stevealu: The Not-Funny-Diarrhea-Club, or What the Hell Happened to Jon ...

This is a somewhat difficult piece for me to write. You see, I?ve been a huge fan of the Daily Show, and specifically the Daily Show under Jon Stewart?s helm, for quite some time. The Daily Show under Craig Kilborn was fine, something like an update of 80?s stalwart Not Necessarily the News. And there were other examples of news parodies out there. SNL had Weekend Update, but since Dennis Miller?s departure, it had never quite lived up to its prime position in that show?s broadcast. So maybe the Daily Show wasn?t the most original concept. But under Jon Stewart, Kilborn?s replacement, it became something new, something almost irreplaceable in the culture.

Let?s take a mental trip back. It?s W?s eight years in office, a surreal time, one where terror drove our collective politics (and ability to publicly discuss politics) into a fog so thick many in the national news media didn?t quite know how to talk about what was happening without fear of being painted as ?You?re not with us!? by the blowhards at Fox News. Famously, just after 9/11, ABC yanked Bill Maher?s Politically Incorrect amid a firestorm that swelled around Maher?s very fair observation that America?s legacy of foreign policy in the Middle East helped, in part, to create the conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive, grow, and commit the attacks on the World Trade Center. The chilling effects that such actions can have on the types of conversations happening in the public sphere are enormous. The message to Bill Maher was clear ? if you?re a comedian, then be funny, don?t try to make serious points that aren?t couched in a joke.

Enter Jon Stewart and the ascendancy of the Daily Show.

Where other shows were happy to simply make fun of the news, Stewart and company took it a step further, parodying the style, the pretentious faux-seriousness, the outrage and the outrageous arguments forwarded by the likes of Bill O?Reilly and Sean Hannity. They took ridiculous arguments and carried them to their logical conclusions, just to illustrate how completely hypocritical and illogical those arguments were. They invited public figures ? politicians mainly, but also other prominent people ? to participate in fake news stories and, for awhile at least, those figures readily participated, not realizing, at least not initially, that they had agreed to participate in something that did not play by the same rules as an NBC, ABC, or CNN production. And, perhaps more importantly, the Daily Show introduced a slew of comedic talent to help forward this agenda ? Samantha Bee, Rob Riggle, Wyatt Cynac, Steve Carrell, and, of course, Stephen Colbert.

What emerged in the months and years after 9/11 was a way of understanding and tackling the culture and? time we found ourselves in through a biting and poignant send up of the news. By adhering to the unspoken rule that speaking truth was fine if delivered through a joke, Jon Stewart and company provided us with some sense, however fleeting, of sanity, of not being the only people in the room who were scratching their heads, looking around, and wondering just what in the hell was going on.

And part of what made it all so wonderful was Jon Stewart?s ability to somehow stay above the fray. Like some sort of modern day Orpheus, Stewart reached down into the filthy depths of cable news and came back up to deliver us some vision and understanding that informed and made us laugh. As his star began a swift rise, he was always quick to defer to the refrain that he was just a comedian, that his critiques of the daily news and those who delivered it were just jokes, and that it wasn?t his job to deliver serious, real news. That was supposed to be the job of the very people he so easily mocked. Sure, there were the moments, such as when he went on Crossfire and, in all seriousness, eviscerated Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala . But we cheered him on, at least I did. Though you could read Stewart?s liberal beliefs through the slant of most of the Daily Shows, he managed to give it to Begala (the liberal) and Carlson (the conservative) equally, taking them to task not for their political beliefs, but for their collective inability to raise the level of political discourse.

Such appearances, as rare as they were, drew critics. Stewart was being disingenuous. Stewart was secretly harboring a desire to eventually run for public office. Stewart was too scripted, his every gesture a well-plotted attempt to present a himself as just a guy, the non-hero, the only kind of hero that was possible in the post 9/11 world. And yet, I could never buy that. Not entirely. Mostly, I found him to be right in his critiques of bow-tied, blow-hearted pie-holes like Carson. But more importantly, there was the body of work. Night in and night out, he showed up in mostly the same way, a steady hand, making us laugh at the complete absurdity of something that, in another light and given the times we were (or are) living through, really wasn?t funny at all. When the end of the world comes, Jon Stewart might conceivably be one of the few people I?d actually want to be around if, for no other reason, than because he could find the right thread of the moment that would make me laugh.

