing Stewart (I don't know if I want to dismiss his positive work?), in combination with other notes here, he may just be someone who works in media and in some cases, attempts to be a very neutral party when any force is attempted to draw hardlines.
I would not know.
posted by firstdaffodils at 2:49 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Here is something that might be constructive:
We watch and discuss but only rarely actually do.
Okay then, let's follow up on this. What does "doing" mean? Voting? Running for office? Engaging with your terrible uncle at Thanksgiving dinner and ruining the holiday for everyone? Getting out in the streets and becoming a group that the right can immediately demonize, as happened with Occupy and BLM?
We live in a democracy, which means, the way we're supposed to interact with it is vulnerable to the other side just having more and more dedicated people. The kinds of people who watched Jon Stewart were, for the most part, people who were already politically active on his side.
To actually affect positive change in a democracy it means either improving turnout on your side, decreasing turnout on the other, or turning them into us. Jon Stewart may well have helped do the first, didn't affect the second at all, and the third had a very small effect. But really, what can be done there? You'd have to teach people empathy, when they aren't even listening to you in the first place.
I think it might be possible to do something, but it wasn't Jon Stewart's place to do it? The Democrats during the past two decades have largely abdicated their old appeals to the working class people who are now Fox News' mainstay. Hearing Democrats on Twitter complaining about young people not being enthusiastic about them, and also carping about Bernie Sanders, shows they still have a long way to go in that area.
posted by JHarris at 2:58 PM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
We watch and discuss but only rarely actually do.
Okay then, let's follow up on this. What does "doing" mean? Voting? Running for office? Engaging with your terrible uncle at Thanksgiving dinner and ruining the holiday for everyone? Getting out in the streets and becoming a group that the right can immediately demonize, as happened with Occupy and BLM?
We live in a democracy, which means, the way we're supposed to interact with it is vulnerable to the other side just having more and more dedicated people. The kinds of people who watched Jon Stewart were, for the most part, people who were already politically active on his side.
To actually affect positive change in a democracy it means either improving turnout on your side, decreasing turnout on the other, or turning them into us. Jon Stewart may well have helped do the first, didn't affect the second at all, and the third had a very small effect. But really, what can be done there? You'd have to teach people empathy, when they aren't even listening to you in the first place.
I think it might be possible to do something, but it wasn't Jon Stewart's place to do it? The Democrats during the past two decades have largely abdicated their old appeals to the working class people who are now Fox News' mainstay. Hearing Democrats on Twitter complaining about young people not being enthusiastic about them, and also carping about Bernie Sanders, shows they still have a long way to go in that area.
posted by JHarris at 2:58 PM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
Reading the Vox article, I followed the link to the 2015 Pew article about the Daily Show's audience demographics. What struck me right away was they didn't mention race. I'll say it again--they didn't mention race. As the Vox article says, the Pew study reveals of that the Daily Show's audiences "...was mostly male, mostly liberal, mostly young, and mostly college-educated."
It's 2022. Seven years ago, mainstream journalists could discuss the audience of the Daily Show without mentioning race. The world has changed for the better. I wonder if Jon Stewart knows.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:01 PM on February 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
It's 2022. Seven years ago, mainstream journalists could discuss the audience of the Daily Show without mentioning race. The world has changed for the better. I wonder if Jon Stewart knows.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:01 PM on February 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
I do believe he and others in the media groomed the so-called left in the country to think it would be No Big Deal if a game show host, Russian mob debtee, and aspiring dictator were to be permitted into the White House.
I don't think this is right. Everyone on the left always knew it would be a total disaster for Donald Trump to become president. If Stewart and his ilk did any harm it was to give us false hope that the rest of the country could see as clearly as we did how awful he is.
But I think I would have believed Trump had no chance without Jon Stewart making fun of him. Somehow I didn't learn the lesson of George W. Bush. Half the country was somehow able to watch GWB speak and not instantly reject him as the rich idiot boss everybody hates who only got the job because of his daddy. I should have realized that I had no idea what people who somehow liked GWB would think of Donald Trump.
posted by straight at 3:04 PM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
I don't think this is right. Everyone on the left always knew it would be a total disaster for Donald Trump to become president. If Stewart and his ilk did any harm it was to give us false hope that the rest of the country could see as clearly as we did how awful he is.
But I think I would have believed Trump had no chance without Jon Stewart making fun of him. Somehow I didn't learn the lesson of George W. Bush. Half the country was somehow able to watch GWB speak and not instantly reject him as the rich idiot boss everybody hates who only got the job because of his daddy. I should have realized that I had no idea what people who somehow liked GWB would think of Donald Trump.
posted by straight at 3:04 PM on February 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
I think the critique of Jon Stewart is fair in that he did not, in fact, fix America, either in his capacity as a fake news host on Comedy Central or as a public figure with a large platform. America is broken, ergo, nobody has fixed it. And if nobody has fixed it, then Jon Stewart, specifically, has not fixed it.
I say Jon Stewart should abdicate his duly appointed throne. He is no longer fit to serve as King Strawman. He should go back to his day job as a rapidly-aging, semi-relevant comedian with occasionally questionable hot takes on current affairs.
Surely there are younger comedians more fit to save us from ourselves.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:04 PM on February 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
I say Jon Stewart should abdicate his duly appointed throne. He is no longer fit to serve as King Strawman. He should go back to his day job as a rapidly-aging, semi-relevant comedian with occasionally questionable hot takes on current affairs.
Surely there are younger comedians more fit to save us from ourselves.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:04 PM on February 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
I haven't looked myself, but I'm pretty sure people have written papers and dissertations about Jon Stewart or Colbert to say that these are people who wield cultural capital and thus have some influence, and yes, responsibility, on consumers' political window.
So to me, and I think to anyone who knows the concept of cultural capital, it's not even a valid premise to suggest that these comedians are a priori politically neutral.
posted by polymodus at 3:06 PM on February 1, 2022
So to me, and I think to anyone who knows the concept of cultural capital, it's not even a valid premise to suggest that these comedians are a priori politically neutral.
posted by polymodus at 3:06 PM on February 1, 2022
*clarifying,
I should say, I don't think he's politically neutral (given his career), I'd been making the assessment as if he knew the person in question (CK) personally.
posted by firstdaffodils at 3:11 PM on February 1, 2022
I should say, I don't think he's politically neutral (given his career), I'd been making the assessment as if he knew the person in question (CK) personally.
posted by firstdaffodils at 3:11 PM on February 1, 2022
I think the issue with Jon Stewart isn't that he's "a comedian," it's that his critique of the media and political partisanship studiously avoided talking about the, well, political agendas behind said dysfunctions. By isolating politics from political culture, he tried to blame the latter for the former, but avoided discussion of how the former intentionally cultivated the latter.
