Saturday Night Special: In Defense of a Comedian

I’ll do this every once in a while, just a post here and there when I feel like writing, or when something in the news just plain pisses me off.  Sorry, a nightly return isn’t happening anytime soon, but since two of my friends started nightly blogs of their own (and both of them have an even higher workload than me), it’s not out of the question.  Now, to the special.

I’ve been accused of idolizing Jon Stewart by the sole reader of this blog, and probably the only one who will actually see this post.  And you know what, to a degree he may be correct.  I enjoy the man’s comedy.  I think he’s necessary.  Hell, I think he’s important, which he’s denied ever since becoming a comedian.  There are people who will never see that, those who watch their chosen network with religious attention and frown with contempt when it gets beat down by the two-man team from Comedy Central.  News flash.  That two-man team gives the most unbiased reporting of the news that exists, literally the only one I can find.  The next best thing is Time Magazine, but even that isn’t consistently unbiased and has the drawback of only appearing once a week.  So I watch those regular news networks with a grain of salt, and when I want to hear the truth I tune into the last place you would expect it and watch two men who have won Emmys for journalism… on comedy shows… at work.

Now why am I doing this?  Well there was an article in Esquire that I found online called ‘Jon Stewart and the Burden of History’.  It started out by describing the intense security process that Daily Show viewers have to undergo… and then seemingly justified it.  It then rambled about Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire.  What is that show you ask?  Exactly.  The popular consensus that Stewart’s appearance damned that show is deserved; he ripped the pair of anchors apart like the pieces of tissue paper they obviously were.  At one point one of those anchors said “I thought you were supposed to be funny.”  Stewart replied “No, I will not be your monkey.”  The article painted those hosts as victims, when really they deserved one hundred percent the beating they’d gotten.  Seriously, when you come out blatantly and tell something you expected him to just pull out a few benign laughs, and basically be your monkey, three minutes after asking why he didn’t ask more serious questions of a presidential candidate on a comedy show… you deserve every slap in the face he gives you.  That is the first sin of the article, painting Stewart as an attacker who destroyed a show because of arrogance while ignoring the obvious arrogance of those on that show.

The second sin was also about another clip of Stewart, this time on his show.  Jim Cramer, who was an analyst for CNBC (keyword was), and hosted a show where he gave financial advice catered to corporations and ripped off people… was again portrayed as one of Stewart’s doe-eyed victims.  Let me tell you, I’ve watched that interview as well.  Cramer even tried to bullshit Stewart once, and the comedian fired back with a clip bathing that shit in harsh white light.  In the end he tore apart Cramer and probably changed his career forever; the man is now an sports commentator for Florida International.  Once again Stewart is portrayed as the nasty, pompous bully beating down the innocents with a sledgehammer.  I saw something much different.  I saw a sane man quite calmly, seriously, and almost gently slicing another sane but deserving man apart.  It sounds terrible even when I put it that way, but to say that the man who in all likelihood lost people a lot of money was the victim… you clearly have never heard of Hammurabi’s Code.  It’s not law anymore, but in some ways an eye for an eye is more effective than a $25,000 fine for a $1,000,000 offense.

The third and final sin of this article was attacking Stewart himself for wanting to be more than a comedian.  After his interview with Juan Williams, Stewart asked the man who’d been fired from NPR for making a comment I don’t agree with but believe he had the right to say if he thought a 24-hour news network based on anti-corruption in politics could ever work.  So that’s the man’s vision.  He wants his own version of Fox News, only the writer of the article makes that seem like a crime against humanity.  If Jon Stewart, who generally tells the truth whether people want to hear it or now, wants to be like Roger Ailes (Fox’s president) and close out his last thirty or forty years as the head of a news network I say all the power to him.  He’s earned that right tenfold, and maybe it’s even time for him to stop insisting that he’s just a comedian when it’s so obvious that he’s more.  The first sign that he might be beginning to step out of that shell was the Rally to Restore Sanity last October when he came and delivered, among others, the honest line that “sometimes that light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land… it’s just New Jersey.  But we do it anyway, together.”  If that’s what this 24-hour network of his will preach… then I’ll be the first one watching.

