Loading ...Comedy with a democratic message - Stabroek News
Few actual journalists would have deserved the sendoff given to Jon Stewart as he took leave of the fake news show he has made into a staple of late-night television over the last 16 years. As luck would have it, his final taping on Thursday evening coincided with a Republican debate broadcast on Fox News. Normally the Daily Show team would have had a field day with the predictable blandness of that event: aging white creationists and climate-change sceptics cowed by their party’s populism into making Donald Trump’s absurd candidacy seem viable. In the end, however, the conversation needed no parody; as Trump leapt from one cringe-inducing remark to the next, he showed why Stewart’s ironic critique of American journalism remains as essential today as it has been throughout his tenure.
Stewart quadrupled the Daily Show’s domestic audience – which peaked at 1.6 million viewers in 2008 – after taking over Comedy Central’s prime late-night spot in January 1999. Thereafter, in a strong field, he was consistently one of the shrewdest critics of American ‘infotainment’, especially for the ways it distracts citizens from addressing Washington’s hypocrisy, Wall Street’s criminality, and the follies of US foreign policy. Stewart was one of the few Americans who could keep his job after speaking candidly about jingoism, corporate malfeasance, racism, social inequality, the spinelessness of the Democratic Party, and the rightward lurch of the GOP. He was able to do so because of his natural even-temperedness and good humour, but he was also capable of the occasional snarl and bite. In 2004, as a guest on CNN’s Crossfire, he memorably took down the ‘partisan hackery’ of the format, correctly pointing out that its empty political theatre did much to inflame well-established political hatreds but hardly ever left anyone better informed about matters of public interest.
Several of Stewart’s colleagues started similar shows – most notably Stephen Colbert and the British comedian John Oliver – so the freethinking spirit of The Daily Show will likely remain part of the US media landscape for some time, but Stewart’s absence will be felt. Not only was he capable of prodding the court of public opinion in the right direction – particularly on sensitive matters such as gun control, racism and religious bigotry – he was even able to discuss Israel and the Middle East with detachment and common sense. In a touching farewell tribute, a Palestinian-American comedian named Amer Zahr praises Stewart for being “one voice in the American media [who] has given some modicum of balance to discussion on Palestinian question.” Similar praise could be found for his progressive stance on gay and transgender rights, his ridicule of xenophobia and rightwing hysteria – particularly as disseminated by the fair-and-balanced pseudo-pundits at Fox News – and his impressive willingness to listen respectfully, however sceptically, to opposing viewpoints.
Although The Daily Show focused on how completely infotainment had displaced serious reporting and analysis in the United States, it also broadcast a much-needed sense of the diversity of American public opinion.
It frequently made other countries aware that their misgivings about the United States were not only understood by its citizens, but often better articulated by the Americans themselves. Stewart himself probably did as much as anyone in his generation to show the well-intentioned qualities of the average American, something that often gets lost in the heated anti-American rhetoric that has become more noticeable in the new millennium. If nothing else, he exemplified the principle that patriotism is not the blind indulgence of “my country, right or wrong” but rather the democratic courage to condemn your country’s errors as loudly as anyone else if it seems appropriate to do so. It is a lesson that should not be lost on citizens, or politicians, in other countries, including our own.
Public figures in mature democracies need to grow thick skins, for satire is often one of the most direct means – even in a highly developed country like the United States – of speaking about difficult subjects.
Source: www.stabroeknews.com