I think this is right. Stewart really wasn't about critiquing and lampooning conservative politics. When he paired clips of the day's news with other videos providing the context to see how blatantly politicians were lying or hypocritical, he wasn't trying to do journalism. He was making fun of how bad the news media were at their jobs. Look how easily a stupid comedy show with no news infrastructure can do better! He was less appalled by what the politicians were saying than by the media letting them get away with it.
But as rorgy says, I don't think he really got that the media's incompetence isn't an accident. You can't shame Tucker Carlson into doing a better job because Tucker Carlson is doing the job he's been paid to do.
posted by straight at 3:19 PM on February 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
I think this is right. Stewart really wasn't about critiquing and lampooning conservative politics. When he paired clips of the day's news with other videos providing the context to see how blatantly politicians were lying or hypocritical, he wasn't trying to do journalism. He was making fun of how bad the news media were at their jobs. Look how easily a stupid comedy show with no news infrastructure can do better! He was less appalled by what the politicians were saying than by the media letting them get away with it.
But as rorgy says, I don't think he really got that the media's incompetence isn't an accident. You can't shame Tucker Carlson into doing a better job because Tucker Carlson is doing the job he's been paid to do.
posted by straight at 3:19 PM on February 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
Stewart might not have been liberal enough for a lot of us, but the idea that the audience were a bunch of moderates is ... well, I'm raising my eyebrow at it.
Yeah, I think at the time for many college millennials like myself, Stewart was more liberal than our parents. And funny. I think college-aged students in particular were just starting to vote and learn about party politics, an age where we had our first taste of exercising our political independence outside our families' value systems. And Stewart was the cool older guy on TV telling us all these funny things about the world going wrong.
posted by polymodus at 3:21 PM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I think at the time for many college millennials like myself, Stewart was more liberal than our parents. And funny. I think college-aged students in particular were just starting to vote and learn about party politics, an age where we had our first taste of exercising our political independence outside our families' value systems. And Stewart was the cool older guy on TV telling us all these funny things about the world going wrong.
posted by polymodus at 3:21 PM on February 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
a project that's distributed some $9b+ to 40,000+ people injured in connection with the worst terrorist attack on US soil in our history.
[...]
That's 0.0001% of the US population and less than one thousandth of the number sickened or killed by Covid, and while I understand it seems big on a local scale it is not actually a large number.
Math Check!
40,000 divided by 400,000,000 = 0.0001 which is 0.01%.
Carry on.
posted by soylent00FF00 at 3:39 PM on February 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
[...]
That's 0.0001% of the US population and less than one thousandth of the number sickened or killed by Covid, and while I understand it seems big on a local scale it is not actually a large number.
Math Check!
40,000 divided by 400,000,000 = 0.0001 which is 0.01%.
Carry on.
posted by soylent00FF00 at 3:39 PM on February 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
shows they still have a long way to go in that area.
I mean, sure, but if you have to be wooed to turn out to vote against fascists, my sympathy is limited.
posted by Galvanic at 4:29 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I mean, sure, but if you have to be wooed to turn out to vote against fascists, my sympathy is limited.
posted by Galvanic at 4:29 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Maybe it is best to stick to what people are saying and not put words into others' mouths.
No, thanks! I understood what people were saying in the first place.
posted by Galvanic at 4:36 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
No, thanks! I understood what people were saying in the first place.
posted by Galvanic at 4:36 PM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
After Bush left, was there anyone he actually punched up at?
He ran the daily show for 6 years while Obama in office and drone bombing civilians, occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and failing to address structural problems, and I don't remember him actually criticising anything other than The Tan Suit.
posted by zymil at 4:44 PM on February 1, 2022
He ran the daily show for 6 years while Obama in office and drone bombing civilians, occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and failing to address structural problems, and I don't remember him actually criticising anything other than The Tan Suit.
posted by zymil at 4:44 PM on February 1, 2022
Jon Stewart hate is such pure shoot-the-messenger. He saw the everything falling apart and brought it to our attention. Now it's his fault.
posted by whuppy at 5:10 PM on February 1, 2022 [18 favorites]
posted by whuppy at 5:10 PM on February 1, 2022 [18 favorites]
Don't have time to review yet but Googling "jon stewart obama drone" brings up clips.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:36 PM on February 1, 2022
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:36 PM on February 1, 2022
The Democrats during the past two decades have largely abdicated their old appeals to the working class people who are now Fox News' mainstay.
white working class
you forgot the white
posted by Anonymous at 5:45 PM on February 1, 2022
white working class
you forgot the white
posted by Anonymous at 5:45 PM on February 1, 2022
Satirizing the Right only pushes them further and further beyond satire, in a process seemingly without limit.
It's entertainment, not politics.
posted by moorooka at 10:26 PM on February 1, 2022
It's entertainment, not politics.
posted by moorooka at 10:26 PM on February 1, 2022
A comedic news show being a source of relief/inspiration to millions says more about the generally horrible state of the media landscape in the US at the time than it does anything about Jon Stewart. There just wasn't anything else to watch that wasn't 100% corporate war supporting idiotic bullshit.
posted by UN at 11:28 PM on February 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by UN at 11:28 PM on February 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
Satirizing the Right only pushes them further and further beyond satire, in a process seemingly without limit.
No, satirizing the right is not what pushes them further and further beyond satire. That's not the chain of causality here.
Believe it or not, the right is fully responsible for its own actions, because the right has agency and is capable of making its own choices. Comedians did not cause the right to become the alt right. They did it on their own. It's not Jon Stewart's fault.
This thread has reached beyond the point of satire, jeez.
posted by MiraK at 3:36 AM on February 2, 2022 [12 favorites]
No, satirizing the right is not what pushes them further and further beyond satire. That's not the chain of causality here.
Believe it or not, the right is fully responsible for its own actions, because the right has agency and is capable of making its own choices. Comedians did not cause the right to become the alt right. They did it on their own. It's not Jon Stewart's fault.
