By Bill McMorris
Thursday, August 06, 2015
I saw one stand-up comedy show during my college career,
and I remember one line from it: “It’s called masturbation because I’m the
master of it, okay?” It was type of fare you’d expect from a guy who’d done
cameo work on Half Baked and Adam Sandler films.
That was Jon Stewart back in the spring of 2005, the
tail-end of his pre-Messianic carpenter phase. Billy the 18-year-old penned a
review praising him for steering clear of politics and sticking with bipartisan
toilet humor that was in vogue thanks to the ascent of Judd Apatow.
Many of my classmates were disappointed with his stand-up
routine. They’d come to have their ideology reaffirmed, to hear truth spoken to
power, another notion in vogue at the time. I knew Stewart didn’t share my
beliefs, but bought the ticket anyway. I thought he was funny. Show me a man
who didn’t snicker when “The Daily Show” debuted “Mess-O-Potamia” or the
“Indecision Desk,” and I’ll show you an ideologue. That’s exactly what Stewart
became. It’s served him well monetarily, but not culturally.
Apatow’s frat boy toilet humor went out of style, but he
quickly replaced it with sorority toilet humor. Stewart replaced his
truth-to-power brand with fealty. His most recent gag lines have been about the
Republican ability to “undercut our president,” while comparing freshman
senators to dictators for not deferring to the Iran deal.
Stewart’s swan song from the host’s chair at “The Daily
Show” is being greeted with everything from sentimental hagiography to
solipsistic despair, and yes, lamentations from Salon that he “felt like a
Messiah,” a “better white savior than any of us had a right to expect.”
“It’s time for us to stop asking more from him than any
one person can be expected to give,” Jeopardy champion Arthur Chu writes.
Substitute L. Ron Hubbard for Jon Stewart, and you have a John Travolta op-ed.
Jon Stewart Begins Pulling His Punches
When Stewart first rushed onto the scene of renegade,
devil-may-care truth-telling, the zeitgeist of the day demanded howling
lamentations of soundbite politics. Stewart is the chief pioneer of soundbite
humor, the news of the day broken into out-of-context eight-second clips
followed by three to five minutes of the host making funny faces and sighing
loudly as each one plays.
It’s the comedic equivalent of saying “ugh,” of
Popsicle-stick one-liners, only less original. It was built for our SEO-fueled,
clickbait-laden age. Stewart may despise the “Watch Jon Stewart DEMOLISH
Idaho’s Infamous Homophobic, Bigoted, Sexist, Cis-Gendered Republican County
Dog Catcher” headlines that accompany each one of his segments, but those
headlines have been routine for nearly a decade and the show has never deviated
from its formula.
“The Daily Show” did not become a staple of the
zeitgeist’s diet until election day 2004, when Stewart bawled at his desk
because voters re-elected George W. Bush. It soon became apparent that Stewart
regretted running the video of John Kerry zig-zagging downhill with a voiceover
noting the Democratic nominee’s flip-flops: “I was for the Iraq War, now I’m
against the Iraq War,” Stewart said. Yes, it was funny, just as funny as his
diatribes against Donald Rumsfeld and Bush, but it was too effective. By 2005,
Stewart seemed to be pulling his punches, although he still criticized
Democrats for their foolishness. Dick Durbin’s comparison of Bush and Hitler
inspired a masterful takedown of Godwin’s Law.
“Please stop calling people Hitler when you disagree with
them. It demeans you. It demeans your opponent. And, to be honest, it demeans
Hitler. He worked too many years, too hard to be that evil to have every Tom,
Dick, and Harry come along and say ‘Yeah, you’re being Hitler.’ No. You know
who was Hitler—Hitler,” he said.
Election day 2006 marked the turning point. Upon seeing
his effectiveness at swinging voters and driving youth turnout, he made a
conscious decision to adopt the inverse of Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh
Commandment: Thou shalt not criticize a Democrat. Never again did he speak
truth to power. He catered to it, slamming the powerful for not exercising more
power. The withering monologues were replaced with mere sighs at the stupidity
of those who didn’t agree with Barack Obama.
Jon Stewart’s Dishonest Editing
If this was commentary, it was WWE commentary complete
with fabricated storylines and DEVASTATING PULVERIZATION of straw men. The mask
came off when guests began publicizing Stewart’s tactics for tickling the
liberal ego. First came Jonah Goldberg’s infamous segment, in which the heroic
“Daily Show” editing crew condensed 20 minutes of Stewart getting embarrassed
for not bothering to read the book that left him reflexively offended into six minutes
of Goldberg shouting.
“Stewart’s complaint echoed all over the Web, radio and
TV by other critics, is that books can indeed be judged by the cover. And
because the title [“Liberal Fascism”] and cover amount to a giant insult to
liberals (only Stewart didn’t use the word ‘insult’), it can be dismissed out
of hand,” Goldberg wrote.
