By Josh Q. Newman
Watching my second-to-least favorite broadcast news host, Bill O’Reilly, is a bit more than unpleasant because, if anything, his terse interjections and incorrigible manner go against how I think a journalist should conduct himself. Yet watching him interview my very least favorite, or I should say most loathed, “journalist” Jon Stewart last month reaffirmed my long-held belief that Stewart, in fact, has no life.
Jon Leibowitz (sorry, I mean Stewart—he changed his name in 2001; for all his talk about fakery, he doesn’t exactly have a good record) has fueled a general mistrust of government for years now. “The Daily Show’s” once jovial tone turned caustic during the Bush administration. Its many mishaps and terrible lack of popularity gave rise to a show not found in the major news networks. Stewart, to his credit, marketed the show successfully as an alternative voice to the supposedly biased Fox News and the incompetence of everyone else. The other shows are boring; the news becomes the same. Watch The Stewart and you will be saved.
The problem is that “The Daily Show” is wretchedly biased, and that Stewart has abused his power. He has turned his show into a left-wing soapbox that attacks Republicans with the casualness of adults handing out candy during Halloween. Every day, Stewart digs deep into the Republican agenda, ripping it apart without much regard for what the other side has to say.
As much as his liberal lessons bore me—and let’s face it, he is a liberal—I’m not here to defend the GOP. I’m here to attack Jon Stewart. There’s something more troubling about him, and that is his lectures on the media and journalism. For someone who continually denies taking himself seriously, he takes himself very seriously. And as someone who might enter journalism one day, I find his finger waving about how people like Campbell Brown or Katie Couric—people with real jobs—should do their jobs aggravating. He rarely has anything nice to say, and jumps on every one of the media’s peccadilloes.
For example, Stewart was furious a few weeks ago with the media’s coverage of chatroulette.com, the Internet’s latest fad. (It’s still better than Twitter.) He viciously mocked CNN, Fox, NBC, and others for merely covering the Web site. Apparently, covering something new that has a few dicks in it is a bad thing. If that’s the case, then he should be upset by their coverage of President Obama’s staff. Or perhaps he should take a look at his own writers.
Of course, Stewart’s defenders will say that he is only kidding. As he said in O’Reilly’s interview about his image in the media and, I think, his material in general, “I don’t take any of that stuff seriously.” Huh. That’s funny, considering in that brief half-hour interview he threw out pedantic phrases like “re-engage the regulatory mechanism” when describing Obama’s job performance and “cyclonic perpetual emotion machine” when describing Fox News. These things sound less like harmless quotes and more like stuff found in the monologues of Glenn Beck, the very person he so virulently despises. Beck, by the way, isn’t any better, but at least he admits that he is just an opinion-maker, not a source of news.
If you feel that I’m overreacting, then perhaps you might want to take a look at his interview on the late CNN show “Crossfire” in 2004, where he virtually established himself as a defender of truth and dignity against the horrors of Tucker Carlson. Carlson, a respectable but not exactly likeable political commentator and journalist, questioned Stewart about his credibility. Like me, he raised the point that he is just a comedian, something Stewart himself always uses to dodge criticism. He told him that he has no legitimacy in criticizing the media because he is not a real journalist, and that it would behoove him to take a look at himself and calm down.
Stewart, with his uneasy grin, condescending body language, and only-bearable logic, didn’t quite make his case. He claimed that the hosts of the show were partisan hacks, and although the rhetoric of the show was incredibly hotheaded and somewhat made his point, Stewart was only meekly convincing. He was like that kid in high school who would criticize how a club was run without actually doing anything. When Carlson called him out, Stewart ended the show by calling him a dick. Childish name-calling. Great.
And as a comedian, he is only mildly funny. He has his moments (aided of course by his 10 or so writers), but his tone is so serious and pointed that the humor rubs off the wrong way. In fact, there seems to be a smug humorlessness in his bits that ruin what could be comedic gold.
But then again, he claims he’s a satirist, not a comedian. Or wait, he’s a comedian, not a satirist. Or is he a satirist? Comedian? Satirist? Journalist? I’ll tell you who he is. He’s a clown. He’s a sanctimonious fool who consumes himself with tearing apart the media and the likes of Sarah Palin without once thinking about who he truly is or what he should be. This so-called “watchdog” of the media has for too long hypocritically criticizing the journalists that he wishes he is but is not. There’s no other way of putting it. Jon Stewart has no life. He has simply got to go.
