The Daily Show

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

I also disagree that the high-water mark of tolerable shit should be the same in 2007 as 1729 but point taken

I think that getting mad at "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" for (perhaps intentionally) highlighting mankind's innate ability to endure bullshit is a waste of energy.

I also disagree that the high-water mark of tolerable shit should be the same in 2007 as 1729 but point taken

feeling is mutual here man, I'm with you in principle, I mean I wish people wouldn't hear an imagined Swiftian/Juvenalian satire as "shrill" or "over-the-top," but I suspect that any such satire would appear quite unhinged to practically everybody

waiting for Ethan to point out to me that Juvenal devoted an entire satire to how much he hated fags

Daily show:

Bad impressions by Jon Stewart. Everyone he does sounds like the penguin. Bush, Cheney, everyone, all the same.

NOT FUNNY CORRESPONDENTS. Everyone that was remotely funny left.

Interviews can be decent. That's it.

I like Larry Whitmore (sp?) a lotty lot.

Samantha Bee is funny. Rob Riggle and Larry Wilmore can be funny. Jason Jones is sometimes funny.

I love half the time the Samantha Bee and the other half find her grating and not half funny.

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

this is kind of what i was getting at when i said i don't think one can sustain 'brilliant satire', as such, on daily television; lots of hours to fill, the gig's too regular, no matter how gifted (or angry) given the circumstances he has to pace himself and the show as a showman first and worry about net political impact after(and i make no mistake those circumstances involve his naked ambition to conquer showbiz, not necessarily effect political change, although his current success make it more likely that his political bent will come along for the ride).

that said, the question tom poses about steady drip satire is an interesting one, i just bristle at the sourness and arbitrariness of some of the yardsticks for success posited on this thread(which remind me of a similar debate about michael moore which i don't want to dredge up really). i'll concede he's close to having explored every nook of the 'authoritarian mindset uberman' dig and there's only so many headlines and what-ifs you can run through that mill but i don't think it's close to being depleted as far as comedy is concerned, but then comedy isn't something you can debate(and insofar that it is, 'it's not funny' always beats 'it's funny' rhetorically so i hope you're not chasing that dead horse).

i guess im the only one who finds/found john oliver funny.

i think j0hn d has unintentionally introduced a giant strawman here, in that no one is claiming colbert is one of the most brilliant satirists of the past 10000 years.

xp

I want to see 19-yr-old college girls with Juvenal posters and bracelets.

19-year-old college girl new rhetorical 13-yr-old pop fan

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

-- Curt1s Stephens, Monday, October 22, 2007 8:43 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

lol zing. the point was deeznuts challenged the idea that colbert had a cult— saying it was only ppl who edited wikipedia— i c/p all those groups because they all have like 15,000+ members, and yes, it's a relevant point.

http://www.stereogum.com/img/mozstewart.jpg

i have never seen these shows, but the smugness & insularity of the the fans scare me

sorta like ilx?

perhaps

ilx fans are far worse.

xpost

far far worse.
the mail i get is just terrifying.

most fans of TDS/TCR aren't insular tho right? They're just passing fans who watch it occasionally, like me (and I presume many ILXors)

i dunno, occasional viewer not really a fan in the fanatical sense, just someone who likes it but doesn't make a point of seeing it every night. i was talking more hardcore types

but fanatics are insular by definition so your point taken

/sarcasm

sorechasm

i used to watch it practically every night, especially 1999-2001; in the past year though i've probably seen 10 episodes tops.

the format, which is the real hero of the show, has been around for so damn long; stewart now has cultural "power" but doesn't seem to know what to do with it; concomitant with that, almost all the interviews are with "important" people rather than supporting actresses on WB sitcoms, the latter of which usually provided more laughs; the correspondents are plowing an existing furrow now and therefore not as exciting as carrell, colbert, rocca, grenrock-woods, walls - none of whom you had any idea what the hell they were going to do.

ppl on this thread might be interesting in the interviews linked on this page - http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article2617512.ece

with some of the people who make "the thick of it" (basically, politics given the curb-your-enthusiasm treatment)

and this from armando ianucci, the guy who created the show (as well as alan partridge, brass eye, etc etc) - http://podcast.timesonline.co.uk/serve.php/292/iannucci1.mp3

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)

-- J0hn D., Tuesday, October 23, 2007 2:24 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Link

this is truly weak sauce rank-pulling -- unless you actually get a horrible taste in the mouth from those dudes in which case kudos, but really, too much.

what the fuck are you talking about dude? there's no pulling of rank there, when you read "modest proposal" or book four of Gulliver or any Juvenalian satire it's like "Jesus Christ, yowch" - I guess it's "pulling rank" to have done the basic course reading for a B.A., didn't know that made me Mr. Ultra-Learned Showoff

if I know my ilx my man will now c&p something from one of the cited satirists and ask "I don't see how that's any kind of a big deal"

lol liberal arts bias @ "basic course reading for a B.A."

