I think many of you are right. If TDS wants to be the forum by which many young people get their news, we need to be more critical of it. I think JS does take a snide, superior and sometimes condescending tone towards his guests.
Then, I think many of them are snide and condescending towards us. That’s an attitude artists have always targeted. I hope it never stops.
I have more to say, but Dexter Haven is right, this is not the forum for it.
Wednesday’s episode kicked three kinds of ass, too – except somebody ought to smack Sam Jackson for his comments about why you ought not to give to the Red Cross, the schmuck. (Still looking forward to seeing The Man, though – it’s about time Eugene Levy got a leading role. Funny, funny man.)
The plastic lawn bit was astonishing. I swear there must be some sort of a gas leak or a toxic waste dump under that subdivison. No way do two people that ostentatiously stupid live next-door to each other due to mere happenstance.
I hear that often, but I really don’t think TDS does want to be that place. Jon’s expressed frustration with the idea before: he wants to be a parody of real media, but he also wants the real media to do their job so he doesn’t have to do it for them. I’ve been watching him on the Daily Show for about three years, and his anger and frustration is never more palpable than when he’s aiming at the media.
In an interview a few months(?) ago, someone asked him what the “point of view” of the show was, and he said “The point of view of the show is that we’re passionately opposed to bullshit.” I honestly think that’s where it’s coming from: he wants people, but especially the media (whose job it is in the first place) to be straight, accountable, and spin-free. He doesn’t want to have to be that person (he’s certainly not very good at it); he wants to be the Jewy guy in the corner taking smartass potshots, and that’s all I’ve ever seen him set himself up to be.
Just to clarify, in case there’s confusion about the forums, and since we face this in Cafe Society often.
A movie where a woman has an abortion, a Law and Order episode about euthanasia, a comic book about a gay super-hero wanting to get married… The line between art/entertainment (and hence proper topics for Cafe Society) and politics/debate (and hence proper topics for Great Debate forum) is a very, very fuzzy one.
Because The Daily Show is political satire, discussions about it tend to waver along that grey fuzzy line. And we ask you to try to preserve the sanctity of the forums.
In this forum, we discuss the entertainment and arts and leisure aspect. If Jon Stewart says, “The President did X.” then this forum can discuss things like:
If you want to debate whether the President really did X, or whether X was good for the country, or whether X was consistent with the President’s position on foreign trade… start a thread in the forum called “Great Debates.”
If you want to lambast the President for doing X, start a thread in the forum called “BBQ Pit.”
If you want to praise the President for doing X, you can go to “Great Debates” or “IMHO” or the Pit, depending on what X is.
This is a Moderated board, which means (in part) that we try to keep discussions on topic. Wild tangents or inappropriate hijacks are frowned on.
It’s also been pointed out that this policy can be unfair. If Jon Stewart says something negative about some politician, then people in Cafe Society can comment, “How funny!” “Right on!” and make additional negative comments about that politician. On the other hand, anyone wanting to defend that politician gets slapped down for starting a political debate in Cafe Society. So there’s an element of unfairness in this separation of forums, and we all (including moderators) need to keep that in mind, as well.
In short, I’m ruling that a little bit of defense is OK and not a hijacking. I’m not sure where the line is, it will probably depend on circumstances. If you see a thread in this forum getting hijacked by political commentary, please hit the REPORT BAD POST button (little exclamation point in red triangle in upper right corner of post) and a Moderator will take a look.
I dunno, maybe Guantanamo
The alphabetic list of disasters was hilarious. Found a posting of this list here, in case anyone didn’t catch them all while watching.
Details fuzzy, but…
When one of the judges involved in the Saddam Hussein trials was killed by insurgents, one of the major networks identified him by name and showed his picture. Unfortunately, they got the wrong guy, and the judge they ID’d suddenly had his picture and name all over the place, at great personal risk. TDS and Stewart made much hay of the network’s ineptness.
Shortly afterwards, one of the personalities from that network was on the show, and pointed out that the misidentified judge had in fact made public appearances, and had revealed himself as one of the judges in the Saddam case PRIOR to the network’s gaffe. So the network wasn’t in fact giving anything away when they made the error. So really, TDS had made the same kind of fact-checking error the network had.
