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.
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