Dear Stephen (may I call you Stephen?),
We need to talk about Jon.
I know you two have this adorably exaggerated rivalry underway, and really, that’s doing you both a world of good. I see that little flush of exhilaration you both get when you do your little between-show sign-off. I know that deep down, you care…or at the very least, aren’t actively disinterested. So, here goes.
Frankly, Jon’s not okay. I think we all remember back in aught ’04, when Jon first showed the strain of reporting on the absurd. Oh, I know he always get a little kerplotz around election time; honestly, I don’t see how the political choices by the American public couldn’t bother a conscious person. I don’t envy Jon the task of making fun of the unmockable; essentially, The Daily Show is satirizing a satire. It’s all absurd; the double-speak that rapidly became single, finally devolving into keyword-peppered nonsense.
And let’s face it, Stephen—we’ve all been feeling the strain. For the past oh, six months or so, as the November looms and the political campaign approached what I affectionately call a “hot mess,” I lost my glee at the ridiculous carnival parading through the headlines—no longer a tidy hot mess, the proceedings had transformed into Stanley Kubrick’s wet nightmare.
A vague uneasiness crept over me instead, as though I was watching a play unfold that I’d seen before and forgotten the ending—but the action kept keying me clues that sparked a faint memory. So the play hurtles towards its ending, as I try to pinpoint why, exactly, I feel this dread.
For the record, Stephen, that play doesn’t end well. But I think you guessed that.
Because politics isn’t fun and games anymore. Not that it ever was, per se, as old Jimmy Stewart movies are happy to remind us; no, gosh darn, it’s an American institution, as sacred as apple pie, advertising, credit cards and starter wives. But that’s exactly why The Daily Show excelled in happier times, pointing out the absurdities in these very formal, ritualized procedures that took themselves very seriously.
(For the record, never - NEVER- would I have thought I’d looked back at Bush’s middle years as ‘happier times’; in a way, they seem so innocent. The Daily Show often amounted to a role call of inane Bushisms almost charming in their reliability. At least with Bush, the absurdity had a shelf life; I feel that November’s outcome will more or less act as the indictor strip for the viability of the American way.)
Now, nothing is sacred—and I don’t mean for comedians and commentators such as yourself, Stephen. I mean that the basic logic of politics have been thrown to hell in favor of buzzwords and pantsuits, as party strategists make choices apparently anticipating their mention on Saturday Night Live (a part of me believes that Sarah Palin’s entire platform is a punch-line that won’t deliver until the morning of November 3rd). There’s virtually no need for a middleman like The Daily Show anymore: the jokes are writing themselves, in margins of the debates, the obvious party manipulations, and the sycophantic pundits.
Jon is that rare breed—a New York intellect combined with that Jersey knack for self-deprecation, creating the closet thing the intelligentsia will ever have to an everyman. Of course this sort of pageantry is going to hit him where he lives. Jon is the man who knows too much: like most of his viewers (stone slackers or otherwise), Jon at least represents that portion of America to whom hiding under the bedcovers and wishing the monster away isn’t a solid exit strategy. But unlike the rest of us, able to at least switch off, I don’t imagine Jon is able to do much of either. As fixated as the nation has become on this election—on this Obamathon and Palinstock— it still doesn’t spend its workday hashing out daily events and trying to find something that is amusingly desperate instead of the other way around.
You may not easily grasp this, Stephen. After all, the more ridiculous the media becomes, the higher you cook the ham. But Jon’s got no thinly veiled personas to fall back on: he presents the fake news as himself. Haven’t you noticed how his Keaton-esque deadpan, former trademark of his anchorman shtick, has been replaced by the sputtering incredulity of the one guy in the room who sees the buck-naked, moronic Emperor for what he is?
This election I’ve seen a Jon Stewart too pissed off by the stupidity required to reach this point to act anything other than how he really feels: he’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore.
Well, Stephen. That’s it for me. Thanks for staying the one immovable rock in the polluted stream of Indecision ’08. As for Jon, well…just check up on him once in a while, hey? And for the love of Joe Plumber, don’t rent Network this time; he might get the wrong idea.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Fan
ps. doesn't "Palinstock" remind you of either A) a cheap knock-off of chicken broth or B) a nuclear disater of epic proportions?
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