Jon Stewart is to blame for Trump.

[abradley]

THE SCROLL
How Jon Stewart’s Culture of Ridicule Left America Unprepared for Donald Trump
The right deserves its share of the blame and more for the rise of Trump. But certain icons on the left lowered our cultural defenses and also helped make him possible.
By Jesse Bernstein

No single event or trend initiated the takeoff of Space Shuttle Trump. It’s not just white lower- and middle-class resentment; it’s not just nationwide frustration with whatever “The Establishment” means to a particular voter; it’s not just a chance for white supremacists to pour out of the woodwork. It’s a combination of all of that and much more. But there is one culprit who has thus far escaped blame for the Trump fiasco and who deserves his due: Jon Stewart.

Let me explain.

On July 21, Stewart made an appearance on his good friend Stephen Colbert’s show, one of his first extended appearances on TV since leaving The Daily Show. Stewart took the desk from Colbert for a segment about Fox News and the mental “gymnastics” it has been performing in order to explain how it can support Donald Trump for all of the things that it so viciously criticized Barack Obama for doing in the past. It was vintage Stewart; he only referred to Sean Hannity as “Lumpy,” he mocked his own ignorance of the West/Kardashian/Swift feud, and he anchored the farce with real substantive criticism at the right moments. The guy’s a pro.

And yet, as Stewart ranted to the camera and reminded Hannity and Co., to raucous cheers, that they “don’t own” this country, it was hard not to see how he and Colbert had helped to create the very specific type of internet-era liberal smugness (and, consequently, ignorance) that, though far from the sole cause by any means, has been a significant factor in both the rise of Trump and our current political fracturing.

The Daily Show debuted 20 years ago in July, but Stewart didn’t take the desk until 1999. What he has accomplished since then is remarkable: A whole liberal generation that might have otherwise been turned off of politics by the early-2000s hegemony of the right was brought into the fold. Looking at the overwhelming Obama margins of victory in the 2008 and 2012 elections with 18-29 year-olds (including 66-32 against McCain, a significant jump over John Kerry in 2004), Stewart’s fingerprints are all over the outcome. At his show’s height, 74 percent of viewers were between 18-49.

Stewart, for his part, insists that he’s no cultural critic, no political commentator, nothing more than a comedian who makes fun of hypocrisy. But that can’t really be true of a man who’s interviewed heads of state on his show. It’s a cop-out to claim that he was the little guy by the end.

His show was a cultural touchstone that dealt in mockery and ridicule, as good political comedy should. It parsed the bluster to find the nugget of insincerity that drives selfish politics. But as the democratization of media made it easier and easier to hear only from the sources you wanted to hear from, those who counted The Daily Show and its even jokier spawn, The Colbert Report, as news sources slowly but surely created an echo chamber.

The process went something like this: Someone said something on Fox News that mainstream liberalism didn’t like; Stewart and/or Colbert aired a sustained critique of the idea and the thinking behind it; liberal internet publications hailed it as the greatest rhetorical victory since Darrow argued for Scopes; liberals’ Facebook feeds full of liberal friends filled up with clips of the takedown. No one learned anything, no one engaged with an idea, and nothing outside of a very specific set of ideas was given any real credence. As Emmet Rensin so perfectly put it:

"Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy. … Over 20 years, an industry arose to cater to the smug style … and culminated for a time in The Daily Show, a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that is opponents were, before anything else, stupid."

As Rensin deftly discerns, this sort of intellectual elitism is probably part of the reason that the Democratic Party went from getting 66 percent of the manual laborer vote in 1948 to outpolling the GOP by just 2 points in 2012. It’s the inevitable consequence of eight years of reducing George W. Bush and all of his supporters to dumbass hicks, and choosing to denigrate the poor and uneducated (if only they read The Atlantic!), rather than doing real outreach to them. But as Christopher Hitchens learned on Bill Maher’s show, people don’t want to consider that possibility:

--Video--

(Continued)
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/210...cule-left-america-unprepared-for-donald-trump

I think this guy is on to something, how about you?.

 

[Kyriakos]

I am not very mindful of all those people, yet from the little i have seen, Stewart is far less smug than Colbert/Maher/similar. The latter are just trolls, really, just of a 'lib' variety, while Stewart seems to be a little more refined (?). And logical.

But i don't think it was surprising that W Bush supporters were ridiculed; i mean W was and is an utter cretin. It is beyond obvious he has serious mental disabilities. You are talking about a guy who (a month ago?) danced to the music in a ceremony about dead people (iirc murdered cops?), cause apparently he thought he was in some party.

 

[emzie]

Nice deflection of responsibility from the right. Of course their problems are the left's fault...

 

[Zkribbler]

My favorite report of the Daily Show is one in which they ran clips of Fox News talking heads who advocated violating, ignoring or repealing the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th & 10th Amendments of the Bill of Rights.

