…and Brainwashed a Generation
That’s the title of a Kyle Smith piece from the New York Post. I wouldn’t have seen this, but my Yahoo home page had it among the offerings. It’s a truly fascinating look into a different mindset.
Smith seems fixated on how Stewart appeals to them uncritical College Students, who aren’t equipped with the analytical skills to detect his errors:
Smith doesn’t actually identify most of the lies that Stewart is supposed to be pushing, except about the blatant un truth of Bush Lying to get us into the Iraq war. To Smith that’s an obvious falsehood, and apparently Stewart ought to be ashamed for knowingly lying about it.
No debate here on my part, although one might erupt over this. I’m just fascinated, as I say, to see a worldview so completely opposite to mine that he feels no need to defend his statements.
Article was a butthurt no-name media man still trying to justify a war based on false premises and trashing another media man who actually speaks the truth once in a while.
That quote just makes me wonder what world that guy lives in. TIL college students who are almost certainly adults have no idea what reality for adults is. Best send those children to war on false pretenses instead.
“[King] Lear expects the Fool to tell the truth and not keep quiet, but the truth, as we can see from a few lines before, consists of telling the king that he is a fool.”
-Paul Corrigan
We are losing the best Court Jester in ages and the New York post can only think about complaining about how a meanie Jon Stewart was.
And what a poof: not a single word about how Dick Chaney pushed the intelligence and the press. It may be true that the press was hard on Bush but in the end the false intelligence (and false information obtained with torture too) pushed the press to create a false balance by reporting also on the false and flawed information like if it was valid too.
And one more note about Jon Stewart to Kyle Smith: Stewart was not defending Brian Williams you bullshitter. Stewart clearly said that Brian did lie, his condemnation was then for all involved in the lead to and the coverage of Iraq so all your talk of Stewart defending Brian Williams and Tu quoques is really dumb too.
That last item clearly comes from the eternally flawed idea from the right that all the mainstream media is liberal and now they do think that Stewart was defending his friends in the mainstream media, when in reality Stewart has roasted them many times in the past.
College students are walled off from conservative views, the reporter claims? Bullshit - college is the first chance many of them get to escape the conservative views of their parents.
Well, assuming they weren’t earlier exposed to the glorious subversion of Mad Magazine, of course.
Not every Jon Stewart can aspire to be a Carl… Kyle? Can hope to one day be a Kyle… sorry, I’ve forgotten the last name. Small? Smith? No. Oh, it is Smith?
Point is, there’s relevant, and there’s Carl Smith relevant, and Jon fancy-pants Stewart would do well to remember the name Kyle Smalls. Sims. Smith. Smith? Kyle Smith. That guy is going places.
I get the impression that the conservative ‘argument’ against Jon Stewart (and Colbert) pretty much stems from sour grapes that – for whatever reason – conservatives just don’t seem very good at the same humor. I know that there’s conservative humorists, writers and such, but you have things like the spectacularly bad “Half Hour News Hour” or “An American Carol” and they just can’t catch the same lightning. Even people mentioning Dennis Miller are thinking of his work from decades ago when his politics were different.
So, with a failure to replicate the same success (and not for lack of trying; it’s not as though they’re too good for it) it’s just a bunch of screeds about how “unfair” it is that Stewart presents himself as a comedian or how terrible it is that people find him more credible than the newscasts that provide fodder for his program. If they could actually pull the same thing off, they’d be all over it but they can’t so it’s all pouts and foot stomping.
Stewart is likely moving on because he knows his shtick is getting a bit tired, and he wants a change of scenery - but it seems like the author is just panning him, like you could pan an episode of Law & Order, for being predictable… 73 seasons into his show.
I think Stewart is taking his leave from The Daily Show at a good time and has left a remarkable legacy. Smart, incisive and truly funny in a way I’ve never seen the right wing even touch.