Really, the article skates around it’s point.  That point?  That Jon Stewart is a pompous asshole and has always been a pompous asshole, but one that we used to forgive because he was funny.  Two comments.  He still is funny, very funny.  And Tom Junod, I can see you’re a talented writer, but this thinly-veiled personal attack makes you seem more like the pompous asshole than the man you’re trying to burn.  I’ll even go as far to say that, if this article was a source your article (a la Crossfire / the Cramer interview), Stewart would be painted as the victim and you would be the arrogant jerk attacking him for doing nothing at all.

Well, I think I’ve overstepped my bounds just a little bit, and my time constraints.  I’m posting this because I’m sure no one will read it… but even if they did I wouldn’t be upset.  There are things I believe in very strongly, and I’ve realized through the writing of this long, morose, and boring post that yeah, maybe I have come to idolize the man a little bit.

However, in my defense, I hardly think Jon Stewart is the worst person I could idolize.  I’ve seen lunkheads who idolize Li’l Wayne and Michael Vick.  Both of them are convicted felons.  There are people who idolize musicians and actors who on their weekends have sex with five different women and smoke pot for the remainder of their time.  I don’t think those are the people I should be idolizing.  But Jon Stewart?  Sure, he’s not the nicest guy in the world.  But why should that make a difference?  Actually, in the end, I’m not sure I’d want him to be.  He’s Jon Stewart and he tells the truth while also making it funny.  That’s why I love him.  Is he untouchable?  Yeah.  Will anyone ever tear him down?  I don’t think it’s possible.  Has he made himself a villain?  Not yet.  Will he?  I honestly can’t say.  In the end all that matters is that he is important, while the article I’ve taken so much time and energy to rebuke will eventually be lost in the same swill of internet junk.

#10 – Thursday: It Was Too Short…

It really was.  And I really am sorry to my one or two readers that I am going to disappoint once again in less than two months.  I can’t keep doing this, for exactly the same reason.  It’s taking up too much time away from what I want and need to do.  I’m also going to need to do some intensive computer maintenance over the next few days… and having to do one of these every night would just stress me out a little more than I need right now.  I’m also realizing that, for the first time, the teachers were telling the truth when they said we’d have more homework this year.  I’ve really only had any in two classes so far, none yet from AP Gov, and that alone took me until five o’clock today.  Then after that there were other things, to do, to watch, to write, things that take precedence to this.  So I’m going to say goodbye for the second time, but once again I’m saying it’s not for good.  I’ll be popping up here and there with posts, like the one I can guarantee will be coming on Sunday, so check every once in a while.  And if there comes a time when I feel like I can start the daily dose of Internet Junk up again, all of you will be the first to know.

Now I realize that sounded like the speech of a disappointed politician, telling people that he has failed while giving about twenty excuses excusing him of any blame for said failure.  I’m not trying to do that.  I just need a little relaxation that apparently didn’t come with summer.  I need to get used to school again.  I need to get better at rationing my time.  Maybe, once I finally get all that done, I’ll come back with this every night.  I did it for a month during school last year; there’s no reason why I can’t do it again.  I just need to acclimate to the new landscape (you know they say 10th grade is a bigger transition than 9th?), and get into a routine.  Once I get into it I can almost guarantee that I’ll be back and hopefully better than ever.  But until then… I’ll leave you with one last song.

SONG OF THE DAY: THE MESSENGER

Adios, for now.  And seriously, it’s been fun.

-Chris

#9 – Wednesday: I Remember Now…

…why I stopped doing this in the first place.  I have no time now, apparently as soon as summer ends I suddenly have five-hundred-million things to do.  Which is fine, if I remember to do this as soon as I get home from school.  However today after our tiny piece of Geometry homework and Spanish flash cards… I sat down and watched an old episode of NCIS.  Shows where my priorities are right?  Anyway, I’m going to try to do this earlier from now on, but if this continues and I start getting more work the blog may once again mysteriously go away… and this time it’ll be for good.