So who is smug: Stewart or Fox News?

 

[Bootstoots]

Well, at least they didn't advocate forcibly quartering troops in people's homes. That would have been a step too far.

 

[abradley]

I am not very mindful of all those people, yet from the little i have seen, Stewart is far less smug than Colbert/Maher/similar. The latter are just trolls, really, just of a 'lib' variety, while Stewart seems to be a little more refined (?). And logical.

But i don't think it was surprising that W Bush supporters were ridiculed; i mean W was and is an utter cretin. It is beyond obvious he has serious mental disabilities. You are talking about a guy who (a month ago?) danced to the music in a ceremony about dead people (iirc murdered cops?), cause apparently he thought he was in some party.

What's wrong with swaying to the music, in the US that piece has history, it's a very spirited marching song plus a song of joy.


Link to video.

‘Allow him to sway’ or not: Video of former president Bush at Dallas memorial divides social media
By Travis M. Andrews July 13
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...bush-at-dallas-memorial-divides-social-media/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...bush-at-dallas-memorial-divides-social-media/

More power to him, he believes.

 

[Leoreth]

Partisan fact and logic free zones on Fox News hosted by the likes of Hannity and O'Reilly normalised fact and logic free politicians like Trump. Stewart is only related to this in his history of pointing out this fact.

Besides, how many of the Republican primary voters who got Trump nominated are even in Stewart's audience?

 

[Naskra]

in the US that piece has history

Yes, it's the Yankee victory song. Taboo in Texas not so long ago.

 

[Cutlass]

Trump isn't Stewart's fault. Stewart's audience is more informed that most people of their generation. Fox news's audience knows less than the people who don't watch any news at all. Trump is Fox's and the Republicans fault. They worked hard to create the conditions Trump is taking advantage of.

Fox 'news' and the Republicans want an ignorant electorate. The more ignorance, the more they win. Well they got exactly what they've spent the past 20 years trying to get. They just didn't understand how scary it would be.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Trump isn't Stewart's fault. Stewart's audience is more informed that most people of their generation. Fox news's audience knows less than the people who don't watch any news at all. Trump is Fox's and the Republicans fault. They worked hard to create the conditions Trump is taking advantage of.

Fox 'news' and the Republicans want an ignorant electorate. The more ignorance, the more they win. Well they got exactly what they've spent the past 20 years trying to get. They just didn't understand how scary it would be.

Spot on.

 

[abradley]

Trump isn't Stewart's fault. Stewart's audience is more informed that most people of their generation. Fox news's audience knows less than the people who don't watch any news at all. Trump is Fox's and the Republicans fault. They worked hard to create the conditions Trump is taking advantage of.

Fox 'news' and the Republicans want an ignorant electorate. The more ignorance, the more they win. Well they got exactly what they've spent the past 20 years trying to get. They just didn't understand how scary it would be.

Hmmmm, I believe the author of the opening article is a liberal, as is the Tablet magazine.

The criticism comes from the left.

AS for Fox, Hannity, and O'Reilly, is that what the article is about, don't remember them being mention in it.

 

[abradley]

Link to video.

A little history behind the song.

It was written during a war where two mainly white armies slaughtered each other to determine if slavery should continue in the US, Thank God the Union won.

 

[sophie]

Ähm...wie bitte?

 

[Cutlass]

Hmmmm, I believe the author of the opening article is a liberal, as is the Tablet magazine.

The criticism comes from the left.

AS for Fox, Hannity, and O'Reilly, is that what the article is about, don't remember them being mention in it.

An intern wrote an article for an online 'magazine'. And you think that makes it established leftist thinking?

 

[abradley]

An intern wrote an article for an online 'magazine'. And you think that makes it established leftist thinking?

Did I post it was: "Established leftist thinking", if it was you'd be going 'Ho hum, everybody knows it.'

As for an intern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Berman and https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Berman/e/B001IZRAH2

I checked his creds before posting ... did you?

 

[Cutlass]

You apparently didn't read the part you actually quoted:

By Jesse Bernstein

Or read the whole page you quoted:

Jesse Bernstein is an Intern at Tablet

 

[abradley]

You apparently didn't read the part you actually quoted:

Or read the whole page you quoted:

My, my, my ... I blew it, that happens when your an old, old, guy!

 

[mrt144]

Nah

 

[FriendlyFire]

I think this guy is on to something, how about you?.

FDR was the founder of the NAZIs
Obama was the founder of ISIS
Linlcon was the founder of SLAVERY

It all makes perfect sense up there on Bull[censored] mountain.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Stewart's program was the first place I heard about Trump's run

If he hadn't talked about him at the beginning of the campaign maybe "the trump train" wouldn't have taken off

Though I doubt it