I offer this absurd level of background because what follows is difficult. It?s not something that I want to say. I love Jon Stewart, much as I love the Daily Show. But lately Stewart has begun to prove some of the critics right. If you are a longtime fan of the show, you will have noticed this change. When it began, exactly, I can?t say. It might have started when he used the Daily Show to protest the shameful treatment of 9/11 first responders who were petitioning Congress to pass a bill to provide them with much needed benefits, a bill that had been caught up in the anti-Obama, do-nothing sentiments of our national dysfunction. If you saw that episode, you saw a Jon Stewart who wasn?t funny and didn?t intend to be funny. You saw a Jon Stewart who was dead set on using his celebrity and status to shame a bunch of pathetic men and women into doing the right thing. And he succeeded.

Or maybe it started a bit earlier, when Obama was first elected and the nation watched what had been a bad, but increasingly laughable situation under W, become somehow worse, as, first, Obama seemed dead set on selling out the various progressive ideals that the majority of people who had rallied to his side and got him elected held dear, and, second, the rise of Glenn Beck, the Tea Party, and the worst parts of the far-right agenda became more and more entrenched. What had seemed absurd under W looked, the further you got from it, almost normal. Sane. Not absurd, at least not compared to the racist pandering that the Hannities, Palins, and O?Reillys of the world seem to relish in.

Whenever it started, it?s hard to deny its reality. Today when you watch the Daily Show, as I still do every day while eating my lunch, you are likely to see a slightly different program than you saw some years back. Where once you would have seen opening sketches and monologues that held to the old maxim that less is more, where the humor came from the unspoken seriousness of what was implied, today you see something else. You hear similar jokes and delivery, but then you see Stewart get serious for a moment and deliver a brief, direct statement, something that underlines and makes explicit the seriousness of what was just joked about. And it?s not funny.

It?s not funny because we?re not children. We don?t need it explained to us why Fox News? blatant lies, distortions and hypocrisy are bad for the culture at large. We know that it?s fucked up. It?s never been anything but fucked up.

There used to be a common refrain in interviews that Jon Stewart would give. He would be asked to offer his assessment of our country and democracy. And he would usually answer, in a way that I frankly found reassuring ? because if someone as smart and funny and witty as Jon Stewart could cover the negativity of cable news and still feel this way, then why couldn?t I? ? that he felt our country and its most basic institutions were so strong that we could survive anything, be it further terrorist attacks, or the potential presidency of a Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann. It was a wise, yet youthful sentiment. And I?m not about to suggest that Stewart is old or outdated. No. What I will say is that I wonder if the years of increased, not decreased, absurdity have taken their toll? Has the inability of our nation?s leadership to take seriously the enormous challenges we face as a society and a country finally begun to push the man beyond humor? Does he still share that same sentiment, that we are a strong and resilient people and nation? Or has he become something more like a modern day Mark Twain, a man for whom lighthearted satire has become something altogether scathing and unforgiving? What I?m trying to say is that maybe this transition is inevitable, that the comfort of reacting to and ridiculing something that already exists is the purview of immature youth and that maturity just naturally requires something more from us. Or perhaps he has finally fallen sway to the media bubble that he so thoroughly enjoyed skewering before, and the result of that influence is to offer more serious, weighted commentary. Perhaps it is none of these things, or all of them, or something altogether different and unguessable, a personal crisis of faith that is happening off the camera, away from the writer?s tables and editing rooms.

In contrast, it is worth considering the ability of another long-lived show to continue to stay relevant and funny without becoming preachy or over serious. South Park, which surfaced sometime in 1995 or 96 and is still going strong today (and on the same channel as the Daily Show), has done what might be considered the impossible. Love it, hate it, or something in between, it?s hard to deny that South Park hasn?t managed to bring the same (if not better) level of humor and insight into the larger culture throughout its 15+ years of existence. And I?ve often wondered how they?ve been able to do it so well for so long. I think the answer is that, despite their increased visibility and influence, the South Park team has never seemed to take its self too seriously, has never really placed itself above the material that it skewered. The more absurd the world they comment on, the more absurd the plot lines of the show. If you?ve been a longtime fan of South Park, you?ve watched Cartman grow from a fat, sarcastic, wise-ass to fat, sarcastic, racist shithead. Making your own ? and to some beloved ? characters that despicable takes a level of vulnerability and perspective that most shows lack.

As I?ve watched Jon Stewart try to remain above the fray, I?ve also watched him and the Daily Show become somewhat stilted, the moral high ground that he has held for so long now polluted with jokes that lead to straight ahead, serious commentary. It?s an interesting evolution, one that says something about the limits of satire and comedy in the face of news and events that defy all expectation of humor. But though it doesn?t make me laugh out loud as much as it once did, I will still be watching to see how this show ends up.