But that would kill me, because deep down I really do enjoy this, and that’s just something looming on the extremely distant horizon.  It’s like the final death-knell fall of the world’s economy.  According to the government (in this case, me), it’ll never happen.  What you realize… it’s a little more likely that the government says.  And that suspense keeps you watching… which is exactly the effect I’m hoping for.  See how that works.  Nice right?  Yeah, I know, that was all filler to waste half a page because I have nothing else on my mind.  Although… maybe I do. (to be continued about ten millimeters below…)

Well, yesterday night marked a two-week hiatus for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the closest thing to true comic relief I ever have.  It’s also the only way, besides reading Time once a week, that I get news.  Everyone else it either too depressing or crazy.  But seriously, these guys are important; where would we be without satire?  You saw, in the weeks they weren’t here there was an earthquake and a hurricane up the east coast.  The last time a hurricane like that happened was nineteen years ago.  The last time of an earthquake that powerful hit the Eastern Seaboard, there was no Eastern Seaboard.  It was 1897.  You see their importance now?  Probably not.  But seriously watch their shows, at least their news will make you laugh.  Everyone else will make you cry.

SONG OF THE DAY: THE STATIC AGE

Because that is what we live in.  Goodnight.

#8 – Tuesday: Oh the Many Things That Annoy Me…

First off, all you hackers out there just having fun and stealing a bunch of game codes, then giving them out for free, thanks a lot.  Next time, go mess with your own lives instead of mine.  I’d appreciate it, and I’d also appreciate getting to keep the games I’ve spent about two hundred bucks on.  You know, instead of losing them because you have to give out a bunch of free codes and call them a ‘promotion’.  I swear, if I ever get the computer skills to hack the first thing I will do is hack every hacker (those that I’m not friends with) and then paste every detail of their lives on the Internet for everyone to see.  I think that would be fun for me, and it should be fun for them to be on the other side of the glass for once.

You know what else annoys me?  Tuesdays.  Useless days.  The only reason I even wake up on Tuesdays is for NCIS or (in the summer) Covert Affairs, and sometimes I’m tempted just to DVR them and sleep through the day.  Seriously.  Nothing good ever happens on Tuesdays.  They’re, hands down, the worst day of the week.  Even Mondays, for all their dreariness, are better than Tuesdays.  At least on Mondays you have some energy left over from the weekend; on Tuesday morning the last of that goes up in smoke.  What’s the best day of the week?  Saturday.  One, because I was born on a Saturday.  Two… for several other more-than-obvious reasons.  Do I even need to go into this any further?  I didn’t think so.

SONG OF THE DAY: BREAKING THE HABIT

You guessed it, more Linkin Park.  Anyway this is a great song; even Anthony admitted that it was good.  So enjoy, and goodnight.  Tell the bedbugs I said hello.

#7 – Monday: Deep Breaths Now

So. here goes my seventh post, making this a week since I started up again, and by now it feels like I never left.  I’m also remembering just why I stopped in the first place… but hopefully this will get better in the coming months.

Now, today is Labor Day and the unofficial end of summer.  Of course, my summer ended a week ago because someone thought it would be a good idea to come back in August.  Brilliant guys, just brilliant.  But anyway, school starts for real tomorrow, and I have a terrible feeling that I’m not quite ready.  Everything’s falling back to Earth… I just hope it doesn’t happen to fast.  But anyway, something interesting did happen today, which you will be notified of in three… two…

This morning I woke up and went downstairs for some breakfast.  What made this different than every other morning was that my dad had found a turtle (actually a tortoise, which we found out later), in the field behind our house.  I was then drafted to take it down to the creek I didn’t actually know existed by a path that I had never seen before this morning with my sister and her friend.  That first part went pretty well actually… even though I ran into a spiderweb… but there was no actual spider in it so that went pretty well.  The bad part was after we released the tortoise, which my sister named Felipe (don’t ask me), up on the embankment.  Someone (your’s truly), decided it would be a good idea to clean up the trash lying around the creek and put it in the bucket we’d used to hold to tortoise.  In the end, we picked up about twenty pieces of trash ranging from cigarette boxes to garbage bags to beer cans (hmm) to this old, dirt-encrusted red towel lying half-in, half-out of the mud.  Then we had to carry it up two hills back to my house… before dumping it in our trash can and getting all the riverbed mud hosed off our shoes.  I’m serious, I should be able to put that on my college application.  Cleaned creek.  It would look good don’t you think?