This thread has reached beyond the point of satire, jeez.
posted by MiraK at 3:36 AM on February 2, 2022 [12 favorites]
I think there's a psychological term that combines shooting the messenger, ignoring all the ambient context of their message, and doubling down when confronted with how shaky that reasoning is. Is it transference? (Not snark, I'm approximating)
It's easier to be mad at and blame people who are accessible and visible than largely unreachable people or unchangeable realities of history. And very, very smart people are exceptionally talented at constructing arguments why your boss at work is actually never going to give you a fair shot and you just want to rage quit you hate them so much than to consider that there's an open wound somewhere in your personal background that is transferring parental approval onto someone who has no responsibility to fill that role but then you're mad at them for not sticking up for you like the parent you've cast them as.
Maybe being mad at Jon Stewart for not being a more effective wielder of political influence comes from transferring our expectations of political savior onto him, without his consent or collaboration - he is as sad and lost about the abdication of responsibility of corporate media as you are. Despite being looped into the orbit of power he isn't wielding it - holding him responsible for it feels very much like that work-transference.
I have empathy that some people often from later generations are feeling angry and betrayed that the world is this way and it's impossible to hold the right people responsible because they are abstract and inaccessible (or dead or no longer in power). Stewart neatly makes himself a target for these feelings through history and exposure, but just like expecting parental care from a boss the premise doesn't hold up and seems to be more about the feeler than who they're transferring to.
This is evident in the stretches I'm seeing in this thread to lionize but especially to minimize. Doubling down once it's obvious to anyone looking that the goal posts are moving says more about the feeling of betrayal trying to find a home than any specific number or population that would be "enough." A way to test this is to ask "what would be enough? What's the thing he should have done differently/more of/less of" - drone coverage? Being less pal-around with John McCain?
Could he have screamed into the mic at the Rally to Restore Sanity "go organize and vote!"? I was there and it was tough to hear much, to be honest.
posted by abulafa at 5:55 AM on February 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's easier to be mad at and blame people who are accessible and visible than largely unreachable people or unchangeable realities of history. And very, very smart people are exceptionally talented at constructing arguments why your boss at work is actually never going to give you a fair shot and you just want to rage quit you hate them so much than to consider that there's an open wound somewhere in your personal background that is transferring parental approval onto someone who has no responsibility to fill that role but then you're mad at them for not sticking up for you like the parent you've cast them as.
Maybe being mad at Jon Stewart for not being a more effective wielder of political influence comes from transferring our expectations of political savior onto him, without his consent or collaboration - he is as sad and lost about the abdication of responsibility of corporate media as you are. Despite being looped into the orbit of power he isn't wielding it - holding him responsible for it feels very much like that work-transference.
I have empathy that some people often from later generations are feeling angry and betrayed that the world is this way and it's impossible to hold the right people responsible because they are abstract and inaccessible (or dead or no longer in power). Stewart neatly makes himself a target for these feelings through history and exposure, but just like expecting parental care from a boss the premise doesn't hold up and seems to be more about the feeler than who they're transferring to.
This is evident in the stretches I'm seeing in this thread to lionize but especially to minimize. Doubling down once it's obvious to anyone looking that the goal posts are moving says more about the feeling of betrayal trying to find a home than any specific number or population that would be "enough." A way to test this is to ask "what would be enough? What's the thing he should have done differently/more of/less of" - drone coverage? Being less pal-around with John McCain?
Could he have screamed into the mic at the Rally to Restore Sanity "go organize and vote!"? I was there and it was tough to hear much, to be honest.
posted by abulafa at 5:55 AM on February 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
but then what, really, what's step 2? #Vote
This, but unironically. Trump followed Obama because... he won the electoral college. I'm not trying to relitigate 2016, what I'm saying is... we have to win elections. We have a lot of other work to do, but a lot of that work (not all but a lot) is helped when we... win elections. And now we have to win them with one hand tied behind our back. But it's possible.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 6:11 AM on February 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
This, but unironically. Trump followed Obama because... he won the electoral college. I'm not trying to relitigate 2016, what I'm saying is... we have to win elections. We have a lot of other work to do, but a lot of that work (not all but a lot) is helped when we... win elections. And now we have to win them with one hand tied behind our back. But it's possible.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 6:11 AM on February 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
>>>but then what, really, what's step 2? #Vote
>This, but unironically
The problem here is that right wing media propaganda, combined with left-wing/"neutral" media in peddling that same propaganda by framing it as controversy, makes people vote for insane candidates. Encouraging people to vote and removing barriers to voting solves a different problem, not this one.
I'm not sure what the solution to THIS problem is. It's just too complicated for me to get my head around, as a layoerson. It's tied up with (mis)"information" saturation in the general public, advertising-based media business models, conspiracy and delusion becoming normalized,
political corruption, corporate collusion, capitalism, cronyism, the imminent collapse of democracy...
I tend to trust people who advocate grassroots organizing at a local level, taking our attention off of national politics & national media which is pure circus, and working on small concrete improvements within our own communities. To me, the core error we're making is that we like to think about problems that are too large, pretend that we have control over things we don't. It's useless rumination, pure anxiety for the sake of anxiety imo. And in this thread, we're applying that same faulty thinking onto someone else, pretending Jon Stewart has control over things he doesn't have control over. We have to remember that we're all small, each of us, and we only do what we can. He has done what he could. That's great.
posted by MiraK at 6:34 AM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
>This, but unironically
The problem here is that right wing media propaganda, combined with left-wing/"neutral" media in peddling that same propaganda by framing it as controversy, makes people vote for insane candidates. Encouraging people to vote and removing barriers to voting solves a different problem, not this one.
I'm not sure what the solution to THIS problem is. It's just too complicated for me to get my head around, as a layoerson. It's tied up with (mis)"information" saturation in the general public, advertising-based media business models, conspiracy and delusion becoming normalized,
political corruption, corporate collusion, capitalism, cronyism, the imminent collapse of democracy...
I tend to trust people who advocate grassroots organizing at a local level, taking our attention off of national politics & national media which is pure circus, and working on small concrete improvements within our own communities. To me, the core error we're making is that we like to think about problems that are too large, pretend that we have control over things we don't. It's useless rumination, pure anxiety for the sake of anxiety imo. And in this thread, we're applying that same faulty thinking onto someone else, pretending Jon Stewart has control over things he doesn't have control over. We have to remember that we're all small, each of us, and we only do what we can. He has done what he could. That's great.
posted by MiraK at 6:34 AM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
> I do believe he and others in the media groomed the so-called left in the country to think it would be No Big Deal if a game show host, Russian mob debtee, and aspiring dictator were to be permitted into the White House.
