Often as I listen to pundits talk about Jon Stewart, the Daily Show, and Colbert, especially but not exclusively conservative pundits, I feel they have no idea what they're looking at. Yeah, we see the same show and hear the same routines, but we clearly see something radically different.
They don't GET it.
They don't GET the Daily Show or Colbert. They didn't get it when Colbert gave his congressional testimony. Or when Stewart skewered Tucker Carlson. Or when he took down Crossfire.
And they still don't get it.
Politico did a story today on the Rally to Restore Sanity that reinforced in me that sense that so many in the punditocracy and media keep swinging and missing as they struggle to make sense of the Daily Show. They simply don't GET it.
DEMOCRATS CAN'T RIDE JON STEWART'S WAVE
The event, with the Capitol as the backdrop, was a comedic success. A gargantuan crowd loved the live music and lapped up the satirical repartee between Stewart and sidekick Stephen Colbert.
But Stewart’s decision to avoid explicit partisan politicking denied the left a kind of galvanizing moment that might have driven to the polls his Democratic fans who weren’t already planning to vote or motivated previously apathetic liberals to grass-roots activities.
I can't blame Politico or others for not GETTING it.
It really is hard to put directly into words the significance of Jon Stewart, Colbert and the Daily Show. So I'll start by putting it into a story.
The first time I got hooked on Jon Stewart was in mid 2000. It wasn't the hilarious news coverage or the skits, though they were brilliant and hilarious. What captured me, and kept me watching for a decade was Jon Stewart's August 1st 2000 interview with Bob Dole.
Bob Dole sat down and Jon Stewart sat down..................
....and Jon Stewart spoke to him like most of us would speak to a guest in our homes. Stewart wasn't a douche. He acknowledged the jokes the show had made about Dole. And he disagreed with Dole and asked him intelligent, even probing questions.
But there wasn't the faintest hint of malice.
I didn't realize it at the time....but for years I was conditioned to feel slightly on edge watching talk show interviews. I didn't realize it, but in fact I felt UNCOMFORTABLE for the person being interviewed.
I remember distinctly feeling a tension release. A tension I had not realized up until then that I had. That almost no matter who was sitting in that chair across from Jon Stewart would be treated with respect.
And that was it for me. That had me. This wasn't just some funny, funny show. There are hundreds of those.
This was a show, and an "anchor" founded on a deep respect for the people of this country...even for the subjects of their humor.
I had become politically aware in an era of O'Reily, Sean Hannity, and a media frenzy over Bill Clinton's impeachment. A frenzy of over the top jackassery and theatrics.
So this Jon Stewart thing...this Daily Show thing...it took the same theatrics of the talk shows, but made them funnier while treating people with actual humanity.
While the punditocracy raged on, and the attacks got more savage, and the dehumanizing more intense, the rhetoric from folks like Ann Coulter and and Glenn Beck became more shrill and shameless....
The Daily Show kept on its funny but humanizing path, catering to people who tuned out of the talk show's need to keep ratcheting up the rhetoric to maintain viewership.
Then came the famous and fateful day Jon Stewart was invited to appear on Crossfire --> full transcript here.
He buried them. He helped drive the nail in the coffin of that show, and call it out as a destructive force in American rhetoric.
That was in 2004. And the punditocracy and political folks continued to Not Get It.
They don't GET it.
The Daily Show has never been overtly politically mobilizing. It doesn't fit in that type of mold.
The Rally to Restore Sanity was not what the Pundits wanted it to be. It was not a left wing version of the right wing rally in a neat little package. It was a collective acknowledgement of the absurdity of one group trying to lay claim to the right vision of America.
Glenn Beck recently held a rally and drew an immense crowd, and he used that crowd to claim the righteousness and popular support for his own ideology as American. To claim that he represents The People.
Jon Stewart took that away from him.
With puppets. And R2.
And the pundits still don't GET it as they look at it in the context of one election cycle, one week of news stories...
There's something much larger than one election going on here.