Courtesy YouTube / The Daily Show
I picked up the “Best of Summer” issue of Entertainment Weekly late last night (the July 9-16 double issue) and was startled to see sitting atop the “Must List” a full cast photo for The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. “There’s nothing funny about the Gulf oil mess,” the magazine writes, “But he still wrings rueful laughs out of the enormity of the screw up.” I’ve been making the Daily Show part of my nightly routine for years now, but EW was right on: The show has never before seemed more vital, or singular, in its funneling of the day’s populist rage. A few random thoughts:
I’ve watched in admiration as the show has evolved from a straight comedy program to a far more biting nightly media/politico watchdog. Back in the day, it seemed more interested in skits and the mocking of videotaped political gaffes. It was big on chuckles, but slight chuckles to be sure. Then something started happening as the Iraq War spiraled into extraordinary rendition and waterboarding. When it came to some of the most extreme headlines – the Homeland Security secretary upgrading the nation’s terror threat level at a politcally-charged press conference, war prisoners who were tortured to death – Stewart’s team stood apart for taking a stand. They labeled wrongs, and pointed fingers. As the rest of the broadcast media remained calcified in its left-right “balance,” asking questions of both sides while rarely addressing the answers, Stewart underscored the hypocrisies and fact-checked the claims. He called out the reporters for being lazy and the politicians for being wrong.
But I was not the only one who wondered what Stewart and company would do in the era of Obama, when someone closer to the crew’s political views came into office. I can still remember the first night Stewart made a flimsy joke aimed at the candidate, and had to remind his audience, “It’s okay to laugh.” Looking back now, however, those seem like the good old days: As it became more apparent that Obama was going to win the election, the rest of the world fell apart. There was TARP, the auto bailout, unemployment and now the oil spill. In recent months, Stewart’s jokes have become less about verbal flubs or stupid news anchors (though he still does plenty of that) than larger routines surrounding a systematic meltdown.
What I’ve noticed most over the last several weeks is that as all the composed talking heads on both sides of the equation talk a good game on the cable news channels, I go to The Daily Show for a little of the exasperation that matches the way conversations are actually playing out in my life. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Stewart now often ends his segments with the mantra “We’re screwed” (replace “screwed” with a more operative word). I don’t think it’s just happenstance that now often times the second segment of the show is doubly fluffy, to compensate for the dire oil/recession/financial-regulation/broken-government themes of segment one. It’s surely not just serendipity that he has brought on many prominent political guests without books to promote, simply to ask them: What’s going on?
My daily routine now seems to be: Follow the wire reports throughout the day for the dark news that’s breaking in all our various crises, trying to make sense of the developments. Then turn on cable news, only to realize that they are barely scratching the surface, or ignoring the news entirely; and when they do have on someone from BP, it seems more like theater than investigative journalism. Questions are lobbed up, to be answered by talking points. Cut to commercial. Then I go home, flip on Stewart, and get a little of the exasperation-panic I’m feeling – exasperation over the injustices that are not being met with nearly enough indignation, and the dose of panic that accompanies the realization that maybe our government just can’t deal with problems of this magnitude any more. In 2010, bipartisanship seems like a naive and archaic concept.
The Daily Show is still ridiculously funny, but it’s starting to now become more than just a venue for media criticism and political takedowns. Stewart’s extended interviews with leading political figures run unedited online, making news in and of themselves. Clips of his show are now widely circulating on the net within minutes of the episode’s credits. And all these segments that end with “We’re Screwed” play to an almost eerie silence.
For a growing slice of the audience, we’re not watching Jon Stewart any more to laugh at the silliness of the machinery. We’re tuning in to see the one person left who seems capable of calling a train wreck what it really is. This is comedy, yes, but only second to catharsis.