ok i guess my point is: who was reading swift at the time? is there any point in comparing satire in a largely pre-urban, pre-literate, and certainly pre-democratic society, with the kind of project stewart is engaged in?

who is doing the 'regarding' of horace, in england?

i don't know if it connects with tombot's point--which i basically agree with--but you seem to savour that acid. i don't know if good satire even needs to stand up for the very special posterity conferred by eng lit reading lists -- but that takes us back to peter cook & weimar germany i guess.

haha I actually came back to this thread because I had just run across Tom Lehrer quoting that Peter Cook line, which I hadn't heard before - for those who also didn't know it:

"I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted... I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the '30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War."

life is a cabaret, old chum

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 ONE CHARACTER. The proper reaction to the O'Reillys is not to parody them, but beat em into a coma with a giant sock o' manure.

more great (forgotten) poli-satirists:

Paul Krassner
Mort Sahl

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.

tombot otm here and i can understand being too disgusted with the rut to feel like smirking about it.

on the other hand i think the whole "oh noes ppl watching daily show/colbert instead of GETTING ENGAGED AND GETTING ANGRY" thing (as represented by that andy sullivan post, and lots of other tut-tutting chin-strokers in the last few years) is strawman bullshit.

i could take ethan's points more seriously if he wasn't the guy who spent a few hundred posts the other year explaining how funny anne coulter is.

(oops no 'e' on ann)

(also i wasn't really sure what to think when nypd commish ray kelly said on the radio the other week that ds/colbert were his favorite tv shows)

that laughing at Colbert and Stewart helps *some* people to avoid thinking about contributing to OR EVEN HOPING FOR political change seems really obvious to me.

most countries probably have this kind of show, the weird thing is the UK is able to see them now -- a pretty recent development.

they are far, far stronger than our nearest equivalents. i can see that they are cynical, but for cynicism they have nothing on the nearest UK equivalents, one of which is an impressionist show with rory bremner, the other a fake panel game, 'have i got news for you'.

xpost: i dunno morbs. that doesn't track. how do you even get jokes about, like, alberto gonzales' congressional testimony if you don't know about alberto gonzales' congressional testimony to start with? i mean, maybe these people exist, but postulating their existence as "obvious," i don't get. there's 175 cable channels of shit you can watch if you want to avoid thinking about contributing to even hoping for political change, and you're telling me the people who tune into the one cable channel where you can get jokes about alberto gonzales and warrantless wiretapping are the ones looking for escapism? the daily show/colbert fans i know are the same ones who read the papers and read talkingpointsmemo and organize petitions to recall local corrupt politicians and run for school board and work the polls on election day and all that goody-two-shoes small-d democratic activism stuff -- and they like daily show/colbert because at least those shows sometimes acknowledge the importance -- or hell just the existence -- of that entire realm of politics and civic engagement that is elsewhere reduced to msnbc commentators sneering about hillary clinton's cleavage (when it's represented at all).

i can understand not thinking stewart or colbert are funny (because "funny" is a matter of taste), or thinking they've gotten stale or repetitive (because that's what happens to performers and shticks), or preferring to read theodor adorno at bedtime, or whatever. but i think the idea that they're somehow undermining the agenda they more or less stand for is just silly. i mean, that peter cook line... ok, brecht didn't stop hitler from coming to power -- but isn't that asking an awful lot of brecht? i mean, omg, two comedians on a comedy cable channel haven't brought the downfall of corporate neo-conservatism. clearly they're part of the problem!

sometimes i feel the same way tombot does except that i don't even live there.
when the punchline has something to do with guantamino and Stewart is essentially sitting there going "lololol, we torture people", I find it impossible to laugh.
The DS is way more guilty of this than the CR.

that laughing at Colbert and Stewart helps *some* people to avoid thinking about contributing to OR EVEN HOPING FOR political change seems really obvious to me.

oh plz, do not want equivocation for breakfast.

hey, have you seen the new TMZ tv show? Riveting.

also, xpost with tipsy, who said the same thing, i think

really, the whole frickin' game is rigged to get people to avoid thinking about contributing to OR EVEN HOPING FOR political change, top to bottom

Anyone who thinks that these shows are blasé about torture or shitty government dealings is either not really watching or has already made up his/her mind to shit all over them and is just coming here to register that shit. And Kenan if you really believe your last statement then...well, God love ya, Kenan.

capn save-a-colb

tipsy, those activist types you know may watch Stewart and Colbert, but they're maybe 1% of their audience. I think most of the audience knows about Alberto Gonzales' congressional testimony, and thinks "What can I do? NOTHING."

I'd never say Stewart 'liking' John McCain and softball-interviewing him repeatedly is any sort of factor in the grand scheme of things, but it defangs the claims of his satire.

if you really believe your last statement then

I do. I also don't believe in god's love. I'm not saying it's hopeless, just rigged.

tipsy, those activist types you know may watch Stewart and Colbert, but they're maybe 1% of their audience.

^^^ tru

I hear that 923% of northern Africa prefers salted butter.

I heard that 74% of people make up statistics to support their arguments.