Were they always terrible? I feel like I only read sporadically before, but everything in this election cycle has been utter crap.
Being an Old, I watched Johnny Carson sporadically during the 1980s and early ‘90s – more as a tribute to his longevity than for real enjoyment. Hell, he’d been doing the show since I was A YEAR OLD. He was a teevee legend, albeit of my parents’ generation.
Then Carson retired and they brought in Jay Leno and I could give it up completely and I’ve felt better ever since.
Shit changes.
I’ve seen a few clips, but I haven’t watched The Daily Show since Jon Stewart left…and I used to be an avid viewer. He was the show. (Yeah, yeah, writers etc.)
No, they weren’t always this terrible. I think the departure of Joan Walsh was the final step in them becoming untethered; when she left for The Nation, there was nobody left to keep them moored to reality.
One of my friend’s and my favorite past times is making really, really dumb left-wingish headlines and then following them with “- Salon”.
I think Comedy Central in general has dropped in quality lately. I used to tune into several shows fairly regularly, and so I used to see promos for The Daily Show that had me up past my bedtime, watching it. For the last six months or so of Jon Stewart, I hadn’t seen The Daily Show, and I haven’t seen a single Noah episode. But if I were watching anything else regularly on CC, I probably would be watching TDS, at least Indecision 2016.
DH watches it on On Demand when I’m not around. He’ll watch the whole week at once when I’m at shul.
Call me names if you like, but I don’t think a South African has any particularly salient observations to make about the US. I’ll accept that from a contemporary. Say Canada, maybe UK or a western European, but SA has no unique perspective on the US I feel I should take seriously. Jon Stewart gets to rip on his own, a South African doesn’t have the cred. Trevor Noah is very limited in what observations he gets to make, and he’ll always be an outsider. That’s not what the Daily Show was.
I used to read them back in like 1998, and they were pretty okay. But sometime in the last ten years they seem to have morphed into something like a troll, writing over-the-top condemnations of shit just to look bold or something. They used to be similar to what Vice is now, IMO.
I’ve been paying closer attention to TDS and its problems a lot since I posted in the previous thread about Trever Noah, and I’ve been meaning to comment here again, if for no other reason than to get the nagging ideas out of my head.
I think this almost gets to the problem. The key here is the satirizing part. The bread and butter of TDS under Jon Stewart was that it was a “fake news show”; i.e., a satire of the media. The humor had a certain focus on the subjects of the reporting, but at least as much of the humor was a riff on the reporting itself. Stewart’s show constantly skewered the failures of the media itself; it didn’t just rest at telling us that Mitch McConnell is an asshole.
Today’s Daily Show, in contrast, hardly ever even bothers with taking that kind of look at the media anymore. It’s all just “Trump’s an asshole” “Trump’s an asshole” “Trump’s an asshole” etc. – no mention made of the assholes who’ve helped make Trump what he is today. It’s like humor from someone who’s mastered the single entendre.
Basically, Noah’s Daily Show has become a satire without the satire–it’s just him doing straight stand-up routine riffs on his subjects. That’s probably because that’s his strength; as noted in the previous thread, they changed the show’s open to have him out from behind the desk most of the time, so he’s literally doing “stand up” comedy. But it’s a real, fairly major shift in from what the previous iteration of the show was. And it’s not necessarily the show viewers want, or need, right now.
And, judging by the last episode I watched–last one last week, with the B segment with Roy Wood and the new girl playing Bernie supporters–it’s getting worse. That ep was awful. A few more like that and a hatchet piece in Salon will be the least of Noah’s problems.
I’ve been trying to hold on here and give the thing a real chance, but last week was the first time I really started seriously considering deleting the series recording.
At least now I can move forward without this idea itching in my head four nights a week.
Agreed. Well stated 'Xap.
His Trump as African Dictator is where he should dig deeper. Sharp, stairical and from his unique worldview. As the new guy, I would expect him to punch harder.
And yeah, the interviews. Oy. I watched Colbert juggle Gosling and Crowe in full sales-character mode the other night. Noah’s head would’ve exploded.
A fake “news show”, as opposed to Fox, which is a “fake news” show.
I feel that there were once interesting and insightful articles to be found in Salon, but it’s been the worst sort of hysterical, knee-jerk, sub-college-newspaper-level, lazy self-satisfied leftist clickbait trash for so long, I’ve come to doubt myself. Maybe it was all just a dream.
And whatever advertising they’re using now routinely hangs up my browser.
It does. For me, though, HuffPo’s does as well.
Are you sure you meant “contemporary”? Not being a native Englishist I can’t be sure usage hasn’t changed, but the dictionary seems to still focus on the “temp” part.
When Stewart took over TDS, the Internet had barely started. People got their news from network and cable (and local media, but that’s too site-specific to work on a national broadcast). CNN was a neutral network and Fox was a nonentity, not having been launched until 1996.
Who watches cable news today? The average viewership of cable is well over 60, way out of TDS’s demographic. Fox is dominant, having won the ratings for a dozen years. Election years give a boost to ratings, and so do special events like debates or plane crashes, but overall viewership has been declining. Most people, especially younger demographics, get their news from the Internet. Cable news is an irrelevancy except to a small core set of devoted fans.
You can’t satirize what people don’t recognize instantly. It makes no sense any more to do a satire of cable news. The audience doesn’t watch and won’t get it. (Look at National Lampoon’s history. From 1970-75, under Kenny and Beard, they satirized what people with a Harvard education would recognize. When they left, the new guys upped circulation by dumbing it down. Nobody satirizes Joyce and Hemingway today. They spoof *Twilight *and Fifty Shades of Gray.)
I’d say that both Stewart and Colbert saw that they were fighting a losing battle. Tosh 2.0 and @midnight talks to the Internet audience. Samantha Bee and Larry Wilmore and Niiki Glazer and Amy Shumer have identity politics niches. John Oliver has the luxury of infinite time one day a week.
Newsweek went out of business (mostly), U. S. World and News went out of business (mostly), *Time *stumbles around looking for a reason to exist. They’re old media. Cable news is old media too. It’s dying. Nobody would build a new business dependent on it. An old business in that plight needs to move on.
*TDS *is moving on. It may succeed or it may not. It may take someone other than Noah to negotiate the leap. It hasn’t been a “fake news” show in a long time. Political and social and cultural commentary is its shtick. By its very nature, that kind of commentary must be contemporary with its time. Or else it turns into the 1970s Bob Hope.
I started reading Salon when they broke the story about Cassie Bernal’s affirmation of God at Columbine never having happened. And for years I felt I could in good conscience say that though it was a liberal web site, the journalism there was solid. But… these days it certainly seems kind of trashy. And as an atheist I grew weary of them having at least one story a week with a headline like “[Famous Atheist] Needs to Shut the Fuck Up Right Now”. I mean, I have my complaints about Dawkins, Harris, etc. But Salon has a serious bug up their asses about atheists.
You’re good. We will never see eye to eye on Gattaca, but you’re good.
This was the bit I was thinking of. He needs more of these - but the writers don’t have his perspective.
Stewart had a real perspective on what the responsibility of media should be. Wilmore is getting a perspective. Noah doesn’t have one yet, but it is still early. And it probably won’t be how Fox News and CNN are evil (in different ways.)