Looong time watcher of the show (pre-Stewart/attended a taping in Colbert’s first week). Big fan. But I’ve long thought that the best thing for them was the Bush administration. I’m not getting political about Bush, but there was—to me—an unusually bountiful supply of apparent hypocrisy, contradiction, general bumbling, and song-and-dance. A comedy goldmine. The difficulty in finding something to laugh about Obama made the Times. McCain has a few more apparent weaknesses, but age jokes only go so far, and despite the inclusion of some lobbyists and Bush staffers working for him, it seems somewhat unlikely that either candidate will be writing their jokes for them at the same rate.
Colbert has the right wing shtick to maintain, but it will be a slight shift from lampooning an administration to lambasting a veritable ghost. Stewart?
Clearly gaffes will be made, books will be written, and genius will still find ways to make us laugh. But in the post-Bush years, will their viewership decline?
I’ve never taken Colbert as so much taking his shots at the administration, but at the loony right wing of the media - the Rush Limbaughs, the Bill O’Reillys, and the like. No matter who gets into office, be it Obama, or McCain, they’ll continue to give him material (although I think Obama will be better for him in this respect - I don’t think McCain’s as bad as Bush, so there won’t be so much covering of stupidity, but with Obama, there’ll likely be serious attempts to tear him down).
I think that if The Daily Show hadn’t started in 1999, and instead were to begin next year, at the start of the impending Obama administration (hey, I can hope), it probably wouldn’t take off in the same way. But, now that it has taken off, it has an established viewer base that will continue to watch it even though everyone’s favorite object of satire will no longer be in power.
Tengu has it right about the Colbert Report; his main target was never Bush, it was O’Reilly.
The Daily Show began in 1996 with Kilborn. I seem to recall it covering Clinton/Dole back then, but that may have been other shows instead. It certainly didn’t hit its stride until 1999 with Stewart, though.
They’ll find material. The current administration has been a gusher of an oil field, but that doesn’t mean there’s no other fields that can be tapped. At worst, it’ll revert to what it was like in the early days as more of a ‘weird news’ show rather than the crusade against the administration it is now.
I’d guess Colbert will spend four years pretending to impotently hate every wonderful thing he’s doing, thereby actually just gushing every night. It will get old.
Viewership is pretty small already - about a million or a million and a half people per night. There’s a very devoted core group. On top of that, Stewart mocks the media, and their behavior isn’t going to get appreciably less nuts (if anything, the opposite) as time goes on. Colbert lampoons pundits, and right wing pundits will go insane if Obama wins.*
If I ever spoke to Colbert again, however, the one question I’d like to ask him would be “If the political culture in this country shifts appreciably but radically over the next few years, with liberals getting more aggressive and conservatives wussing out, do you think your character could keep up? Would you be able to morph Stephen Colbert the pundit into a guy who sympathizes with the aggressors and attacks the right?”
I’d ask the question off the record because I don’t think he’d want to talk about it. But I think the answer would be “Yes. He’ll change with the times. There will always be angry people to lampoon.”
And, as much as the Bush administration has given The Daily Show plenty of fodder, I think ultimately they are at their best when they’re pointing out how ridiculous a lot of the news media are in their reportage, and I don’t see that improving with a change in administration. I think there will be plenty of Fox News/CNN/MSNBC moments of ridiculousness in the years to come.
Rory Bremner seemed doomed when Labour won the 1997 election in Britain. He’d built up an entire career based around the Tory politicians everybody was starting to loath. However he was smart enough to find alternative targets, and the Daily Show has never been short of them. Agreeing with carlb, finding clips to show from Fox will be fish-in-a-barrel.
Mort Sahl became popular among Democrats and liberals for joking about the Eisenhower administration. He turned to joking about JFK and his administration after the election. In his act, he said Democrats would come up to him and say things like, “We thought you’d be happy now!” His reply was, “Hey, you didn’t have to do it for me!”
Stewart and Colbert will adjust. His current audience probably won’t, for purely political reasons hidden behind claims of “not funny any more”, just like they did for Dennis Miller.
As much as some of their audience would like to claim them as liberal political satirists, both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are comedians, who make jokes about whatever is going on in the world that strikes them (and their writers) as funny. I think Colbert is the funniest man on television today, an absolutely brilliant improvisationalist, whether he’s talking about the Bush administration, or the International Space Station, or Cookie Monster eating fruit, or Salman Rushdie’s new book, or Rush’s new album, or advances in medicine, or the number one threat: bears! When Obama is elected, only the first of those will cease to exist. As for Stewart, he was funny under Clinton, and he’ll be funny under Obama too. As an Obama supporter, I’d like to believe that the government will be all sunshine and roses once he’s elected, but I’m clearsighted enough to realize that there will still be plenty of government gaffes. Stewart has already posed the rhetorical question about how Obama will break our hearts. I have absolute faith that both Stewart and Colbert will continue to be screamingly, ridiculously funny no matter which party is in office. And if all else fails, they can always make fun of the French!
But that core group is also very devoted to Obama (in a way that was never as intense for Clinton). And if the New Yorker cover controversy is any guide, many of them will take it as betrayal if Stewart mocks President Obama. Or, if you prefer, presents President Obama in a way that helps the right wing mock him. The presidency is often the single largest generator of news, particularly political news, and if it’s off limits, that’s a big restriction on what he can joke about without alienating his audience.
I think this is mostly true, but again, it’s not so much about Stewart and Colbert themselves as it is their audiences, and whether they will continue to enjoy and watch the show when darts are flung their way.
I think that’s the nature of my question. Clearly they’ll continue (fortunately), and they’re much more than “Bush is teh stoopid.” But I somehow think their peak audience numbers will drift, and incoming fans won’t be driven in the same way.
Clearly I’ve been watching a different show, which has routinely mocked Obama and the Obama campaign. My mistake. (And don’t assume that the majority are as devoted to Obama as a vocal minority may be, either.)
I’m quite looking forward to time in which they will be free to spend time mocking the general news story of the day, without the obligatory segments about the political kerfuffle of the day.
They’ll make fun of/satirise the the media’s reaction to the story of the day and also hit the political establishment for their failures and mistakes.
That’s what they do now. If you think it’s a left/right thing then you’re wrong IMO. It’s a funny thing, the Brits have been doing it for decades. The makers may vote left but they hit anyone that put their heads up equally and both sides cry foul when the target is on them.
If a comedian’s popularity is based upon the topicality of a single person, their career will suffer accordingly. I think Colbert will survive the change–at least I hope so. I think he’s a pretty funny guy.