SONG OF THE DAY: RESTLESS HEART SYNDROME

Don’t worry, it gets better than the beginning.  It’s Green Day.  Give it a chance.  So see you tomorrow reader, or not, the choice is… … … gah, I’m doing it already.  Goodnight.

#6 – Sunday: Second Time Around

Tonight was a movie night, because the rest of my family wanted to go see Harry Potter.  Seeing as The Debt wasn’t in the theater (which in itself was confusing), I watched the movie again with the same result.  Completely average.  Mediocrity at its finest.  There is nothing special about Deathly Hallows Part II other than the mind-boggling special effects… but as I’ve said countless times, if you want special effects then go see Transformers.  And if you want to argue with me, you better have read the books first or you’re no better than the slobs that rushed out to see Shark Night 3D (though, to be fair, it did get marginally better reviews than Apollo 18).

Now that that rampage is done, remarkably shorter the second time around, I have some free space.  So… let’s make this a movie post altogether with one of the several I watched in August.  We’ll go with the first one, and easily one of the best movies I’ve ever seen (warning though, it’s almost sixteen years old), Se7en.

I’d never been a huge Brad Pitt fan before I saw Ocean’s Eleven, and even after that I was never truly on board until I saw this movie.  His performance was one of the best I’ve seen in a while, so it’s really significant that both Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow were even better.  And Kevin Spacey… let’s just say that this movie has some of the best acting I’ve ever seen.  It’s also one of the most suspenseful, with an ending that has a massive buildup and an aftertaste that will last long after Freeman’s final bleak quote.  Aesthetically, almost everything about Se7en is perfectly done, from the lighting to the pacing to the incredible attention to even the smallest detail.  It makes the nameless city where it always rains feel like a real place, and definitely not somewhere you want to go.  I’ve seen a couple of David Fincher’s movies (Zodiac and The Social Network), and neither of them compared to this.

SONG OF THE DAY: NO ROADS LEFT

More Linkin Park.  I warned you didn’t I?  So see you again tomorrow, where hopefully I’ll have something more interesting than that to share.

#5 – Saturday: Quickly Now

For some reason it still feels like summer to me, which involves going to bed at one in the morning and starting these posts at ten thirty at night.  Now, that’s all well and good for this weekend, but very soon, as in two days soon, I’m going to have to get back into school mode.  I think I’ve figured out how too: do these as soon as I get home.  No more eleven o’clock posts.  This will be done before it has any chance to mess up my seven hours of sleep.  Still, I just did some computer maintenance and I have a bit more to do tonight… so let’s get this over with.

Now, it’s September third, and I’ve already missed two opportunities to welcome in my favorite month.  I know it sounds stupid, but it’s a Saturday and I literally have nothing better to do.  Now, I’m sure a ton of people disagree with me (just like they disagree when I say Tuesday is the worst day of the week, which it is), but I’ll tell you simply why September is the best month of the year.

1.)  It’s the ninth month.  Before the Romans, it was the seventh month.  Both the numbers nine and seven are awesome.

2.)  My birthday is September 9th.  Enough said.  Also, remember how I said nine was an awesome number?  It just sounds cool when I say I was born on the ninth day of the ninth month.

3.)  School… wait.  That’s not a reason.  Actually, technically, school started in August.

3.)  Autumn, which is also the best season of the year, begins in September.  Why is autumn the best season?  One, because it has two names, one which brings images of skydiving and one which is just fun to say.  Two, because (duh), the leaves change color.  Three, if only for two weeks at the end of September, autumn has some of the best weather of the year.

