CNBC IS NOT SMILING AT YR PARTISAN HATE SPEECH

[defrog]

ITEM [via Talking Points Memo]: Remember how Jon Stewart made fun of CNBC’s boom market cheerleading? Joe Scarborough and Jim Cramer are not amused.

Watch and marvel as they dismiss him as a mere comedian, and then hold him accountable for his obviously biased politics.

Jon Stewart retorts here.

All of which is the latest exhibit in the ongoing debate about the role of political humor in post-Bush America.

We’ve talked in this space before about how making current-President jokes used to be a non-partisan activity until Republicans unilaterally decided (around the time The Daily Show became a hit, I think) that mocking Bush and the GOP was somehow unpatriotic and borderline treason, and an obvious indicator of extreme liberal bias.

Now, we have CNBC talking heads spending several minutes of valuable screen time on their own program defending themselves against satire by demanding that Stewart be held accountable for what he says and making his political beliefs clear – all under the belief that he only makes fun of Republicans (when in fact he’s been making Democrat/Obama jokes pretty much since the Demos won back Congress in 2006).

All this fuss over a comedy show – albeit one that is allegedly a more trusted source of news than the real news programs it makes fun of. The fact that CNBC and Fox News blame Jon Stewart for this speaks volumes.

We’ve been here before, though. It’s not the first time the media demand to know why Stewart doesn’t adhere to journalistic practices, under the mistaken belief that what he does is journalism. To be fair, it’s an easy mistake to make – if journalism’s goal is to report the truth and get people to think critically about current events, then The Daily Show does fit that criteria.

But so does satire. And The Daily Show has much more in common with satire than journalism. TDS doesn’t break stories or do its own reporting – it makes fun of stories that already exist. It’s multimedia stand-up comedy dressed up as a mock news program that largely makes fun of what passes for journalism these days. It’s mash-up comedy that's been around since at least the 1960s. Take away the studio set and the video clips, and Stewart is no more a journalist than Bill Hicks or George Carlin were. Leave the studio dressing, and The Daily Show is Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update with real guests and better jokes. No one accuses SNL of practicing biased journalism. And they had Tina Fey on their team. I rest my case.

On the other hand, if you accept the premise that comedy is funny because it contains just enough truth for people to get the joke – and certainly satire needs truth to live – then maybe comedy is the new journalism. Given what passes for TV journalism these days, it might as well be.

That’s not funny,

This is dF

Comments

[jasonfranks.livejournal.com]

It's the same phenomenon we see with political cartoonists: they're always the first people their targets lash out against. The work of a cartoonist--or a satirist--is to boil a complex problem down as simply and humorously as they can, and there's really no room for a rebuttal.

I think you'll find that the majority f death threats issued to media types do not go to journalists. At least, I like to think so. I'm still sore than my cartoons were banned from the high school newspaper fifteen years ago...

-- JF

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

I heard an interview with Al Franken and Tom Davis (back when they were still a comedy team) where they mentioned the biggest criticism they got from the NBC censors was that when comedy is applied to serious or controversial issues, it trivializes them. Cartoons probably do that more because of the need to simplify things into a panel.

On the other hand, I am (as far as I know) the only person ever to write, produce and put on air the funniest 60-second radio PSA about date rape. Which either means it's all in the execution, or people thought date rape was funny in 1994. I hope it was the former.

(For the record, I did the PSA because I was production manager, and the person in charge of PSAs asked me to come up with something on the topic of date rape that was informative, but not a bummer. Tricky. But I did it, by God.)

[jasonfranks.livejournal.com]

Sublime!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEJYEauuoY8

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

Sublime it may be, but it's blocked in Hong Kong.

[(Anonymous)]

Bugger.

Well, you know Sublime's Date Rape song, right?

-- JF

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

I do now.

[dinopollard.livejournal.com]

It’s not the first time the media demand to know why Stewart doesn’t adhere to journalistic practices, under the mistaken belief that what he does is journalism.

Once Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, and any number of right-wing lunatics who fancy themselves journalists start adhering to journalistic standards and practices, then they can bitch about Stewart. As it stands, he adheres to them far more than they do and he's ten times the journalist as any of them. For one thing, he actually tells the truth.

[garbagecanmusic.livejournal.com]

Hey Joe.......Fuck you.