The Daily Show is smarter than you
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Avid political watchers have probably seen that video of CNN's Susan Roesgen "interviewing" Tea Party protesters on the 15th, and doing a remarkably bad job of it. Here's the video if you haven't seen it yet:
The thing about loony protests is that loony protesters are very good at making themselves look bad without any outside help:
and reporters injecting themselves into the debate just put themselves into the spotlight instead, which is not only unprofessional but also distracting.
Now, those of us that love the Daily Show know that something like this is comedy gold as soon as we see it and also know that chances are it's going to make it on today's show. Nothing better than an unprofessional reporter berating a man in front of his baby for a comedian like Jon Stewart.
A lot of people still don't know the first thing about the Daily Show though, and make the assumption that Jon Stewart is only interested in putting forth a certain agenda and ignoring the rest. A post on Red State on the 16th made a prediction that even though Jon Stewart berated her for shoddy reporting before during the Fargo flood, he wouldn't "whale" on her this time because it was against his ideology:
…because I bet you that Jon Stewart isn’t going to think that this example of hysterical “reporting” is going to be nearly as funny as her reporting of the Fargo flood was. Or overwrought...After all, floods are one thing, but at the end of the day voluntary propagandists have only got each other to cling to.
So what happened? Well, the prediction was 100% wrong as he "whaled" on her that very night.
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So here's the lesson to learn if you dislike the Daily Show and see Jon Stewart as a partisan hack: Jon Stewart definitely has his own political preferences and makes no effort to disguise them, BUT he's a comedian first and foremost and his show is based on pointing out ridiculousness in politics and the news wherever it may lie, not simply on putting forth a certain agenda. That's why the Daily Show continues to be just as funny even after Obama has become president, and that's also why the 1/2 Hour News Hour (remember that?) never was.
2 comments:
You are right. This kind of news reporting is a piece of crap. I am not interested in seeing reporters debate issues. I want to get information, and I am grown up enough to make my own conclusions. Reporters like that are condenscending to their audience, which should be treated as grown-ups, as they are.
By the way, have you realized that most prescriptive books on language are like that too? They do not treat the reader as a rational, grown-up person, capable of evaluating arguments and developing his own conclusions.
You are right. This kind of news reporting is a piece of crap. I am not interested in seeing reporters debate issues. I want to get information, and I am grown up enough to make my own conclusions. Reporters like that are condenscending to their audience, which should be treated as grown-ups, as they are.
By the way, have you realized that most prescriptive books on language are like that too? They do not treat the reader as a rational, grown-up person, capable of evaluating arguments and developing his own conclusions.
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