At least Goldberg had a studio audience bearing witness
to his “Daily Show” experience. Producers routinely lie to pre-taped interview
subjects, deny requests for raw footage and witnesses, and dictate to guests
the exact narrative Stewart wants on his program.
That’s exactly what Stewart did to former Libertarian
presidential nominee Wayne Allen Root when it aired a segment of him bashing
the Internal Revenue Service for profiling Tea Party groups while seemingly
defending racial profiling that he’d spent his career condemning.
“When the interviewer asked the 3 guests for their
opinion of me…all 3 said something nice. The director said, ‘Cut. C’mon guys.
This is supposed to be funny. Please say something funny or negative about
Wayne. Like ‘rich white guy’ or ‘Fox News guy.’ And then they turned the camera
back on…and each guest said something negative about me,” Root said in an email
to Reason.
No wonder Stewart hasn’t addressed the month-long Planned
Parenthood organ harvesting story—he couldn’t parrot the “heavily edited” line
without coming across as a fraud and hypocrite, “The Daily Show’s” only mortal
sins.
What Distinguished Jon Stewart from Other Comedians
Stewart stood out amidst the other satirists of his day
in one major respect: character. Colbert affected Bill O’Reilly to parody the
Right. Sasha Baron Cohen donned stereotypical hip-hop gear to make buffoons out
of his guests. Each maintained character, affording guests the opportunity to
defend themselves. Stewart granted no such quarter.
Colbert and Cohen left their opponents room to defend
themselves against caricatured imbeciles. Stewart edited footage to be as embarrassing
as possible and, when called out on it, donned a clown nose to dodge
accountability. His self-deprecating cartoon space-man voice and claims of
being “just a comedian” were cudgel and shield. His entire shtick is the
equivalent of Bruce Jenner insulting someone’s manhood and screaming, “You
can’t hit me—I’m a woman.”
Colbert respected the intelligence of his opponents.
Sure, liberals would have an easier time handling softballs, but the rules of
the game were clear. Not so in Stewart’s world. There was only one rule:
demolish your enemies.
In one of Stewart’s most famous interviews, he laid into
then-presidential contender Sen. John McCain for courting the support of
students at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University after calling Falwell an “agent
of intolerance” during his 2000 run.
“Are you going into crazy base world?” Stewart asked,
condescension dripping. He never recognized that if you sit at the table of
politics and you can’t spot the person in “crazy base world,” you’re it.
Stewart is the Donald Trump of the Left, only more foolish; at least we all
know deep down that Trump doesn’t believe anything he says he believes.
Being Kind to Anthony Weiner Before Being Cruel
Stewart became the political animal that he so reviled
when he first decided to pursue his calling as a Very Serious Funnyman. It’s a
shame. Fans rightfully point to the 9/11 monologue as the essence of the
humanity at the center of the show’s appeal, but I was struck by a far more
controversial segment as proof: his reluctance to jump on Anthony Weiner’s
Twitter controversy. After weeks of silence, Stewart laid out for viewers why
he had avoided addressing this comedic gift from God.
“Here’s my dilemma: One, we, news-based comedy program,
are looking at a story about a snapshot that appears to be an ample helping of
penis allegedly posted by a congressman whose name is a synonym for penis. I
mean for a program like this, the phrase ‘sweet spot’ springs to mind,” he
said. “The cons of this story are that this is my friend Anthony…As a comedian
this is slam dunk…but as a friend I really hope that this story is untrue.”
The jokes were relatively tame and obvious. He used the
occasion to focus more on shrinkage in the chilly waters of the Atlantic during
his summers on Dewey Beach with anonymous idealist Anthony Weiner. “It can’t
be,” he says, as he cuts to a commercial break.
Conservatives hammered him for dodging the scandal
because Weiner was an uber liberal and frequent guest on the program. He
engaged in some requisite “doubts about its veracity” because of Andrew
Breitbart, but it’s hard to come away from the clip with any other conclusion
than that Stewart was genuinely concerned about his friend’s marriage and
mental health. Stewart may have helped create the politicized life of comedy in
which we are all now held hostage, but he wouldn’t succumb to it then, for the sake
of a friendship. It was all rather touching.
Fast-forward to Weiner’s disastrous mayoral candidacy,
and we see Stewart the political hack doing what any political hack does:
throwing his friend under the bus. “There’s that charm that borders on the edge
of dickishness. It’s Anthony Weiner, former congressman turned amateur
photographer,” he says, with the trademark spin of his papers before lambasting
Weiner for affecting a parody Jamaican accent—rich, given his recent
controversy over a Herman Cain impersonation.
I still think Jon Stewart’s capable of being funny. His
audience of the past few years has been young people trying to seem
sophisticated and 40-somethings trying to feel hip. If anything else, “The
Daily Show” provided cougars and their prey something to talk about. Maybe he
can return to form in retirement and make jokes about Onanism instead of the
intellectual masturbation he’s been peddling for a decade.
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