…and don’t get me started on Stephen Colbert.
Corrected on 3/23/2010 – Title Fixed
First off, its obvious that you voted Mccain/Palin. The Daily Show makes a mockery of Republican talking points and it apparently hurts your feelings. Fox News is the network spewing the most illogical fallacies and this provides great material for the show. Watch the show more often and you’ll see he also spends a fair amount of time mocking MSNBC and CNN.
On the coverage of Chatroulette, he wasn’t mocking how they covered it, but rather that they covered it. It was a complete waste of time. American news networks are way too involved with trivial things. AMERICAN IDOL? PARIS HILTON?
Last, claiming that The Daily Show is a viable source of news is ridiculous. The show airs on a network that also airs South Park. Glenn Beck may claim to be sharing his “opinions” but how many people take his opinions to be truth? Not a small amount.
His show is satirical, his job is to criticize people.
Josh,
You are right about one thing: Stewart is from the clowning tradition. His use of nonverbal communication, particularly silence, facial expressions and emotive gestures, are from the clowning tradition. The fact that his subject matter is complex doesn’t change that.
I’m just wondering — if you accuse satire and comedy of being biased, do you understand satire? It’s whole point is to make points that could not be made otherwise. He has no cultural requirement for “objectivity” and makes no claim to it.
That said, I have seen him go after Obama, Rachel Maddow and other stalwart figures on the “left.” The problem there is, there’s not much to go after, and the best reporters on the “left” — such as Olbermann and Maddow — themselves use irony, parody and satire as part of their routines.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-4-2010/tech-talch—chatroulette
The people who are the easiest to parody are the ones who take themselves too seriously.
PS
I am a reporter/editor, and over the months as I tried to get a grip on health care reform, I depended on Jon Stewart for the most coherent points of analysis. You could call that using the Daily Show as news; I think of it as a source of analysis, asking the right questions, and revealing the viewpoints of the parties involved in an issue.
He also does one of the best daily news roundups in the business; too bad there is a one-day lagtime.
Adam, I have seen some excellent analysis on South Park as well. One of the best deconstructions of the banking scandal and its economic aftermath was written by Trey Parker as a South Park episode.
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Stewart’s criticisms of the traditional media are echoed by our own Secretary of State, who stated that foreign media outlets, unlike ours, cover “real news.” Jon Stewart is a comedic genius and performs an invaluable service keeping us cognizant of the shortcomings and contradictions of our media and political system, designed to entertain and inform all at once.
President Bush led us into a useless war with Iraq that cost over a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives, pulled out of Afghanistan too quickly to divert resources to Iraq, which allowed the Taliban to regroup, left our national reputation in tatters and torpedoed the budget. You think Stewart’s treatment of him was “caustic?” lol? Perhaps you actually bought into the Bush mantra and his criticisms hit too close to home.
When you feebly attempted to link Stewart’s clever wit with Glenn Beck’s messianic, glib delusions, I knew we had hit rock bottom. I’d decry this shoddy post further, but I wouldn’t want you to miss Hannity. Thanks, though, for the quick lesson on casting pearls before swine.
I stated in the very beginning that I hate Bill O’Reilly and how he handles journalism. I think the point I was trying to make here is that I loathe any “journalist,” whether it’s O’Reilly, Stewart, or Beck, who abuse their positions to make rants, however shrewd or loud they are. It’s a journalist job to report the news and it’s a commentator’s job to interpret it. Since Stewart openly claims that he is neither, I’m not sure what he’s trying to accomplish.
I think your criticism would be more valid if you didn’t make so many assumptions about me. I don’t watch Fox News nor did I buy into Bush’s policies. I was merely trying to express my frustration of Stewart’s fingerwaging. If he has a problem with Bush or mainstream journalism, he should come out already and become a real journalist – not this facade he’s been shelling out for the past 10 years or so. What I don’t like most about Stewart is not his criticism of government officials – although I must say, and I hope you’ll agree, that he seems to be more critical of the right than of the left – but his diatribes against the media. Since he is only a “comedian,” he’s in no place to criticize how journalists on CNN or MSNBC should do their jobs. He derides the media on a regular basis, only to hide behind the “I’m just a comedian” excuse whenever he faces legitimate criticism. What goes around comes around; I wish Stewart and his fans would be mature about that and except it.
