I never watched much of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. It was mainly the time slot, but it was also that I spent all day writing about politics and I kind of needed a break by the end of the work day. But I did find time to watch those shows from time to time and I watched a lot of clips of their more popular segments.
The main thing, for me, was that they were fellow travelers. They were dedicating their lives to exposing the absolute bullshit that our government and our media empires had become. They gave me comfort, particularly at the beginning when it seemed like we were some badly outnumbered sane people living in some of kind of asylum. The blogging community was important. The Drinking Liberally scene in Philadelphia was important. It was huge when Keith Olbermann flipped a switch and just started called bullshit on everything, all the time. After a while, it actually seemed like we got some wind in our sails, and winning the midterm elections in 2006 was such sweet vindication.
After a while, you could begin to see the media respond to our efforts to shame and scold them. They began to care that we were out there just blasting them, and they actually got better.
Jon Stewart was one of the biggest and most consequential players in that scene.
He did a great job.
Aww man. I had my issues with some of his “both sides do it” tendencies, but The Daily Show was a welcome relief from Fox News…now who will keep Fox News and the media on their toes… Oh well, like they say “all good things come to an end”
The biggest contribution Jon Stewart made during that time was when he was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. He told Carlson, “You are hurting America. You are hurting America. Just stop.” I knew then that there was at least one person who would stand up to the bullies.
I haven’t always identified with the left; maybe I always had the basic instincts, but growing up in a town/area where being a Republican is akin to calling yourself “human” must have an effect. Nonetheless, I still knew our health care system was bullshit as early as 7th grade.
I don’t know what my specific influences in political life are, but I attribute my political coming of age to three things, all of which entered my life at around the same time when I was 12 years old:
I started TDS in the summer of 2001. I remember listing it as my favorite show during a Q/A for German class in the fall. I haven’t watched it much since college, just some clips here and there. Again, don’t know for sure if it influenced my politics, but I feel like it had to. It was part of my my own coming of age. It’s going to be weird without him being there, given he’s been there for more than half of my life. Sometimes his bipartisan schtick grated me in his later segments, but I cannot deny my overall fondness for what he has done. So bravo, Jon Stewart.
Stewart is a very intelligent man, and his sense of humor is impeccable. He is able to speak forcefully, yet calmly, about the bullshit the politicians keep dishing out. He calls them on it, but he’s got a lot of class when he does so.
I’m going to miss the smart man in the room who isn’t afraid to shine the light on those cockroaches. I expect he’ll continue to do great work in other ways, but I’ll miss him at the Daily Show.
“After a while, you could begin to see the media respond to our efforts to shame and scold them. They began to care that we were out there just blasting them, and they actually got better.”
They did? How?
Never a regular watcher of either show. Never cared for the heavy-handed audience overreaction — or producers juicing the sound level in the control room. Hysterical laughter and wild applause for merely amusing observations, as I saw it.
And reading Salon or HuffPo regularly always enabled me to catch up on a recent segment if I chose — usually headlined and oversold as “Stewart Demolishes RWer’s Argument”/”Colbert’s Devastating Mockery of O’Reilly”.
And as others have noted, that rally for sanity and bipartisanship Stewart and Colbert held a few years ago was a most unfortunate waste of time. I want my comedians and satirists a little edgier and jaded than that. S and C should have been calling for a New American Revolution not a New American Niceness.
The reason everyone is “upset” over this, is that it is a pretty solid concept that only jesters can laugh at the king.