Monday's point about Look, I was an asshole to Obama too! was especially bad. He's proud about mocking the ACA website as a sign of the whole thing being a failure? Way to counter the narrative- brave unique stance there.
At one point he had a serious problem with "both sides do it"ism..... but he mostly got past that.
Some of the segments were good, but I stopped watching around 2008 and didn't watch much before 2004.
The whole rally in DC was premised on both sides do it, and that was relatively late in his career.
What I liked best about him was the implicit criticism of the mainstream political media when he did things like show Cheney denying he said something followed by the clip of Cheney saying it. Simple stuff, of course; but something that the regular media could not find the moxie to do themselves. I think that dysfunction really created the space for Stewart's shtick to become as well-known as it was.
The "both sides do it" thing was tiresome. I thought the aspects of Obama's admin that he chose to attack were generally misguided; but then again I'm an Obababot who did not think the the ACA website launch proved conclusively that O was the most imcompetentest president ever.
8: That was my thinking as well. After the Iraq invasion, mainstream TV news outlets completely lost interest in even pretending to report the news.
I never watched The Daily Show much because I prefer to get my news in written form. But if you tended to rely on TV, then from about 2003 on Stewart was about as close to an actual journalist as you were going to find.
I agree with 8. He was best when criticizing other parts of the media, and not so great on politics more directly.
Part of the problem was that Stewart, unlike Colbert, is just not very smart and often didn't understand the policies or politics he was trying to criticize. The media part works better because the media is so dumb it doesn't take smarts to criticize them.
How did you arrive at that assessment?
I thought Stewart sometimes seemed super smart, especially (sometimes) in interviews, he'd think on his feet much faster than I'd be able to.
I don't even own a basic cable subscription.
I watched it between 2003 and 2005. At that time, I found that it played a valuable function. Principally, by calling out things that the mainstream media were not covering.
15: It was available over the Internet.
To me he was always just Jon Stewart, quick comedian I've been watching since the early 90's who happened to gig into Kilborn's News Quip gig and made it his own, and grew into political seriousness in fits and starts.
I can't even go near the 'voice of several generations' 'our political conscience 'stuff coming out, if that's true for millenials that's fine, you could do a lot worse than Jon Stewart for that. As smart as he is there has to be a certain political incuriousness at play indulging in the why-cant-they-just-meet-in-the-middle pose/fantasy for as long as he did; after that shitty rally I took to mostly just watching Colbert who from the get-go had the moral clarity and understanding to get to the bottom line quicker and truer and not waste my time. What I'll miss most is generational, he may be the last gasp of Old Comedy nerd appreciation in a mainstream venue. Random borscht belt and Johnny Carson bit references will get nothing but blank stares 5 years from now (if they didn't already) and that makes me a little sad.
I think Stewart is super smart, and/but he wants to be liked.
each time I had to tap out because the smugness was just too much
It must be so sad to have that smugness-supertaster gene. Asparagus and cayenne are really good, too, you poor deprived thing.
They aren't booing him, they're saying "Stewwww!!"
Stewart made Elizabeth Warren a star, and for that we are very much in his debt.
FALSE. YOU ARE WRONG. JON STEWART IS ENTERTAINING AND INTELLIGENT. additionally, he started the careers of many excellent comedians.
Does "smug" still mean "right about something I was very wrong about and which, in retrospect, was also really obvious"? Because if so then the OP seems about right. Comparing the Daily Show to the liberal blog also seems right to me, because the Daily Show during the Bush years at least was the television equivalent of what people were getting from the blogs.
And 24 is right: it really is crazy when you realize exactly how many of the current very talented comedians got their start on the Daily Show. Jon Stewart is one of those people whose biggest influence is through the people he mentored, even given how big of an influence he's had over the last fifteen years or so.
22, 23: Warren: Stew makes me vomit.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/elizabeth-warren-profile-115489_Page2.html
I am really partial to the fake news format, since Not the Nine O'Clock News, but Stew was much better at taking on the media, like Crossfire, than politics, government, and news.
I too found him overly smug, but I give him credit for growing the Colbert skit though.
Isn't one of Haidt's moral axes about tolerance of smugness?
I love that one of the primary motive forces in American politics is people who'd rather elect psychopaths who want to destroy the middle and working classes rather than vote for someone who seems smug.
Boy, W sure showed that smarty pants Algore, haha.
27. Wait, what? Warren isn't smug, not that I've noticed. John Kerry was smug, Obama is smug. (Clinton is smug, too, but only because she knows she's got it iced; just going through the motions until the voters "choose.")
Jon Stewart, yes; smug was his whole schtick. Colbert, too, but with more of a smile and a just-under-the-surface wink that he was letting you in on the joke. John Oliver is smug, but in a Brit way that Americans of a certain class/race/politics bent find impossible to resist.
None of which means they haven't all done some brilliant work.
Wait, maybe 27 was about Gore. I'd forgotten about him. Smug but nerd-smug, unlike all the others.
The infuriating thing is that George W. was as smug as smug gets.
I'm not seeing the 'Jon Stewart is smug' thing: sarcastic, yes, sardonic, yes. I do agree that his 'both sides do it' routine got annoying at times.
Hey parsi, I couldn't respond to that other thread where you were looking for advice on reading conservatives, but the answer is twitter.
The "both sides do it" thing represented about 1% of Stewart's output, and even where there was more of it - as there was with the rally - the underlying message was still, "Why can't both sides be sensible, the way liberals are."
And of course, sometimes both "sides" do it. See Stewart's evisceration of Crossfire.
And note, on that Crossfire clip, when Stewart is talking about how both sides do it, Carlson understands who the main target is (and so does Begala).
Stewart's "court jester forced to be a journalist" schtick should never have had to happen for the same reason Countdown with Keith Olbermann should never have been as big a deal as it was, and that there should never have been a market for the Colbert Report. Anyone who's pretending these are all just barnacles on the media landscape, though, is either deluded or is Camille Paglia (but I repeat myself). The massive self-infantilization of the "real" news media made it all not only possible but necessary; a problem that still hasn't corrected itself, really.
(That said: was rarely a big fan of the interviews Stewart did that weren't with wacky members of his own cast.)
Stewart made Elizabeth Warren a star, and for that we are very much in his debt. I do agree that his 'both sides do it' routine got annoying at times.