Oct
18
2004

deception lane

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart was a guest on CNN’s Crossfire this past Friday, and instead of just telling jokes about politics and current events (although he did a bit of that, too), he spent most of his visit criticizing the show and arguing with “from the right” co-host Tucker Carlson. (Washington Post: “Left Hooks and Right Jabs: Stewart Tangles With Carlson” - 10/16/04)

(I did giggle at MTV’s characterization of the show: “Jon Stewart Bitchslaps CNN’s ‘Crossfire’ Show.”)

The gist of Stewart’s argument was that “debate” shows such as Crossfire (particularly those on news networks) do a massive disservice to the American public by reducing complex issues to black-and-white polarities — opposing talking points to be tossed in “entertaining” fury or laughter, but rarely examined seriously.

Carlson and “from the left” co-host Paul Begala took offense at this, naturally.

I’m inclined to agree with Stewart’s point … and perhaps consider expanding it to also encompass general news departments’ efforts (whether painstaking or merely token) at “equal time” and “objectivity” so as to ward off any possible accusation of “media bias.” (Ellen Gray has some interesting thoughts on that topic in today’s Philadelphia Daily News.)

Stewart’s comments likely are garnering so much attention because of A) The Daily Show’s “White-Hot Show of the Moment” status, B) his surprising bluntness and C) the general off-kilterness of the entire exchange, from the hosts’ attempts to steer the conversation into tamer topic areas to Stewart stubbornly staying (ironically?) on-message to the weird “we’re saying harsh, cutting things to each other, yet we’re laughing to make it seem like we don’t hate each other” vibe through the entire conversation.

It’ll be interesting to see if mass media coverage of the “incident” goes beyond the “Stewart vs. Begala feud” to look at the substance of Stewart’s argument. (An argument that, granted, isn’t new, but generally tends to be voiced more among academic media critic-types.)

It also continues to intrigue me how Stewart continues to sidestep any assertions that he holds any kind of journalistic responsibility on the grounds that he is a fake newsman, yet he uses his renown as such as a launching point to critique the real news media establishment. (The most recent example being in this recent Crossfire appearance, when Carlson criticized Stewart for not being harder on John Kerry when the senator visited The Daily Show.) In sort of a related thread, I continue to be intrigued as well by a continuing sense at times that the show’s pageant-within-the-“real”-media/politic-pageant schtick better reflects “reality” (or my perception of it) than “real” media coverage does (a sense that is amplified, or perhaps merely validated, by “testimonials” I occasionally run across from other viewers — or even other news folk — who seem to feel the same way).

I don’t know what any of this really means, in a larger academic “where is this going” sense of things. But the phenomena that is The Daily Show — and all the questions of what it might demonstrate or represent — continues to fascinate me to no end.

(Thanks to Rob for the links to the MTV story and the video feed. Links to the philly.com story and the program transcript found via Romenesko.)

Posted at 6:10 PM in journalism/media, television

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Comments

It intrigues me just how widely the video of this is being disseminated and discussed …

Better-quality versions of the video here (iFilm), and several mirrored from here (contemporaryinsanity.org).

Posted by alykat on October 18, 2004 8:31 PM

Interesting post yesterday by Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine about how the “Jon Stewart vs. Crossfire” story (and video clip) is being disseminated:

What’s fascinating about the Jon Stewart takedown of Crossfire is not just what he said but how his message got distributed.

Terry Heaton reports that there have been almost 400,000 downloads of the segment at iFilm (which is how I saw it) … in addition to countless (literally, countless) BitTorrent downloads. This was a flood of viral distribution that came from viral promotion.

Welcome to the future of TV!

In old TV, a moment like this came and if you missed it, you missed it. Tough luck. In new TV, you don’t need to worry about watching it live — live is so yesterday — because thousands of peers will be keeping an eye out for you to let you know what you should watch (we call that metadata now) and they’ll record it and distribute it.

The really stupid thing is that CNN didn’t do this themselves: Hey, we had a red-hot segment with tsunami star Jon Stewart strangling our guys with a bow tie; you should watch; here, please, look at this free download because it will promote our bow-tie boy and our brand and our show and give us a little of that Stewart hip heat. That’s what CNN should have done. Instead, they’ll charge you to deliver a videotape (what’s that?) the next day.

Appended to the end of the entry is an observation from Jarvis about Stewart’s role in the continuing debate about media ethics and responsibility. He says it far better than I was able to yesterday.

Separately, a few commenters below have called out Stewart for continuing to hide behind his comedy-show status. I agree with them. Stewart is not providing fake news. He’s providing real news with an attitude. Just as he said to the boys at Crossfire: He’s part of the conversation now, too, and he doesn’t get a out just because we can hear his audience laughing.

I don’t know that I completely agree with him, but I share some of the general sentiment — that The Daily Show is more than a mere comedy show, but rather has become part of the general discourse about news, media and politics. Thus, it’s too easy an out for Stewart to use comedy as a pretense for ruling out his own role in the conversation.

(Link found via today’s column by WP writer Howard Kurtz.)

Posted by alykat on October 19, 2004 3:27 PM

More takes on Stewart vs. Crossfire:

Also, I read somewhere that Stewart voiced many of the same sentiments in an interview last year with PBS’s Bill Moyers. It’s striking just how similar the language is that he uses between here and his Crossfire appearance.

MOYERS: Which is funnier? CROSSFIRE or HARDBALL?

STEWART: CROSSFIRE or HARDBALL? Which is funnier? Which is more soul-crushing, do you mean? Both are equally dispiriting in their… you know, the whole idea that political discourse has degenerated into shows that have to be entitled CROSSFIRE and HARDBALL. And you know, “I’m Gonna Beat Your Ass” or whatever they’re calling them these days is mind-boggling.

CROSSFIRE, especially, is completely an apropos name. It’s what innocent bystanders are caught in when gangs are fighting. And it just boggles my mind that that’s given a half hour, an hour a day to… I don’t understand how issues can be dissected from the left and from the right as though… even cartoon characters have more than left and right. They have up and down.

I mean, how… it’s so two-dimensional to think that any analysis can come from, “It’s the left and it’s the right and well, we’ve had that discussion and that’s done.”

Posted by alykat on October 20, 2004 2:56 PM

Slate’s Dana Stevens offered her take on Stewart vs. Crossfire earlier this week:

A trot through the blogosphere suggests that Stewart’s hyper-sincere Crossfire turn may have cost him a few fans, even as it solidified his diehard base. I wouldn’t be surprised if the news media’s recent crush on Stewart -— the rave reviews of America, the high-profile journalists appearing on his show -— turned a corner after this. As America: The Book makes clear, nobody likes a civics lecture. But you’d be hard-pressed to ask for more entertaining television than Friday’s live smackdown. Stewart’s naked appeal to his hosts to “please stop, stop, stop. Stop hurting America,” had a loopy, apocalyptic power. It burned a hole in the screen, like Peter Finch as the crazed anchorman in Network, bellowing, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

A while back, I called Jon Stewart the “court jester” of this election. But he may be more like the fool in King Lear, speaking brutal truth to a king who is already too far gone to hear it. Sure, Stewart’s job is to make us laugh, not to lecture us. But as Lear’s fool asked, “May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?”

Posted by alykat on October 22, 2004 4:32 PM

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