I have indeed noticed that the daily show has often engaged in “tu quoque” arguments in their pieces, it’s true that they always follow some substantial criticism and mockery of the person (ie: Brian Williams) they’re accused of “defending”. I actually think it has less to do with defending, and more with using the event as an opportunity to show how full of shit Fox is. No matter, it still feels like Tu Quoque and I cannot defend it. I disliked that as well.
The fake news show vs real news show argument has been going on for over a decade now, and the fact is the daily show is a mix of serious interviews and satire, but even the serious interviews are peppered with jokes, so the show is comedic at its roots. Satire is a very informative tool as well, so I’m cool with defining it either way, but I certainly don’t buy the whole “unfair advantage” argument. That’s giving way too little credit to his skill.
The fact that I disagreed with JS seems to invalidate the idea that college students are naive sheep unable to think critically, or maybe I’m just a very smart person. I’d like to go with the latter but the former is statistically much more likely, so I’m going to disagree with that part of the article.
The bottom line is my estimation of Jon Stewart is that he is very funny, very smart and very articulate. He also seems (no proof here) like a caring, decent person and a true patriot. I also happen to agree with him 90% of the time. And that remaining 10% is fine. I don’t agree with anyone more than 90% of the time.
As a counter-example, Anthony Weiner was another “friend” of Jon Stewart and the show did not pull any punches. I feel like Jon just isn’t all that fond of witch hunts and is wary of the cruelty of the mob when it’s about someone’s fall from grace.
I think the funny liberals are well balanced by the fear mongers on the right - like Rush.
Liberals like to laugh at the intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy of the right, and feel smarter, while conservatives like to laugh at the apparent lack of any moral center and the fact that we can’t make bright-line determinations without lots of detail, and feel morally superior.
Of course, liberals are wishy-washy and as a group we have a wide range of moral imperatives, and we don’t like to follow any leader without critically thinking about where they are leading us.
And conservatives value group cohesiveness and homogeneity above punishing any little foibles that any leader may have, along with a strong and unwavering faith in the accepted morals and belief systems.
I used to think that conservatives have an unfair advantage with the fear mongering, but in reality that is somewhat balanced by humor and an ability to evolve our opinions on the left.
So, bottom line, I’m sorry to see Stewart go, but I hold out hope for a new and also funny anchor for that show, and in the long run, liberals are on the right side of history and are winning, little by little.
From the recent conservative attempts at something comparable to Stewart, the impression I get is they overuse the trope of “durrr, that too hard, me no understand!” mockery, i.e. what the person being mocked is saying is nonsensical beyond the understanding of anyone with common sense. Trouble is, the conclusion I ended up drawing is that “you no understand” because you’re an idiot or you’re finding it convenient to pretend to be an idiot. One example that comes to mind is Sarah Palin’s half-smile-and-eyeroll combo during her “community organizer” speech.
I’ve been watching the Daily Show since before Stewart. I enjoy it, even though his politics differ than mine. (I’m a Conservative.)
However, he does go too far quite often and ends up being in dishonest territory. I think it’s usually just that he and his staff have blind spots. Gun rights is one of them. He genuinely doesn’t understand the pro-gun side of the argument at all. Therefore, his bits on guns come across as very ignorant.
But other times you get the sense that he knows better and does it anyway. It does seem to have gotten worse over time. The Brian Williams example from the article seems to be a good illustration of that sort of “you too” fallacy.
I can’t be sure, though, since I didn’t actually catch that episode.
I am not familiar with the Daily Show and don’t know what Jon Stewart did or did not do.
That said, the broader point about comics making real points is a valid one, and it also applies to other types of fiction (e.g. movies like Selma). The point is that they tend to bolster their positions by saying things that are not actually true. They fall back on the “it’s only humor/fiction” line when pressed on it, but the fact is they are expecting their audience to take what they say seriously at some level - certainly as to their overall point - and much of that audience will not be able to differenciate between what’s true and what’s fiction/humor, and the false parts of their presentation are a part of what influences their audience about real issues.