Jon Stewart’s Real Legacy Is A Generation Of Smug, Lazy, Dishonest News ConsumersStewart used comedy as a replacement for intellectual rigor. Behind the smug faces and pregnant pauses is nothing but partisan hackery.BY: EOIN LENIHAN
AUGUST 25, 2023
In a recent tweet critiquing the legacy of Jon Stewart, I summarized that for my generation, who were coming of age during 9/11 and the war in Iraq, we were desperately in search of anyone who could cut through the corporate media partisanship. We craved an everyman to tell it like it was. We were given Jon Stewart. And just like he taught us, we became smug, disingenuous, and lazy thinkers.
The post went viral with Elon Musk weighing in, stating, “I rather liked the old Daily Show and Colbert Report. But now they’ve gone off in a direction that is…” Thousands agreed.
Three hours later Stewart tweeted, “There is no finer legacy than having the right people hate you. Frauds, liars and hack ideologues. Discuss.” So I thought I should.
Bush, ‘Crossfire,’ and the Birth of an EverymanIt’s Dec. 13, 2000. While all major news outlets analyze George W. Bush’s acceptance speech along predictably partisan lines ad nauseam, a fresh-faced Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show,” features a two-second clip of Bush saying, “I was not elected to serve one party…” The camera cuts to Stewart who looks us straight in the eyes: “You were not elected.” Boom! This was the guy who was going to hold our politicians’ feet to the fire and smash the news media corporations that propped them up. This was our guy.
In 2004, with the war in Iraq raging, Stewart appeared on CNN’s long-running debate show, “Crossfire.” He refused to play by their rules and instead chastised hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. “What you do is partisan hackery,” he said launching into a hostile critique. “You’re doing theatre when you should be doing debate.” It was a brutal assault. He positioned himself perfectly as the disaffected’s everyman. “Come work for us, the people. … We need your help. Right now you’re helping the politicians and corporations and we’re left out there.” It was a star turn.
Leftist Hackery and the Death of the EverymanIn 2004, we forgave Stewart for his obvious support for John Kerry. Anyone was better than Bush, right? But throughout the Obama administration, Stewart increasingly became a mouthpiece for the president. In 2011 and again in 2014, Stewart was secretly invited to the White House to talk policy. After that second meeting, in which the two spoke about the Russian intervention in Crimea, Stewart returned to “The Daily Show” with a laser focus on Putin. In 2015, the L.A. Times perfectly encapsulated the relationship between the two in a piece entitled “When Barack Obama met Jon Stewart: A Love Story.“
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Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/25/jon-stewarts-real-legacy-a-generation-of-smug-lazy-dishonest-news-consumers/
