The Daily Show

yes, yes, capn save-a-what-have-you

I view it all with a detached amusement. It is hell of strange and...um...bemusing. *shrugs to the high high sky* Thz for the backup bday boy.

ok I actually am not in agreement with a lot of ethan's criticisms on this thread. Anything that becomes popular enough without being overly complex is going to have a large fanbase of "dittoheads" so I really don't see that as valid.

What I think is worth discussing is if anything colbert does is necessarily worthwhile commentary on politics or even media anymore; it seems like they nailed it on the first episode with "truthiness" and have basically been going over the same ground, over and over and over, ever since, with increasingly bigger tires. Colbert's joker is watered-down topical Dada, it's like Jackass News with a little less juvenile enthusiasm and a veneer of political gutsiness that it doesn't deserve.

I have to strongly disagree that his "points," such as they are, are brilliant. I think he is competent at satire, but really he's an excellent improv comic settled into a single character that's working very well because the country as a whole cannot get out of this rut.

I think that because people 17-30 can't see how to get out of said rut, they take some comfort in Stewart, Colbert and crew making laffs out of the situation, and the problem is that that comfort is just making it easier to not actually go out and "speak truth to power" as maybe we ought to be doing. Instead of, for example, lying down and just watching our parents go vote for Hillary and Fred Thompson and shit and being glad we don't have any friends who are in the fucking war.

These guys don't have a point except to belittle the government and the media, and fine, but to imagine that that serves any purpose beyond the ha-ha-fat-kid joke that it is seems to me to be kind of dangerously disingenuous and most certainly far, far too trusting of comedy central's real motives and interests.

(hence all the hem-and-haw re: daily show partisan bias and softball treatment of real fucking winners like john bolton or newt fucking gingrich)

but OTOH to blame two comedians on late night cable for my dim, bleak outlook on my own generation is even greater disingenuousness in itself. clearly it's time to go out and get angry at everybody over 40 again OH WAIT

What can I do "speak truth to power"? Because I truly do not know and this ineffectual state is extra depressing sometimes.

if you wanna play the 'just a comedian' card go for it, its dudes claiming colbert is a brilliant political satirist who i got beef with.

name ten brilliant political satirists from 0 B.C. to the present without google: GO

here I'll help
1)Petronius
2)Juvenal
3)Swift

all you gotta do is seven now

bierce

twain

shakespeare

biz markie

vonnegut
voltaire

Tombot 2/4, I don't know that Shakespeare did a lot of satire and I love Biz more than anybody I know but umm no

xpost voltaire yet
vonnegut no

yet=yes + beer

ray stevens

free vodka for anybody with the nuts to say "mort sahl"

Yes weren't v. big political satirists IIRC.

Bahaha I guess a guy reading a paper on stage is not too different than TDS (re: Mort Sahl).

yakov smirnoff

mencken

Franken

george lucas

http://www.speakersla.com/2006-07/images/capitol-steps-large.jpg

(The Capitol Steps)

so much fail

anyway you're right nobody but you is qualified to discuss the relative quality of satire

so perhaps the problem is not so much whether or not it's good satire to begin with, but that we've yet to become accustomed to satire with lots of heavy duty merchandising and promotion involved, and an ongoing drip, instead of a book or a pamphlet that can just drive a point home and leave it at that. I think perhaps satire-as-commercial-venture is more than part of the problem here, involving several peoples' livelihoods and multiple companies all jumping in to make a buck off of how easy it is to poke fun at our completely and utter inability to elect anyone worth a flying fuck or practice journalism with any respectability whatsoever

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/photopost/data/818/9421sctv_2.jpg

xp sorry tombot

Colbert's joker is watered-down topical Dada, it's like Jackass News with a little less juvenile enthusiasm and a veneer of political gutsiness that it doesn't deserve.

not fair, sez me. I mean, in one way it's true, and even more true of stewart, but the colbert character has exceeded its expected mileage on the strength of the comedian behind it. He's a funny guy. Characters are his thing, he does them well. Standup was stewart's thing, and he was never great at it, and it's seeming lately to me like he'd be more effective if he stayed in the writer's room.

LOOK GUYS AMERICA FUCKIN BLOWS HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

I mean unless you are actually shakey mo I don't see how that's watchable more than a couple nights a month while already inebriated, as a quite popular form of humor it's pretty fucking gallows

especially when people are apparently so willing to go out and spend money on it

I think perhaps satire-as-commercial-venture is more than part of the problem here

yeah it's not like this has been the exact state of the enterprise since its earliest surviving instances

IT USED TO BE PURE MAN

(qualification: I ain't got cable, I see this shit maybe five times a year, it always strikes me as funny when I do)

yeah thats what i dont get, tombot you essentially seem to be saying 'poking fun at our completely and utter inability to elect anyone worth a flying fuck or practice journalism with any respectability whatsoever' is worthless unless its er worthless

oh right the Candide "best of all possible ice creams" and accompanying comic book series and poster

voltaire fucking roomed with the king of prussia, i dont see colbert pullin that kinda shit

swift just kept pumping out sequels to gulliver, this is not well known because they were all overburdened with expensive special effects and on the whole rather embarrassing

no deeznuts I was arguing you're worthless for sitting there laughing the whole time instead of getting angry

oh right the Candide "best of all possible ice creams" and accompanying comic book series and poster

yeah that Voltaire was indie as fuck! he didn't publish his shit or accept money for it nor a rising position in society, none of that, he just told it like it was

same shit different epoch man, you know this, you're a good deal smarter than I am, don't get all old-guy on me

"if u aint swift, u aint shit"

so taking depressing situations & making light of them to illuminate them further is NOT a satirists purpose. interesting.

Daily show suxxxxxxxxxxxuxuxuxux

in fairness deeznuts the best satirists don't leave you laughing, they leave you with a truly horrible taste in your mouth (cf. Swift, Voltaire, Juvenal especially - this is why Horatian satire is generally regarded as lesser by everyone except the English: it doesn't burn like acid)

perhaps my real problem here is that I personally disagree that this moment in history is appropriate for "and then the prince didst make a poo in his gran's flange" lol satire and needs a bit more of the fucking heat

I was arguing you're worthless for sitting there laughing the whole time instead of getting angry

well, at least one person is angry. Very very angry. The nation breathes a sigh of relief.

Who watches late nite comedy to get angry? I have enough angry during the day.

yes thank you john for that

xxpost, you may have a point

how do you work a pun on "sedition" into an ice cream flavor though

Seditious Berrylicious?

anyway, does anyone remember kilborn era daily show? I seem to remember it being way more talk showy and seemed to satirize local news a lot more. was it around 2004 election when it became like 'culturally relevant'?

Tombot the thing you should remember: in Juvenal's time, in Swift's time, in Voltaire's time, shit was way worse than it is now, no matter how we may like to imagine that our era is totally the worst - if people start starving to death on the fucking streets to a point where you can't take a walk without seeing somebody who'll be dead by the time you're heading home, the fuckin' Daily Show, should there be one, will get a bit more caustic

wait wait a TV character has not one, but several facebook groups??? may god save us all from this horrendous cult of personality