This is ALMOST right - it's not that the media groomed us to think it would be fine if he were president. It's that the media groomed us to think of his candidacy as a joke. And yes, Jon Stewart specifically was part of this.
The media's treatment of Trump's candidacy as "lol what a joke he's never gonna win" blinded us all to the inherently destructive nature of his candidacy itself. While the media told jokes and we were laughing, his candidacy was corroding the very standards and institutions that were the source of our confidence that he'd never win.
Jon Stewart was part of that. The liberal media was universally guilty of it. Hell, even the right wing media participated in the joke treatment of Trump, before he became the Republican candidate. Not a single one of us innocent of that particular sin.
posted by MiraK at 6:56 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is ALMOST right - it's not that the media groomed us to think it would be fine if he were president. It's that the media groomed us to think of his candidacy as a joke. And yes, Jon Stewart specifically was part of this.
The media's treatment of Trump's candidacy as "lol what a joke he's never gonna win" blinded us all to the inherently destructive nature of his candidacy itself. While the media told jokes and we were laughing, his candidacy was corroding the very standards and institutions that were the source of our confidence that he'd never win.
Jon Stewart was part of that. The liberal media was universally guilty of it. Hell, even the right wing media participated in the joke treatment of Trump, before he became the Republican candidate. Not a single one of us innocent of that particular sin.
posted by MiraK at 6:56 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
Could he have screamed into the mic at the Rally to Restore Sanity "go organize and vote!"? I was there and it was tough to hear much, to be honest.
posted by abulafa at 7:55 AM on February 2 [3 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]
Too true. They didn't bring enough speakers and if you weren't up front it was an audio nightmare
posted by TheProfessor at 7:25 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by abulafa at 7:55 AM on February 2 [3 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]
Too true. They didn't bring enough speakers and if you weren't up front it was an audio nightmare
posted by TheProfessor at 7:25 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm a little late to this thread, but I agree with all of those saying we've forgotten how bonkers post-9/11 was, and how much that context matters here. I recently listened to the podcast 9/12, which looks at the aftermath - as someone who was in high school at the time, while none of this surprised me, I had forgotten some of it. Also this reminds me of a thread here on an article by Marc Maron reflecting on how after 9/11 he saw his comedy world suddenly start to draw lines, and how what had been a fairly apolitical scene suddenly was quite political. So, Stewart was also probably responding to his own social world as well.
posted by coffeecat at 7:49 AM on February 2, 2022
posted by coffeecat at 7:49 AM on February 2, 2022
Mismatch. If Stewart or Colbert were republicans they would be senators/governors now, because they would have sought to convert their popularity into power and the republican base wants a 2-dimensional Daddy to save them. See Tuberville, Gov Arnold, Trump, Kemp, Reagan, The Rock. The base wants celebrites and the masters want puppets.
But liberal celebrities just want to have opinions, not power; and liberal voters want adults in the room. The base wants permission not to be so upset and the masters want the status quo.
So no, Jon Stewart isnt responsible for failing to convert his fame into dictatorship like Trump or for weening the masses off their entertaining opiates or for diverting the resistance into compliance.
The idea that Jon Stewart owes anyone anything is like being mad that Santa didnt bring us a Parliment. There is no Santa, get over it. Make your own parliment.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 10:09 AM on February 2, 2022 [7 favorites]
But liberal celebrities just want to have opinions, not power; and liberal voters want adults in the room. The base wants permission not to be so upset and the masters want the status quo.
So no, Jon Stewart isnt responsible for failing to convert his fame into dictatorship like Trump or for weening the masses off their entertaining opiates or for diverting the resistance into compliance.
The idea that Jon Stewart owes anyone anything is like being mad that Santa didnt bring us a Parliment. There is no Santa, get over it. Make your own parliment.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 10:09 AM on February 2, 2022 [7 favorites]
If Stewart or Colbert were republicans they would be senators/governors now. . . But liberal celebrities just want to have opinions, not power.
Al Franken? Cynthia Nixon?
posted by FencingGal at 12:12 PM on February 2, 2022
Al Franken? Cynthia Nixon?
posted by FencingGal at 12:12 PM on February 2, 2022
A way to test this is to ask "what would be enough? What's the thing he should have done differently/more of/less of" - drone coverage? Being less pal-around with John McCain?
What would've been enough, for me, is if Jon Stewart had a political orientation more like AOC or Bernie Sanders. What's pretty objectively known is that Stewart and Colbert's shows were an exercise of cultural capital to implicitly minimize the very existence of a leftist politics, i.e. the European kind. It was always depicted as a politics of the Blue vs. the Red (and the media's incompetence), which attracted impressionable young college-aged millennials at the time (just look at the positive reactions of my peers to these shows), and that was the dichotomous Overton landscape they were implicitly creating.
posted by polymodus at 3:38 PM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
What would've been enough, for me, is if Jon Stewart had a political orientation more like AOC or Bernie Sanders. What's pretty objectively known is that Stewart and Colbert's shows were an exercise of cultural capital to implicitly minimize the very existence of a leftist politics, i.e. the European kind. It was always depicted as a politics of the Blue vs. the Red (and the media's incompetence), which attracted impressionable young college-aged millennials at the time (just look at the positive reactions of my peers to these shows), and that was the dichotomous Overton landscape they were implicitly creating.
posted by polymodus at 3:38 PM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
What's pretty objectively known is that Stewart and Colbert's shows were an exercise of cultural capital to implicitly minimize the very existence of a leftist politics
Known by whom? Exercise by whom? Comedy Central and Viacom? The hosts? It feels like you're attributing intent to those parties when the landscape they operated in still needed to be picked up by basic cable. What progressivism they did drive was subtle because that's how they stayed palatable, not because they didn't think universal health care was an obvious good but because it's only become possible to prepend "social-" to your democracy in the last decade without having to apologize to red states and promise to stick to jokes.
Rewriting the realities of the 90s-10s cultural and political landscape so that people who were sometimes the only non-jingoistic voice I'd hear for weeks are somehow complicit in not being left enough when it was so easy to be silenced for questioning unjust wars in the first place much less from a broadcast medium... just didn't achieve the goals that I'm pretty sure we both would completely agree on.
posted by abulafa at 3:16 AM on February 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
Known by whom? Exercise by whom? Comedy Central and Viacom? The hosts? It feels like you're attributing intent to those parties when the landscape they operated in still needed to be picked up by basic cable. What progressivism they did drive was subtle because that's how they stayed palatable, not because they didn't think universal health care was an obvious good but because it's only become possible to prepend "social-" to your democracy in the last decade without having to apologize to red states and promise to stick to jokes.