Stewart immediately made a joke about being a fake news show, and how they don’t really do research. When his guest tried to press the point, Jon changed the subject.
This is all IIRC, of course.
Don’t get me wrong, I love TDS. And I get the whole ‘we’re just joking, here folks’ thing. But I think the line between jokes and commentary does get a little blurry sometimes.
thwartme
Did TDS get the Sean Penn story right, on Wednesday’s show? What I read earlier was that Penn and an entourage had some problems with a small boat and that their visit to NO was short and unsweet.
TDS’s clip implied that Penn helped some survivors, not that his own people ended up in the water.
So did Penn really contribute something to relief, or did TDS do some selective reporting?
CK: I hope this is the right forum still… what I want to debate is not “is Bush X” but “Did Jon Stewart do a good job of convincing us that Bush is X”, so it seems like this should still be the right place…
Here’s the thing. There are at least three distinct ways Bush might have screwed up Katrina relief:
(1) By appointing incompetent people, cutting funding, adding confusing beuraucracy, etc., ahead of time, before anyone had heard of Hurricane Katrina
(2) Through action/inaction immediately before, during, and after the storm itself
(3) In the “the buck stops here” sense that anything the federal government does (or at least, anything the executive branch does) is ultimately his responsibility
Plus one other, less important way:
(4) Not being an inspiring and visible and reassuring leader figure
From watching Tuesday’s Daily Show, I got the feeling that JS thought it was so insanely obvious that Bush was at fault that no reasonable person would disagree, yet I’m honestly not quite certain which of (1) through (3), and in what percentages, JS thought Bush was guilty of. Certainly, a damning argument was made that he was guilty of (4), but honestly, (4) isn’t all that big a deal. And even (3) isn’t all THAT big a deal, as plenty of bad things have happened on the watch of basically decent presidents.
Is JS pissed off because Bush gutted FEMA funding and appointed an incompetent FEMA head? If so, convince us of that. Is he instead pissed off because Bush didn’t stop vacationing a day earlier? But would that have made a difference? If so, convince us of that. Is it both? Then at least clarify your position.
Hey! The bit I was talking about it my previous post is actually available on line here .
It’s Brian Wilson, from NBC news.
thwartme
Gaah! Brian Williams. I meant to say Brian Williams.
And as long as I’m acknowledging my idiocy, I’ll just point out that I also meant “in my previous post.”
preview is my friend preview is my friend preview is my friend
thwartme
I like TDS, even though I may disagree with the political slant.
I was disappointed that JS’s Meet the F*ckers segment, he didn’t balance it out with Blanco.
Was her name even mentioned by JS?
Hell, he nearly absolved her of responsibility with the “Blame Game” segment.
JS is very relevant, whether he is “just a comedy show” or not. I don’t think he can stay as relevant if people think his show is trying to promote one side exclusively.
I’m not saying he needs to have objectivity, but he needs to be honest with his audience.
No side, party or ideology should be free from comedic scorn.
I love the DS, its the show I most look forward to each night.
I love the whole Cheney seen and I personnally think the FEMA guy is the largest putz ever. But he should maybe highlight the fact that the Mayor & Gov’n also failed. It would be fairer and more balanced.
But the F’ you Mr Cheney was a Great TV moment.
Um, why are some of you saying that a satire/interview show on the Comedy Network be held to higher standards of fairness than the purported news channels?
Because overall, I have come to expect a higher level of Integrity and fairness then lets say as an example CBS or Fox News.
This was discussed at excruciating length in the Pit. I think at the end, everybody agreed that Penn did help a little bit - he was/is/I don’t know there to write an article for Rolling Stone.
I missed it. Did they pick that clip for their “Moment of Zen”?
I probably shouldn’t say everybody. I do think that was the consensus.
Even if he failed or had less than pure motives, Penn WAS trying to help people.
Tip of the hat.
No, they showed some CNN weatherman telling the anchorbimbo “Just shut the fuck up and let me finish, okay?”