Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
When is the next Jon Stewart Daily Show?
When is the next Jon Stewart Daily Show?
Do zeitgeists matter?
TikTok is peak comedy now
The ruination of American comedy????So, the starting point for this thread is the announcement that Jon Stewart is returning to host the Daily Show--one day a week.
I learned of it watching Ari Melber's show. He had on James Carville and Michael Steele. Mostly they were talking about Trump. When he brought this up, all three of them were excited, and Steele said "That's exactly what we need right now; mockery is the best defense against fascism" (quoting from memory). On another site, I've heard Stewart described as a "cultural bulwark against the GOP propaganda machine."
Over in the Clown Car thread, there was some discussion of Stewart's return, and Lexicus, contra Steele, advanced the following bold thesis:
And then later elaborated, in a post that I'll trim to what for me is the essence, but also put the entirety in a spoiler:
I sounded him and others out on whether they would participate in a thread with basically this as its question: are Stewart and the gang he spawned (Colbert, Oliver, Bee, etc) and present ilk (Kimmell, Meyers) exactly what we need to fight fascism or a microcosm of the impotence of contemporary liberalism in the face of an explicitly fascist threat?
I'll spoiler my post, too, because it gives a lot of explanation of why I'm interested in this question that you probably don't care about:
Spoiler :
But one of the other ways I ask the question there picks up on Lex's starting claim: that Stewart is the ruination of American comedy. So that makes me ask: Is there some other, better form of comedy that Stewart's ascendancy drive off the stage? To which Farm Boy gave the surprising but insightful answer:
What I was really asking was: is there some better form of comedy for defeating fascism than Stewartesque? (And maybe this is Farm Boy's answer to that question, too.) Probably the quick answer is no; that's too big an ask for comedy.
So, those are our questions (plus anywhere else you want to take this):
Is Stewart's brand of humor politically efficacious?
Is there any form that is or could be? What form of comedy would best serve us in our present political circumstances?
Did it drive some better form of humor off the cultural stage? (better at fighting fascism, or just better as comedy)