Rewriting the realities of the 90s-10s cultural and political landscape so that people who were sometimes the only non-jingoistic voice I'd hear for weeks are somehow complicit in not being left enough when it was so easy to be silenced for questioning unjust wars in the first place much less from a broadcast medium... just didn't achieve the goals that I'm pretty sure we both would completely agree on.
posted by abulafa at 3:16 AM on February 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
No, it seems like you're using the typical x-ist rhetoric of demanding intentions matter more than consequences in order to rationalize that a status quo at the time was okay. Your argument is essentially saying they needed to self-censor their position to make it palatable for the mainstream. That is precisely what is problematic, because all it did was reinforce two party politics which Helen Keller famous called the politics of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. What's next, Jon Stewart is a white male so what he achieved 15 years ago was palatable and thus socially necessary?
Whereas I think if we apply basic leftist concepts from media studies such as, but not only, manufactured consent, it is not at all hard to observe that cultural capital is a thing that people in prominent positions use, and the effect is that the Overton window gets regulated societally. This is structural, Stewart or Colbert's complicity, while obviously being one piece of this, does not make them exempt or without agency. Their shows got young people to think that only two kinds of politics existed.
posted by polymodus at 3:49 AM on February 3, 2022
Whereas I think if we apply basic leftist concepts from media studies such as, but not only, manufactured consent, it is not at all hard to observe that cultural capital is a thing that people in prominent positions use, and the effect is that the Overton window gets regulated societally. This is structural, Stewart or Colbert's complicity, while obviously being one piece of this, does not make them exempt or without agency. Their shows got young people to think that only two kinds of politics existed.
posted by polymodus at 3:49 AM on February 3, 2022
you're using the typical x-ist rhetoric of demanding intentions matter more than consequences in order to rationalize that a status quo at the time was okay
I don't read those comments that way at all. There isn't a progressive alive who thinks that the status quo is or ever has been OK. That's pretty much definitional of the position.
And though Twitter has made it very fashionable to claim that outcomes are the only things that matter, when the space of all achievable consequences is so heavily constrained by existing social structures, intentions can matter more than consequences. Most such structures are robust enough that it takes many careers' worth of consistently applied intentions even to begin reshape them. Complaints that progress is unacceptably slow usually reflect the lack of a historically informed grasp of the scope and scale of the forces arrayed in opposition to it, and the thing that's so often overlooked about intentions is that they spread.
Stewart or Colbert's complicity, while obviously being one piece of this, does not make them exempt or without agency
If they were without agency, they wouldn't have been able to achieve as much as they have.
Entertainment can shape discourse only to the extent that it does command a following, and there's only so hard you can push a mass audience before losing it. On balance, both of those performers have moved the public discourse closer to where it needs to be, and neither has impeded further motion. I think it's unrealistic to expect, and unreasonable to ask, more than that of any entertainer.
And to the extent that young people whose political consciousnesses were forming during the Daily Show's peak years really did come out of them thinking that only two kinds of politics existed, that's an improvement on thinking that only one kind ever could. Once people start to understand the differences between Shit and Shit Lite, the path toward Not Shit becomes much easier to find.
posted by flabdablet at 5:35 AM on February 3, 2022 [4 favorites]
I don't read those comments that way at all. There isn't a progressive alive who thinks that the status quo is or ever has been OK. That's pretty much definitional of the position.
And though Twitter has made it very fashionable to claim that outcomes are the only things that matter, when the space of all achievable consequences is so heavily constrained by existing social structures, intentions can matter more than consequences. Most such structures are robust enough that it takes many careers' worth of consistently applied intentions even to begin reshape them. Complaints that progress is unacceptably slow usually reflect the lack of a historically informed grasp of the scope and scale of the forces arrayed in opposition to it, and the thing that's so often overlooked about intentions is that they spread.
Stewart or Colbert's complicity, while obviously being one piece of this, does not make them exempt or without agency
If they were without agency, they wouldn't have been able to achieve as much as they have.
Entertainment can shape discourse only to the extent that it does command a following, and there's only so hard you can push a mass audience before losing it. On balance, both of those performers have moved the public discourse closer to where it needs to be, and neither has impeded further motion. I think it's unrealistic to expect, and unreasonable to ask, more than that of any entertainer.
And to the extent that young people whose political consciousnesses were forming during the Daily Show's peak years really did come out of them thinking that only two kinds of politics existed, that's an improvement on thinking that only one kind ever could. Once people start to understand the differences between Shit and Shit Lite, the path toward Not Shit becomes much easier to find.
posted by flabdablet at 5:35 AM on February 3, 2022 [4 favorites]
METAFILTER: There is no Santa, get over it. Make your own parliment.
posted by philip-random at 9:25 AM on February 3, 2022
posted by philip-random at 9:25 AM on February 3, 2022
I'm unclear what x-ist rhetoric refers to here, but the fact that you can claim with a straight face that these wielders of cultural capital are directly responsible for the sustenance of two party politics because they failed to spend their cultural capital in a way you believe might have affected the outcome (without any clear line to draw other than they were popular at the time, without addressing the counterfactual that if they had been more visibly progressive it's unlikely they'd have been as popular) rests on so many assumptions of differing scale and truly unknowable impact that the best good faith interpretation I can make is you're taking the piss here.
Ross Perot did more to cement two party politics by making third party (admittedly not especially progressive) bids look like jokes than any comedian could have managed.. And whether he was a useful idiot or intentional spoiler ignoring a direct line in favor of a tortured web of unknowable cause and effect because it can implicate inadequately true Scotsmen just doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than making the next unintentionally successful media progressive explode in an impotent ball of righteous progressive fire on Livestream for a nanosecond of pure holy praxis as the perfect once and for all annihilates the good.
posted by abulafa at 2:05 PM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ross Perot did more to cement two party politics by making third party (admittedly not especially progressive) bids look like jokes than any comedian could have managed.. And whether he was a useful idiot or intentional spoiler ignoring a direct line in favor of a tortured web of unknowable cause and effect because it can implicate inadequately true Scotsmen just doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than making the next unintentionally successful media progressive explode in an impotent ball of righteous progressive fire on Livestream for a nanosecond of pure holy praxis as the perfect once and for all annihilates the good.
posted by abulafa at 2:05 PM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
Jon Stewart Defends Joe Rogan From ‘Overblown’ Rhetoric of His Critics
“Don’t leave, don’t abandon, don’t censor, engage,” Stewart said to Rogan’s critics on the latest episode of The Problem With Jon Stewart podcast. “I’m not saying it’s it’s always going to work out fruitfully, but I am always of the mindset that engagement, and especially with someone like a Joe Rogan who is not, in my mind, an ideologue in any way.”posted by zymil at 4:18 PM on February 3, 2022
Yeah, that comment was a big error from Jon Stewart, one of the worst takes he's ever had.
posted by JHarris at 8:03 PM on February 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 8:03 PM on February 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
I think that's a completely reasonable position.