You may have caught me on my comparison of Stewart to Glenn Beck; perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. Although Stewart does his research and presents it in a clear manner, they’re both assholes. Instead of being civil, both men decide to use their airtime to ridicule and assissinate character. I only watched Beck’s show once and I could tell immediately that he’s nuts. But I did the right thing: I ignored him. Stewart feels that by bringing attention to Beck that he’s doing damage but the only thing he’s really doing is giving him credence. Anyone that actually believes in what Beck says isn’t going to be swayed by Stewart or anyone else, for that matter. Stewart and his supporters are merely patting himself on the back for pointing out the obvious. It’s like writing an entire book on how dog-shit smells. What’s the word…duh?
The media is far from perfect but Stewart is ultimately doing a disservice by presenting biased, angry information when that is exactly what he is supposedly against. If the media and the country needs to be “restored,” Stewart is not the man to do it.
Josh, you wrote, “I was merely trying to express my frustration of Stewart’s fingerwaging. If he has a problem with Bush or mainstream journalism, he should come out already and become a real journalist – not this facade he’s been shelling out for the past 10 years or so.”
and then you proceeded to wag your finger at Jon Stewart, which I find very ironic. As someone else mentioned I also noticed that Stewart took shots at the left side of the administration in a couple episodes I caught last week. By the way, he didn’t have as much material to work with, I wonder why.
Dude, Jon Stewart is a comedian, if you ONLY watch the daily show for news you’re ignorant. The man takes an analytical slant on politics and makes it, that’s his craft and he’s very, very, intelligent in doing it (if you don’t appreciate his ability to eloquently speak on a subject that he is passionate about from the hip, you’re biased.)
To me, the American ideal is that cable news networks have a place for Stewart, a place for Bill Maher, and a place for O’reilly and his stupid freakin’ pov, and the freedom to change the channel to something else. Obviously for me, Jon Stewart really earns his wages as something else.
“Dude, Jon Stewart is a comedian, if you ONLY watch the daily show for news you’re ignorant.” I agree with this. You should find it unfortunate, then, that this is something many Stewart fans lose site of. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me they get their news exclusively from TDS, or at the very least let it form their opinions. Viewers should know better than to rely on a “comedian” for anything besides comedy. Now, this is only my analytical slant, but I feel that Stewart fans take the facts presented on the show for granted, take Jon’s rather left-leaning bias as fair, objective reporting, and take his swearing and theatrics as the only effective reaction to the impotence of the mainstream media. Apparently, he has the right to call people names and make fuck jokes but Bill O’Reilly can’t? Why? Stewart’s reaction has always been that he is just a comedian and shouldn’t be held to the same standards he holds other journalists to, ie he can do whatever he wants and not be held responsible. If this is the case, then it is total hypocrisy. He can’t tell people what to do and not do it himself. It’s a logical fallacy any 4th grader can point out.
Yet when critics, most recently Chris Wallace, try not to take him seriously as a commentator or anything besides a comedian, he seems to get very offended. Hysterically so. He called Wallace “insane” for accusing him of wanting to be a political player. Come on now, even you should admit Stewart wants to be exactly that.
I do agree that Stewart sometimes makes good points and does his research (actually, that’s mostly done by his staff, some of whom are openly Democratic; for someone who criticizes Fox News for being openly Republican…). I just wish Stewart takes responsibility for his own actions and admit that the stakes he raises for himself are rather high for just a “comedian.” Dave Chappelle is a good example of a comedian that makes points behind his comedy. With this I have no problem; I’m fully aware of what satire is, thank you very much. But while Chappelle depicts or mimics political and social problems, Stewart “reports” them and meanly excoriates those that try to question his motives. Satire is all well and good, but it doesn’t replace actual in-depth reporting being done by real journalists. And Chappelle is never self-righteous. Stewart on the other hand…
Also, every response to this article so far has put Stewart on a pedestal, which is another thing that annoys me. I find it amusing, for example, that Mr. Fleming compared Stewart to a pearl – a nice biblical phrase, but still a bit vain. The greatest comedians of all time – Carlin, Pryor, Seinfeld, etc. – may be pearls but not in the sense Stewart wants to be. Get over yourselves: the dude makes iffy and biased jokes about the government and the media. He continually insults hypocritical Republicans (everyone) wihtout insulting hypocritical Democrats (everyone). He seems to think that the problem with the Democrats is they’re not Democratic enough. Etc. He’s not the next Edward R. Murrow and he’s certainly not (to use Mr. Fleming’s phrase again) a pearl.
I’m sorry if any of this is finger waging. If you really do appreciate Stewart’s “craft,” then I have done nothing wrong.
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