Jon Stewart Talks SOPA, at Last | Hacker News Reader

Jon Stewart Talks SOPA, at Last

thenextweb.com

200 pointsFluidDjango62 comments

It's good to note, before anyone jumps to any conspiracy theories about Viacom silencing Jon Stewart, that Stephen Colbert has talked about SOPA on multiple occasions (see http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/40346... and http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/40346...). I don't know the editorial overlap between the two these days but they are certainly under the same corporate roof - Viacom.

I read somewhere that the writers rooms of Daily Show and Colbert rarely cross, at least day to day. I believe they deliberately keep them separate to keep them tonally unique, even though it sometimes results in both shows covering the same topic, and even occasionally making the same joke.

(Sorry for no source on that.)

I did some UX consulting for The Colbert Report that required me to research their entire writing and production workflow and my understanding is that the executive producers of the shows might check in with each other, but it's true that there's essentially no overlap, and there's no effort to coordinate topics.

Censorship doesn't require a conspiracy. It doesn't even require an explicit policy.

A lack of promotion here, a dinner-party snub there, and pretty soon everyone gets the message and falls in line.

I think part of it is due to the fact that Colbert has confirmed in the past that he is an active redditor, and on there SOPA has been a pretty popular topic.

Stewart on the other hand might just get his news from TV, which hasn't really covered it all that much

But Stewart has about 80 writers (I think) at least some of which I know to be techy. They must be keeping him aware.

If even Jon Stewart's team hadn't picked up on SOPA, that goes a long way to suggest why a Wikipedia/Twitter/Facebook/Google/etc blackout would be useful. If they're not up to date, how could we expect any non industry insiders to be?

A brief blackout is like tapping the media on the shoulder.

"We'll be all, like, SOPA what? ... uh ... I have some reading to catch up on."

Nobody thinks about dial tone until it's not there.

If you think Mr. Stewart is simply behind in his reading, I have a nice bridge for you.

He's in entertainment, he comments endlessly about policy. You think he somehow missed the #1 policy initiative of his employer?

He is very well paid, with a large budget that employs a lot of people. But I don't think his show breaks even on its revenues, it is a tent-pole for his channel. He's paid not for his own audience but the larger strategic benefit he brings to his employer. So think on what might happen if he starts to pose still larger strategic problems for that employer? And what happens to Mr. Stewart should he want to move on from his current perch? [EDIT: As suggested below, the 'strategic benefit' payment is speculation. Probably a mistake to go there, b/c I think my point still stands: if he hurts a major legislative initiative of his industry, his life gets a lot harder and riskier.]

And while he himself seems reasonably secure, he has a staff of writers and producers, many of whom would like to move on to bigger and better things. Who will be greenlighting those various ventures?

Remember, Hollywood blacklisted people for (alleged) Communism. Those people lost their whole careers. Imagine what might happen to those who challenge the studios' interests still more directly.

I'd say this is the perfect moment for Mr. Stewart's reputed bravery, independence and courage.

Can we get a source on TDS not making money? It's one of the most popular shows on Comedy Central, syndicated in many countries. If it doesn't make money, it's hard to see how Comedy Central stays afloat.

No source, I seem to recall reading his salary is pretty high given his ratings, but I couldn't point to it.

I don't it's speculative to say networks will lose money on some product to build audience. Stuff like the NFL, Letterman?, that sort of thing.

Even if he's making them money directly, he's not untouchable if he gets blamed for hurting a major political priority.

They probably wouldn't be so clumsy as to just fire him -- but his next negotiation could get a lot harder, and he'd be a lot more exposed to "business decisions" should his ratings stumble. And his people could find it a lot hard to move on and up with other projects.

can I get a disclosure from you about anything that would impede your neutrality (either way) like employers, business partnerships etc on the subject of SOPA

that last part just sounds like a threat from the other side, you know?

Wow, hadn't thought of that.

Zero industry connection, nada. Formerly in finance (not covering media), now freelance and building my own business.

Anyone peronally worried about my post can find my email in profile -- send me a phone number, I'll call you.

EDIT: Wasn't me. Downvotes never make sense to me. Downvote me for _admitting_ I said something speculative? With all the crazy guesses posited as Gospel truth here?

thank you, didnt expect this to get mod-worthy. I was just curious. I wasn't "worried" or anything, the part about 'anyone who wanted to move up...' just seemed out of place to me, like you never hear that about other 'support' jobs. Basically I wanted to know if you were even more cynical than me or an insider -- I guess the former! thanks for the detailed response.