It's a position I thoroughly disagree with as applied to Rogan specifically, because I've met enough people whose attitude is indistinguishable from Rogan's to have convinced me that my time is far better spent engaging with almost anybody else. But Rogan is widely understood to be a comedian and Stewart still clearly sees himself as a member of the same community so it's only to be expected that he'd have a blind spot there.
And who knows? He might have an in with Rogan that could help that apparently intractable bro idiot learn something useful. Weirder things have happened.
Despite disagreeing strongly with Stewart's reasonable but incorrect opinion on Rogan, it seems to me that if Stewart's present audience were bigger than Rogan's then we'd be further from falling into global fascism than we are right now.
Would I rather see a more progressive voice than Stewart collect a larger audience than either? Obviously. So if you know of someone with the potential to be that, I'd strongly encourage you to spend the time you'd otherwise be devoting to carping about Stewart to dunking on Rogan and promoting that person instead.
posted by flabdablet at 8:31 PM on February 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's a position I thoroughly disagree with as applied to Rogan specifically, because I've met enough people whose attitude is indistinguishable from Rogan's to have convinced me that my time is far better spent engaging with almost anybody else. But Rogan is widely understood to be a comedian and Stewart still clearly sees himself as a member of the same community so it's only to be expected that he'd have a blind spot there.
And who knows? He might have an in with Rogan that could help that apparently intractable bro idiot learn something useful. Weirder things have happened.
Despite disagreeing strongly with Stewart's reasonable but incorrect opinion on Rogan, it seems to me that if Stewart's present audience were bigger than Rogan's then we'd be further from falling into global fascism than we are right now.
Would I rather see a more progressive voice than Stewart collect a larger audience than either? Obviously. So if you know of someone with the potential to be that, I'd strongly encourage you to spend the time you'd otherwise be devoting to carping about Stewart to dunking on Rogan and promoting that person instead.
posted by flabdablet at 8:31 PM on February 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
The problem is that Spotify pays Joe Rogan a hundred million dollars, a tenth of a billion, for the exclusive rights to spread his antivaxer nonsense. People who are on Spotify, who are legendarily paid very little for their music, are thus to great extent subsidizing him. And the people who are taking their material off of Spotify aren't even podcasters, they're musicians. They didn't sign up for this. What are they supposed to do to "engage" with Joe Rogan, write songs mocking him?
I have largely been on Stewart's side up to this point. Regardless of whether it's a blind spot or if he's justified in a way, I think "carping" about this is okay. I mean, sheesh.
posted by JHarris at 9:09 PM on February 3, 2022 [8 favorites]
I have largely been on Stewart's side up to this point. Regardless of whether it's a blind spot or if he's justified in a way, I think "carping" about this is okay. I mean, sheesh.
posted by JHarris at 9:09 PM on February 3, 2022 [8 favorites]
Rogan is widely understood to be a comedian
Your perception does not line up with my experience with Rogan fans.
posted by Candleman at 10:03 PM on February 3, 2022 [5 favorites]
Your perception does not line up with my experience with Rogan fans.
posted by Candleman at 10:03 PM on February 3, 2022 [5 favorites]
Probably not; I too have met my fair share of people who infuriatingly treat Rogan as some kind of public intellectual rather than the utterly unremarkable, utterly interchangeable, utterly conventional, useless lazy reckless self-satisfied overpaid fuckwit he so transparently is.
Pretty sure perceiving Rogan as a working comedian does line up with the circles Stewart moves in, though, and on that basis I think there's a fair chance that Stewart was at least part motivated by a reflex to defend a fellow community member.
Regardless of whether it's a blind spot or if he's justified in a way, I think "carping" about this is okay.
I dunno. Personally I find Rogan objectionable enough that I'd rather see all available carping resources pointed squarely in his direction, rather than letting Stewart take any of his flak for him.
I'd much rather see the reverse Streisand effect deployed whenever somebody basically sound shits the bed this way, and just have it slip quietly down the memory hole. I see no benefit in handing the gift of such a distraction to Rogan's fanboi army.
posted by flabdablet at 2:02 AM on February 4, 2022
Pretty sure perceiving Rogan as a working comedian does line up with the circles Stewart moves in, though, and on that basis I think there's a fair chance that Stewart was at least part motivated by a reflex to defend a fellow community member.
Regardless of whether it's a blind spot or if he's justified in a way, I think "carping" about this is okay.
I dunno. Personally I find Rogan objectionable enough that I'd rather see all available carping resources pointed squarely in his direction, rather than letting Stewart take any of his flak for him.
I'd much rather see the reverse Streisand effect deployed whenever somebody basically sound shits the bed this way, and just have it slip quietly down the memory hole. I see no benefit in handing the gift of such a distraction to Rogan's fanboi army.
posted by flabdablet at 2:02 AM on February 4, 2022
That defense of Rogan is just sad.
posted by octothorpe at 5:14 AM on February 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 5:14 AM on February 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Siding with Rogan and Chapelle and claiming "censorship" tells me that Stewart doesn't really understand anything and there's no good reason to listen to him anymore. Bleh.
posted by rikschell at 8:15 AM on February 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 8:15 AM on February 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
"What are they supposed to do to "engage" with Joe Rogan, write songs mocking him?"
This was exactly my reaction to Stewart saying "...those who oppose Rogan should 'make better arguments' and 'engage' with him." How does Neil Young make a better argument? How does anyone engage with Rogan when he's the one who dictates who comes on his show? If you can't directly engage, you take indirect action.
Stewart really has embraced the "walk down the middle of the road" position, and it's pretty pathetic.
posted by schoolgirl report at 8:25 AM on February 4, 2022 [5 favorites]
This was exactly my reaction to Stewart saying "...those who oppose Rogan should 'make better arguments' and 'engage' with him." How does Neil Young make a better argument? How does anyone engage with Rogan when he's the one who dictates who comes on his show? If you can't directly engage, you take indirect action.