There?  Agree now?  No?  Well at least you’ll be immune to those political commercials that will be inundating the airwaves in a few months; god I hate those things…

SONG OF THE DAY: 1985

Bowling for Soup.  Enough said.  And wow, I think I set a record for post-writing time.  Eleven minutes.  Not bad.  Adios muchachos.

#4 – Friday: End of an Era

That title could be applied to many things, so I’ll act like a horoscope and tell you that a personal era in your life is about to end while another one will soon begin.  What I just said is an excuse for using that title, which just popped into my head and felt really good to type.  Now… moving on… this is my first weekend post (weekend being defined as a day without school; I know very well that today is Friday).  Generally these posts tend to be boring, but I have a boatload of things I never got to vent on in August, so they should be no less entertaining than my weekday posts (however entertaining they may be).  So let’s get started.

The most interesting thing that happened this August was probably my vacation to Mexico.  It lasted about seven days, two and a half days longer than last year, which actually made all the difference.  For five of those days we just relaxed on the beach… which I just realized that I’d really like to be doing right now.  We snorkeled a bit as well; the sea turtles were incredible.  And on the last day I even got bit by a fish.  Just a regular, short-sighted fish who probably saw a piece of food and didn’t realize that beneath that piece of food was my back.  Then, on one of the remaining days, we took a tour of Chichen Itza.  It was incredible, even better than Tulum (which I saw last year), probably one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.  one really cool thing about the temple was the acoustics; if you clap at the bottom of the steps the echo that comes back sounds just a bit like a crow.  The other day… we rode camels through a jungle.  Yes, that was not a typo.  Camels.  Through the jungle.  In Mexico.  Camels.  I know.  But it was actually really cool, and actually I found it a lot more comfortable than riding a horse.  Then, to cap it all off, I got one of the best pictures I’ve ever taken of the sunrise from an airplane.  Here it is… and I know it says it at the bottom of the page but I’ll give my little paranoia talk here anyway.  This is mine.  You can’t use it for anything unless I say yes.

SONG OF THE DAY: WHAT I’VE DONE

And there we go, picture and video all up in a neat little column.  Sorry for the three days of Linkin Park, but this was kind of necessary for today, personal reasons.  I promise to put something non-LP tomorrow.  Though you should get used to it… there will be a lot of this band on here until I exhaust every song from A Thousand Suns.  Adios.

#3 – Thursday: The First… Sort of… Day of School

Today was the fourth day of school.  It was also the second day of classes.  It was also the first day of full-length classes.  So I think, just for simplification purposes… I’m going to call this the first real day of school.  I’m not saying the others were fake… but when you can sleep to eleven in the morning it can’t be called a school day.  And when you sit in homeroom, staring at a wall for three hours, waiting to go back to your powerless home (as it was Monday and Tuesday), it’s not called school.  It’s called nap time.  I just wish they’d have let us actually take a nap.

Moving on, today involved, you guessed it, more walking.  Third Floor, First Floor, Second Floor, Basement, Third Floor, Second Floor.  When I put it like that it may not sound bad… but consider that each one is in the opposite end of the building from the one before.  Yeah.  Workout time.  Still, we got to rest a bit in AP Gov when our teacher was once again a sub and we played Hangman and Pictionary for the eighty minutes.  I could not imagine a better way to spend an AP class period… which is why I know I shouldn’t get used to it.  And for a change today Spanish was actually bearable, the entire eighty minutes of it.  Though it was the only class with homework, but all in all it took about ten minutes.  And now we have a four-day weekend because of our school’s messed up schedule, which really is more like a little piece of extended summer.  I’m planning on cramming as much sleep into it as I possibly can… because there won’t be another one until Veterans Day.

SONG OF THE DAY: BURNING IN THE SKIES

Little Linkin Park encore for you guys… or guy.  I’m going to wait until I get a really good day to post this on Facebook again, because this once again feels like the filler I was writing in the summer.  Oh well, good things come to those who wait.  I hate that proverb.  Goodnight.