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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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July 01, 2006
Jon Stewart, Sophisticate
It is amazing how many people mistake a certain hip snideness for sophistication.
-Thomas Sowell
I saw this observation in a recent column of Thomas Sowell's "random thoughts." Immediately, one face came to mind - Daily Show host Jon Stewart. "Hip snideness" makes an outstanding description of his whole act.
I've hardly ever seen him make any kind of point indicating any insight at all into a damned thing. I've seen no indication that he or any of his writing staff have any knowledge of history, or that they're making any kind of original connections at all. Their show is mostly just regurgitating the same stale left wing talking points, without even bothering to digest them. In Team America, puppet Janeane Garofalo expressed a strategy of reading the newspapers, then going on tv repeating what you've read as if it were your own opinion. That pretty much describes Jon Stewart's act- just add a little smirk.
But he's a master of contentless hipness. He's real good at making a smug aside that means nothing, but sounds like he very much thinks that it does. Broadly mention, say, Dick Cheney saying something about fighting terror, then make some reference to high gas prices. Then smirk knowingly, like you're telegraphing some hipster inside knowledge about the VRWC.
It's great for the audience, cause they're receiving insider info, and they're cool and hip themselves because they "get it." A big chunk of his audience appears to be so functionally illiterate that they don't even realize that there's little or nothing there to get. It doesn't involve the writers doing research, or reading books, or actually thinking- much less the audience. There's nothing to actually study or consider in what he's saying. It'd be difficult to argue against most of his "jokes" because he's not really saying anything refutable, just making vague and often sinister innuendo.
The height of this snideness is the frequent boasts about his lack of credibility, as if that innoculates him against criticism. It's a FAKE news program, see? Hey, it's just a COMEDY show, what kind of idiot are you acting like they should know something or have a legitimate point that could be defended in a debate? Not that you can't offer real arguments in the form of comedy. South Park does it frequently.
But of course, that's just exactly where Stewart's cheating. Jay Leno might make some similar minor jokes- but isn't pretending like he's any serious part of public discourse. He's just an entertainer, and maybe he gets in a good zinger now and again. Whereas, Jon Stewart famously went on CNN to chide an actual journalist like Tucker Carlson for his supposed lack of professionalism.
Jon Stewart loves to have that "not serious" cake and eat it too. Out one side of his mouth, he's just a clown on Comedy Central, but out the other side he's giving a little "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more" to let the cool people know that he's really a holy fool speaking truth to power. This approach has the advantage that you don't have to actually have any logic or back up what you say. If any lying, venal person presumes to call you out for any of this, then they're just humorless and stupid- and probably just a right wing tool.
These Poindexters just aren't cool and hip and sophisticated like Jon Stewart.
In his fans' eyes: Here is an image of what fans see in Jon Stewart from a website photoshop contest, based on an 1816 painting "Count de Turenne" by Jacques-Louis David.
Jon Stewart, "Journalist"
posted by Al at 7/01/2006 10:13:00 PM
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