TONY BURMAN ON JON STEWART
The late-night comedian not only changed television — he changed American politics,
The American cultural landscape will undergo a seismic change next week. It will bring joy and relief to all bubble-headed Fox News commentators, selfserving Republican blowhards and to the increasingly brain-dead world of American cable news. Crack open a cold one and rejoice, I say to them, while you have a chance.
However, this will also bring horror and uncertainty to American liberals, particularly among young people, as the life of late-night television is about to change dramatically.
Next Thursday, Jon Stewart steps down after 16 years as host of the influential nightly satire and comedy program The Daily Show. He says he needs a change. Although Stewart claims to be first and foremost a comedian, his fans and critics know that he is much more.
Not only has Stewart become the most trusted TV anchor among American young people, many regard him as this generation’s most talented political satirist. And, by holding lying U.S. politicians and selfinflated mainstream journalists to account every weeknight, his impact on modern American political culture has been profound.
What drives The Daily Show above all is its humour. In withering and comic ways, it rips into the conceit, stupidity, dishonesty and abuse of power of America’s political and media elites.
In recent days, as he prepares to step down, Stewart admitted that Donald Trump’s run for the Republican presidential nomination has filled him with delight: “It’s hard to get mad at Donald Trump for saying stupid things, in the same way you don’t get mad at a monkey when it throws poop at you in the zoo. It’s a monkey. It’s what they do.” But he has been equally contemptuous of the “ridiculous, disingenu- ous defending of the poop-throwing monkey” by the U.S. news media.
This is an example of another thing that drives Jon Stewart. He has an idealistic and high-minded belief in the public service role of journalists.
In 2010, immediately before the U.S. congressional elections, Stewart and fellow comedian Stephen Colbert drew more than 200,000 people to Washington for a rally to “restore sanity” to America’s political debate. Stewart cited politicians in Washington and U.S. cable news networks for being particularly nasty and divisive.
“The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen,” he told the rally. “Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected flaming ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.”
Stewart’s genius has been to treat very serious issues in very funny ways. One of his recurring themes has been the failure of the Obama administration to close the 9/11 prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in spite of its promises. In several shows, he did skits using “Gitmo,” an Elmo puppet dressed up as a Guantanamo Bay detainee.
After the U.S. media, at the prodding of the military, reported that the detainees had use of a library, enrichment classes and a new soccer field, “Gitmo” on The Daily Show was decked out in jewels, saying his ultimate revenge against America was the use of all these tax dollars.
In Stewart’s 16 years as host, the range of issues the show has covered has been remarkable, particularly given the current obsession with crime and celebrity in America’s mainstream media.
These issues — all treated with humour and satire — have included workers’ rights, the minimum wage, police brutality, race relations, homelessness, animal rights, street harassment and global trade policy.
Research by the Pew Center indicates that the under-30 viewers of The Daily Show are among the best-informed in the United States. Viewers of Fox News and CNN, on the other hand, rank near the bottom.
In December 2010, congressional Republicans refused to approve a bill that would help ailing 9/11 “first responders” who hadn’t recovered from the 2001 attacks. Stewart took up their cause and the Republicans eventually caved. In the New York Times, he was compared to “a modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow,” the legendary CBS journalist.
Stewart’s fans are waiting to hear what he will do next and how The Daily Show itself will evolve in his absence. But what is astonishing is how this comedian’s imprint is now all over American politics and media. And that is for the better.