This bummed me out. My girlfriend and I loved John Stewart on the daily show. He always had his point of view but he was also always fairly equal opportunity and seems to be interested in taking the piss out of bad takes in general.
We watched the show.
1. Why lead off a series with this episode ? Even if it’s true and important this episode is a terrible hook for a series. It’s a downer and, as they showed with the weird out of place skits, it’s very hard to mind comedy from. The fact that it was so nakedly sensationalized didn’t help either.
2. About 15 minutes in we both looked at each other like “ ummmm”. The point of view of the show was so nakedly obvious. It felt like the audience was being bludgeoned. “Do you get it now!!! Be outraged!! Look how outraged we are! Being less outraged must mean you’re stupid!”
You know what it felt like ? Have you ever stayed up until like 3 am. And those infomercials come on for “natural male enhancement” but they set them up to look like round table talk shows? Then hire a few models/porn stars to act like experts? It felt like that.
It felt like an advertisement for a point of view.
Thanks so much for this well written and analyzed piece. I enjoy most of what you've written so far, but I think your obvious skill in critical thinking reviews of media takes really shows in both this and the recent one about coverage of the Afghanistan drone strike. Can't wait to read more like these -- I learn a lot and they make me feel less crazy.
I was also a long-time Jon Stewart fan, from back when he was on Comedy Central and then had his own show on MTV. I loved The Daily Show, but the interviews started to bother me after a while because the slant was so blatant and seemed pointless. If your shtick is to mock media bias and you're clearly capable of doing a more in-depth challenging interview, why not do it with all your guests? Instead, particularly as time went on, he'd let the people he agreed with talk endlessly and reinforce what they said and he'd constantly interrupt anyone else. While I found this annoying, it wasn't so central or frequent that it ever turned me off entirely (most of the guests weren't explicitly political). The thing that ultimately completely turned me off was that terrible movie. Has anyone seen "Irresistible"? It's appalling. It's not just tone-deaf & limp with poor pacing and a criminal waste of talent, it's *actively offensive* -- glib, arrogant, condescending, and grade-school-stereotype simplistic. I was so upset I actually turned it off somewhere in the middle and asked Apple for a rental refund. This new show sounds like that film mixed with the worst aspects of LWT that made me quit watching, so while I'm even further disheartened I can't say I'm surprised.
I agree that the better conversation was about why it takes so long to get any sort of answer to these type of things. If they had left out a few claims about the science and instead focused on what a clusterfuck the entire thing was it would have been a much better episode. There are of course endless historical examples to compare to. But huge distributed systems where no single person is actually in power and can make decisions don't make great targets for critical takedowns.
IIRC (I'm too lazy to Google before 7 AM), epidemiological evidence also didn't support farmers' cancer being caused by Roundup. Yet a jury awarded million$. Sometimes "we don't know" is the best answer that scientists can give, but people don't want to hear that.
This bummed me out. My girlfriend and I loved John Stewart on the daily show. He always had his point of view but he was also always fairly equal opportunity and seems to be interested in taking the piss out of bad takes in general.
We watched the show.
1. Why lead off a series with this episode ? Even if it’s true and important this episode is a terrible hook for a series. It’s a downer and, as they showed with the weird out of place skits, it’s very hard to mind comedy from. The fact that it was so nakedly sensationalized didn’t help either.
2. About 15 minutes in we both looked at each other like “ ummmm”. The point of view of the show was so nakedly obvious. It felt like the audience was being bludgeoned. “Do you get it now!!! Be outraged!! Look how outraged we are! Being less outraged must mean you’re stupid!”
You know what it felt like ? Have you ever stayed up until like 3 am. And those infomercials come on for “natural male enhancement” but they set them up to look like round table talk shows? Then hire a few models/porn stars to act like experts? It felt like that.
It felt like an advertisement for a point of view.
Thanks so much for this well written and analyzed piece. I enjoy most of what you've written so far, but I think your obvious skill in critical thinking reviews of media takes really shows in both this and the recent one about coverage of the Afghanistan drone strike. Can't wait to read more like these -- I learn a lot and they make me feel less crazy.
I was also a long-time Jon Stewart fan, from back when he was on Comedy Central and then had his own show on MTV. I loved The Daily Show, but the interviews started to bother me after a while because the slant was so blatant and seemed pointless. If your shtick is to mock media bias and you're clearly capable of doing a more in-depth challenging interview, why not do it with all your guests? Instead, particularly as time went on, he'd let the people he agreed with talk endlessly and reinforce what they said and he'd constantly interrupt anyone else. While I found this annoying, it wasn't so central or frequent that it ever turned me off entirely (most of the guests weren't explicitly political). The thing that ultimately completely turned me off was that terrible movie. Has anyone seen "Irresistible"? It's appalling. It's not just tone-deaf & limp with poor pacing and a criminal waste of talent, it's *actively offensive* -- glib, arrogant, condescending, and grade-school-stereotype simplistic. I was so upset I actually turned it off somewhere in the middle and asked Apple for a rental refund. This new show sounds like that film mixed with the worst aspects of LWT that made me quit watching, so while I'm even further disheartened I can't say I'm surprised.
I agree that the better conversation was about why it takes so long to get any sort of answer to these type of things. If they had left out a few claims about the science and instead focused on what a clusterfuck the entire thing was it would have been a much better episode. There are of course endless historical examples to compare to. But huge distributed systems where no single person is actually in power and can make decisions don't make great targets for critical takedowns.
IIRC (I'm too lazy to Google before 7 AM), epidemiological evidence also didn't support farmers' cancer being caused by Roundup. Yet a jury awarded million$. Sometimes "we don't know" is the best answer that scientists can give, but people don't want to hear that.