Stewart really has embraced the "walk down the middle of the road" position, and it's pretty pathetic.
posted by schoolgirl report at 8:25 AM on February 4, 2022 [5 favorites]
There should be a meme of Fonzie water-skiing but with Stewart's face instead of Winkler's.
posted by Lyme Drop at 10:29 AM on February 4, 2022
posted by Lyme Drop at 10:29 AM on February 4, 2022
A willingness to engage across a difference in ideology doesn't necessarily constitute a walk down the middle of the road. If you look at The Problem With Jon Stewart epsiode titled "The Economy", for example, it's pretty clear that Stewart's own position remains about as far to the left as a US presenter can go while still getting exposure on a mainstream US corporate platform.
Stewart does seem rather more willing than most to assume good faith on the part of those he's proposing to engage with, though. Personally I think that despite (or perhaps because of) having spent so many years exposing just how little good faith remains alive in mainstream US media culture, he's clinging to an increasingly unsupportable expectation of being able to find some, clutching fairly desperately at anything that looks like it might be a straw (e.g. Rogan's grudging admission about being wrong on myocarditis risk vs COVID risk).
I've sat through all four episodes of The Problem With Jon Stewart now, and I'll probably watch the rest as well, mostly for the guests. As one of the show's EPs, Stewart deserves a fair bit of credit for the thoughtfulness and expertise of those he's had on so far.
He's not a journalist's asshole, though; his interviews with the high mucky-mucks from VA and Treasury were pretty cringe-inducing. Should have pulled in Jonathan Swan for those instead of doing them himself. And I think John Oliver is a better presenter. But I still rate Stewart worth a look. He's certainly no Bill Maher.
posted by flabdablet at 10:50 AM on February 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
Stewart does seem rather more willing than most to assume good faith on the part of those he's proposing to engage with, though. Personally I think that despite (or perhaps because of) having spent so many years exposing just how little good faith remains alive in mainstream US media culture, he's clinging to an increasingly unsupportable expectation of being able to find some, clutching fairly desperately at anything that looks like it might be a straw (e.g. Rogan's grudging admission about being wrong on myocarditis risk vs COVID risk).
I've sat through all four episodes of The Problem With Jon Stewart now, and I'll probably watch the rest as well, mostly for the guests. As one of the show's EPs, Stewart deserves a fair bit of credit for the thoughtfulness and expertise of those he's had on so far.
He's not a journalist's asshole, though; his interviews with the high mucky-mucks from VA and Treasury were pretty cringe-inducing. Should have pulled in Jonathan Swan for those instead of doing them himself. And I think John Oliver is a better presenter. But I still rate Stewart worth a look. He's certainly no Bill Maher.
posted by flabdablet at 10:50 AM on February 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
He's trending on Twitter at the moment. When The Daily Caller and Post Millennial are trumpeting your statement, perhaps it's time to reconsider what you said.
posted by Candleman at 12:49 AM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Candleman at 12:49 AM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oh, and Newsmax.
posted by Candleman at 12:50 AM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Candleman at 12:50 AM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you are sad that 2022 Jon Stewart is out of touch I have bad news about Dennis Miller.
But seriously, indict the guy for decisions he's making now with full context, it seems like there's plenty of good examples. Indicting him for lack of perfect prescience is different. He can both be very disappointingly wrong now and not directly responsible for the shitty condition of our politics due to behaviors twenty years ago.
Conflating the two as if it proves he was out of touch all along... well I also have bad news about 00s era comedy's rampant transphobia, homophobia, and constant pre-metoo frat party of misogyny-for-funsies. It was a different world where simply not participating actively in that filth was enough to set you both apart and back.
posted by abulafa at 5:40 AM on February 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
But seriously, indict the guy for decisions he's making now with full context, it seems like there's plenty of good examples. Indicting him for lack of perfect prescience is different. He can both be very disappointingly wrong now and not directly responsible for the shitty condition of our politics due to behaviors twenty years ago.
Conflating the two as if it proves he was out of touch all along... well I also have bad news about 00s era comedy's rampant transphobia, homophobia, and constant pre-metoo frat party of misogyny-for-funsies. It was a different world where simply not participating actively in that filth was enough to set you both apart and back.
posted by abulafa at 5:40 AM on February 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
If you are sad that 2022 Jon Stewart is out of touch
I am, a bit.
In one of the new series (Freedom, I think) he draws an analogy between two lanes of cars merging in order to enter a tunnel, and two political parties taking turns at running a country, and spends a bit of time wondering what happened to the implicit social contract that allowed his country to pull off the equivalent of a merge without creating a huge pileup.
It seems he's totally missed the point that in his analogy, the first act of every driver from the Right lane after getting their spot in the tunnel has been to lob a bunch of IEDs into the Left lane behind them and then complain vociferously about the clear danger posed by exploding Democrats, and that they've been doing this consistently since Gingrich was Speaker.
posted by flabdablet at 5:56 AM on February 5, 2022 [8 favorites]
I am, a bit.
In one of the new series (Freedom, I think) he draws an analogy between two lanes of cars merging in order to enter a tunnel, and two political parties taking turns at running a country, and spends a bit of time wondering what happened to the implicit social contract that allowed his country to pull off the equivalent of a merge without creating a huge pileup.
It seems he's totally missed the point that in his analogy, the first act of every driver from the Right lane after getting their spot in the tunnel has been to lob a bunch of IEDs into the Left lane behind them and then complain vociferously about the clear danger posed by exploding Democrats, and that they've been doing this consistently since Gingrich was Speaker.
posted by flabdablet at 5:56 AM on February 5, 2022 [8 favorites]
That said, the rest of Freedom is absolutely on point, and recommended viewing.
posted by flabdablet at 6:52 AM on February 5, 2022
posted by flabdablet at 6:52 AM on February 5, 2022
well, I just watched the Jon Stewart Defends Joe Rogan From ‘Overblown’ Rhetoric of His Critics stuff without really intending to. It came up on Youtube after something else I'd been watching (I had autoplay on while I was cleaning the bathroom) -- a 16:22 long clip that covers a fair bit of ground, only some of which is Joe Rogan specific ...
Spotify And The Problem With Platforms
I suppose his overall point on Rogan is that engagement is preferable to avoidance assuming you want actual clarity about what your opponents may be thinking/intending as opposed to just writing them off as THE ENEMY.
One thing I do like from those 16 plus minutes is this bit on the topic of "I'm more worried about the algorithm of misinformation than the purveyor of misinformation. Misinformation will always be out there but if the algorithm drives people further and further down the rabbit hole, the fucking algorithm is the amplifier and the catalyst of extremism. I would much rather fuck with the algorithm than de-platform and all these other things."