I see you mod'd my question down. you can just say you don't have anything to disclose...

FYI, it definitely wasn't him. HN doesn't allow anyone to downvote replies to their own comments.

Or, perhaps he generally focuses on what he thinks his viewers are focusing on, which, at this time, is the presidential primaries. Jokes work best when your audience knows what's going on; and really, it seems like it's primarily the internet and engineering culture that abhors SOPA. I've had to tell people about it, not them come to me (the resident computer nerd) and ask about it.

SOPA isn't on the radar of the general public. So it makes sense when Stewart says he "needs to catch up on the issue".

I really think it's a simple as that.

The format of Stewart's show is such that he gets most of his talking points directly from his media targets. It seems reasonable, then, that in an effective media blackout, he and his writers might have legitimately missed SOPA.

I don't think he reads up on this stuff, wouldn't have the time, his researchers cut it down and he makes it funny. I'm sure it's because his researchers are largely unaware that it's an issue.

I agree, whilst Stewart spends most of his time poking fun at the establishment, he isn't actually anti establishment.

Most of his material comes from picking up on hypocrisy by politicians when they make essential compromises in their head for money.

The establishment is afraid of the internet, they want to place restrictions on it. Stewart may well agree with them.

Jon Stewart's brother is Lawrence (Larry) Leibowitz, COO of the New York Stock Exchange. He used to be an executive VP at UBS.

Jon will never go against the money.

We're in desperate need of a Ted Stevens moment, here.

There has been absolutely no art to show the absurdity of the pro-SOPA position. Without a visual, Stewart has very little to work with.

It's not hard – you've got dinosaurs born decades before the internet was conceived trying to make critical policy decisions around it. There's got to be something brief and absurd to be said there.

But until we get that soundbite, it's going to be a much more difficult story to pitch.

>> you've got dinosaurs born decades before the internet was conceived trying to make critical policy decisions around it.

But weren't the people who conceived the internet born decades before the internet was conceived?

As someone born before the internet was conceived, I find that comment particularly offensive.

Edit: Now get off my lawn!

I believe that jab was aimed at organizations with no ability to adapt, not at people.

But... corporations are people.

(Un?)fortunately, the people deciding Internet policy in DC aren't quite as clueless as Stevens, or at least not as prone to gaffs. I think we've gotten all the "Series of Tubes" moments we're likely to see. The next idiotic thing out of a politician's mouth may rile the technorati, but I doubt it will be as easily and widely mockable as the Tubes.

Hard to tell. The "series of tubes" moment was a very strange one to mock, because he was right---the context of that quote is that he was saying it was more like a series of tubes than like a fleet of trucks, which for the purposes of his explanation was exactly right: he was trying to explain bandwidth limitation.

There were other things he said that day that were bad, but "series of tubes" is an analogy, and a good one.

So it's hard to say what could become a Ted Stevens moment here, or which side it'll come from; someone just has to pick some statement to mock, and get lucky that it goes viral.

>The "series of tubes" moment was a very strange one to mock, because he was right

I always felt that way as well, but the way he said it was just so mockable. In the end, that's why it went viral: not because he was a dinosaur who didn't understand the Internet, but because he appeared to be a dinosaur who didn't understand the Internet, to people who themselves did not understand it.

Representative Smith can make as many factually incorrect statements as he wants; as long as they appear reasonable to the uninformed public he'll never be called on it in the way Stevens was.

  > not because he was a dinosaur who didn't understand
  > the Internet

He may have had a good analogy, but I doubt that he understood the Internet. Comments like "my office sent me an Internet on Friday and I didn't get it until today" don't really imply good knowledge of the Internet. More likely the 'series of tubes' analogy was given to him by a staffer or lobbyist and he tried to run with it even though he didn't understand it.

While likely true, that's incidental to my point of perception mattering more than reality. I was unaware of the "sent me an Internet" comment, but I'm hardly surprised. The man was not known for verbal acuity.

"The Internet" was basically Reddit and a guy who asked if he should ask Stewart about SOPA.

This is the follow up thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/od6qy/i_asked_jon_...

Edit: Original thread - http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ocely/i_have_vip_p...

