Game Changers: Jon Stewart [video]
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I don't watch Jon Stewart to make me laugh. I enjoy his show because he uses funny as a weapon. Like the kid in Kick-Ass trying to be a superhero. Jon fights injustice with the only weapon he has - his wits and charms. The things he points at are funny (or make me cry) - not the gags so much.
Jon and his writers and fake correspondents are doing what they do best - make jokes - incidentally they also make them at the expense of those who need them most - who need to be put to their place once in a while.
If Jon is able to shape the minds of his viewers, I do hope he succeeds. At the very least, creating a healthy disrespect for the use of hyperbole in political discussions would go a long way to bringing some 'sanity' back into what has become a bitter political divide.
Another great political production is Chaser's in Australia. Absolutely love these guys.
I hope there will be more of such shows on a global scale. Countries in Asia, Africa and Europe surely have their own versions, but something that can speak to the whole continent or world would be awesome.
Thanks
but...his smirking, smug, winking schtick is tiresome, prepackaged drivel designed precisely for semi-disgruntled but well off (hi advertisers!), cnn-watching, barely left of center cube-dwellers.
you do realize that he has a team (a TEAM) of writers that come up with "his" stuff right? he's in the business of selling you. it's a show kids. howdy doody wasn't a _real_ cowboy either.
Not because of the quality of his show and the fact that he has writers. Him having stupid gags is perfectly fine. Having writers watch the gazillion shows on TiVo with him and deciding what is the funniest thing that happened today - this makes the show great.
What depresses me is the sad state of the media. It takes a Jon Stewart, a simple, smart, sincere comic, to show how poor they are doing their job as journalists. He gives a voice to the people who watch the occasional news report and think - WTF! - why is Obama's daughters school menu a part of the news?! There are two wars and half the budget used to pay for them - borrowed money. People getting swept by hurricanes, toxic oil spills - and the politicians and media making it worse - not better. The media should at least show the ineptitude and bad decisions for everyone to see - not what Paris Hilton had for breakfast in jail.
For the next hour, Stewart paces diagonally across a windowless eight-by-eight-foot room, sucking on an iced coffee and grabbing handfuls of candy. Projected in front of him on one wall is the current script; beneath it, at two keyboards, sit Kristen Everman, a production assistant, and Kira Klang Hopf, an indefatigable senior producer. Head writer Steve Bodow and executive producers Josh Lieb and Rory Albanese perch on small couches. As the studio audience files into its seats down the hall and tonight’s musical guests, Arcade Fire, tune their guitars in the greenroom, Stewart and his team go on a nonstop, rapid-fire jag that tears up and rewrites nearly three-quarters of the script. The typist transcribes, cuts, and pastes; as visual gags pop feverishly into Stewart’s brain, Hopf calls down to the art department, ordering up new video montages and a collage of an “Anchor-Me Terror Baby” to go with a reference to the “birthright citizenship” debate. Many of the new ideas will be scrapped only moments later. ... As Stewart speeds along, hours of work by writers and producers are cut, replaced by improvised digressions.