Hardly new insights but sometimes I need to be reminded of the territory we're actually in ... my emotions maybe having gotten ahead of my brain and all that ...
posted by philip-random at 8:52 AM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Spotify And The Problem With Platforms
I suppose his overall point on Rogan is that engagement is preferable to avoidance assuming you want actual clarity about what your opponents may be thinking/intending as opposed to just writing them off as THE ENEMY.
One thing I do like from those 16 plus minutes is this bit on the topic of "I'm more worried about the algorithm of misinformation than the purveyor of misinformation. Misinformation will always be out there but if the algorithm drives people further and further down the rabbit hole, the fucking algorithm is the amplifier and the catalyst of extremism. I would much rather fuck with the algorithm than de-platform and all these other things."
Hardly new insights but sometimes I need to be reminded of the territory we're actually in ... my emotions maybe having gotten ahead of my brain and all that ...
posted by philip-random at 8:52 AM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you are sad that 2022 Jon Stewart is out of touch
agreed.
stewart is absolutely not out of touch, if being in touch means having views shared by most americans. dumbass joe fucking rogan, see upthread, has a mega-audience. vanilla joe is president. close on his heels is a wannabe dictator with millions of followers who has a great shot at being president again.
stewart- not as left as you want him to be on culture war issues? sure. but out of touch?? with whom, exactly? lefty twitter and college kids who got upset at his taking seriously that the chinese govt--the most totalitarian state on earth that has lied about numerous prior outbreaks in its territory--might be lying about the origins of covid? or his doubting that shouting down the self-avowed idiot rogan would help convince anyone to get vax'd who hasnt already? these are not out of touch with mainstream sentiment. they are well, well within it.
posted by wibari at 9:27 PM on February 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
agreed.
stewart is absolutely not out of touch, if being in touch means having views shared by most americans. dumbass joe fucking rogan, see upthread, has a mega-audience. vanilla joe is president. close on his heels is a wannabe dictator with millions of followers who has a great shot at being president again.
stewart- not as left as you want him to be on culture war issues? sure. but out of touch?? with whom, exactly? lefty twitter and college kids who got upset at his taking seriously that the chinese govt--the most totalitarian state on earth that has lied about numerous prior outbreaks in its territory--might be lying about the origins of covid? or his doubting that shouting down the self-avowed idiot rogan would help convince anyone to get vax'd who hasnt already? these are not out of touch with mainstream sentiment. they are well, well within it.
posted by wibari at 9:27 PM on February 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
out of touch?? with whom, exactly?
For me it's not so much with whom as with what. A lot of what Stewart says leads me to believe that he's working off an assumption that the state of global culture in 2022, and US culture in particular, is a lot less unhealthy than actual public intellectuals have been consistently warning us all for decades.
And this is something that the mainstream generally is equally out of touch with, largely due to the outstanding success of the technologies of manufactured consent.
Stewart pretty consistently works from the premise that in principle there are and must be two equally legitimate "sides" to politics, even if he personally disagrees sharply with the policies of the side he isn't on and argues vociferously against those at every opportunity. But it seems to me that the only "side" with any genuine legitimacy is the side of democracy. There's currently only one US party that's displaying anything even vaguely like support for that, even though within that party such support is very much a minority position.
posted by flabdablet at 12:06 AM on February 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
For me it's not so much with whom as with what. A lot of what Stewart says leads me to believe that he's working off an assumption that the state of global culture in 2022, and US culture in particular, is a lot less unhealthy than actual public intellectuals have been consistently warning us all for decades.
And this is something that the mainstream generally is equally out of touch with, largely due to the outstanding success of the technologies of manufactured consent.
Stewart pretty consistently works from the premise that in principle there are and must be two equally legitimate "sides" to politics, even if he personally disagrees sharply with the policies of the side he isn't on and argues vociferously against those at every opportunity. But it seems to me that the only "side" with any genuine legitimacy is the side of democracy. There's currently only one US party that's displaying anything even vaguely like support for that, even though within that party such support is very much a minority position.
posted by flabdablet at 12:06 AM on February 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's no sign of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society, and it's nothing creditable to be in touch with popular sentiment when that sentiment is a pile of lies and insanity.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:38 AM on February 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:38 AM on February 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
Completely true. Also completely true is that this has been Stewart's position for as long as he's been on TV, he seems pretty committed to it, and arguing against it is unlikely to make him change it. It's unfortunate, and I think it does stop him doing more good than he already does.
I also think that the amount of good he's already done and continues to do is considerable, so if I have to put up with a few obvious blind spots in order to see that happen, well, I can live with it. If the world were influenced more by presenters who think like Stewart than like Maher and Rogan, we'd certainly be better off than we are. His whole career he's been pulling the Overton window in the direction it needs to go, even if he's not pulling it quite as hard as you or I would like.
posted by flabdablet at 12:54 AM on February 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
I also think that the amount of good he's already done and continues to do is considerable, so if I have to put up with a few obvious blind spots in order to see that happen, well, I can live with it. If the world were influenced more by presenters who think like Stewart than like Maher and Rogan, we'd certainly be better off than we are. His whole career he's been pulling the Overton window in the direction it needs to go, even if he's not pulling it quite as hard as you or I would like.
posted by flabdablet at 12:54 AM on February 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Imagine if Jon Stewart came to recognize that he's wrong on this one? Imagine if he saw his bedfellows in this take and decided: no, I don't have to keep saying this. I can say I was wrong. Everyone is wrong sometimes, we're all only human. I don't have to have an ego about this.
He could show people with bad takes a path out of their wrongness. He could not double down.
Will he do that? Probably not.
posted by JHarris at 6:19 PM on February 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
He could show people with bad takes a path out of their wrongness. He could not double down.
Will he do that? Probably not.
posted by JHarris at 6:19 PM on February 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
one week later and Mr. Stewart is responding to criticisms, with some help from at least one genuine expert (Dr. Joan Donovan). I've cued it to where they start talking about Joe Rogan and Spotify in particular, but the whole half hour feels pretty relevant.
Spotify And Rogan: How To Engage With Misinformation | The Problem With Jon Stewart Podcast
posted by philip-random at 8:46 AM on February 11, 2022
Spotify And Rogan: How To Engage With Misinformation | The Problem With Jon Stewart Podcast
posted by philip-random at 8:46 AM on February 11, 2022
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