Sure, but "the Internet sent me" was a brilliantly concise way to give context to the question (and be funny, and memorable). These Q&A sessions are fast-moving and questions with long rambling introductions are not good ones. "There's a site on the internet called Reddit, which is an aggregator of links with a large community, and I posted there to see..." No.

Here is a link to the video for Canadians: http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Shows/TheDailyShow?videoPacka...

Is there a way us non-Americans to watch this?

To save you some time, the quote (and paraphrase) in the article is literally all he said in the video clip.

(To answer your question directly, I think there are services that provide a proxy within the US.)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-11-2012/indeci...

that works for me, and appears to be the same video. no idea why the one in the original link is blocked.

Get a plugin that sets X-Forwarded-For in your http headers to some random US IP. Doesn't work on all sites, but it does work for comedy central.

I use Modify Headers in Firefox.

To my understanding it's not the US Comedy Central that is blocking you from viewing it outside the US but your country of origin - if they signed exclusive distribution rights for that country. Not too sure how this plays out in EU countries but I definitely know this is the case in Canada where The Comedy Network has exclusive broadcast/distribution rights.

In any case these types of antiquated deals further support the idea that SOPA was crafted by an industry that refuses to innovate.

Curiously, the clip plays for me in the Netherlands. But there was little on SOPA in it.

Yes, the title is a bit misleading. He only said he would talk about it in the next show.

NetShade, you can get a free trial.

Anonymizer is your friend.

Mmmmm... The funny to flack offset probably isn't worth it to Stewart and Colbert. They're not news shows and there's not much comedy to draw from the SOPA proceedings. Especially with Ameraca's favorite reality show cramming up the broadcast space.

Their interviews are the real deal. Getting a famous Internet person on to talk about SOPA wouldn't be an unusual thing for either of them.

"Famous Internet Person": I don't know. I would much more prefer some artist, director, politician and not another "internet activist".

Niel DeGrasse Tyson? I don't know his position on SOPA, but I'd imagine he's against it. John Hodgman? He's a writer for Wired, been on Diggnation, Attack of the Show, and TED, and works with Jonathon Coulton. He's got a ton of 'net-cred and is frequently on TDS.

I would much more prefer seeing one of the household names in the "old" media see speak out - some of the more expected opponents like Al Gore, Mc Hammer or Aston Kutcher would give the issue a better face and show that the opponents are not just some people from the internet who want to "to kill our beloved music and movie culture".

How many people are going to make this same comment? Colbert has already covered it multiple times. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/40346...

While I don't appreciate the rhetorical question, good point. I had forgotten about that.

I don't want to play down the clip as it was humorous, but the actual sopa content was from :17 - :35. Out of a 6 minute clip, I was thinking that there would be more.

"This content is unavailable from your location"

Oh, sweet irony...

Stop posting comments where they will never see them, go and post this on their facebook pages, do it en masse and they will not be able to ignore it...

I am surprised this has not been done by anti-SOPA activists. This would be using the tools Internet has created to save it shows well it's reach. This I think is the easiest way an individual can get attention of the regular public, after he is done talking to his friends.

Not sure I understand the headline chosen for the HN submission. "at last"? Jon Stewart is a comedian, it's a disappointing reflection of news, media, and political informedness that we're desperate for Stewart to cover an important political issue.

I think that people are looking for someone to put a good, satirical spin on the whole pro-SOPA movement. The Daily Show is good at that. Most political writers not so much.

If The Daily Show can use humor to point out the absurdity of the pro-SOPA position it will definitely sink in with their viewership.

I don't think anyone thinks Stewart and Colbert are just "comedians" anymore.

It would surprising if Viacom allowed anyone in their empire, even a fake news program, to engage in commentary that is critical of SOPA/PIPA.

They're one of the largest proponents of this bullshit legislation: they couldn't win at the judicial level so they've shifted the attack to the legislative branch where they can buy the support.

The colbert report has done two segments on SOPA.

This one calls out the bogus FBI theft numbers. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/40346...

This one has Danny Goldberg & Jonathan Zittrain giving their viewpoints on the legislation. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/40346...

Thank you; I stand corrected.

It's telling that someone like Stewart (and Al Gore for that matter) waited this long to speak up (after SOPA is already dead). Scary.

How is SOPA dead? Am I missing anything?

It's not dead. Don't be deceived.

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