The Yesterday Show
Jon Stewart is the closest thing the Left has come up with as an answer to Rush Limbaugh. They are both entertainers first, ideologues close behind. The next two years will be very interesting to see what happens with regards to their respective ratings.
Unlike Limbaugh, Stewart never struck me as someone terribly concerned about ideas as such. Like Bill O'Reilly, he was content to meet his opponents on an uneven field, and feed them piece by piece to an audience as interested in ideological diversity as Vladimir Putin. This is not to say Limbaugh's show is on the same level as Firing Line, but then, who besides Tim Russert has come close to that in the past decade?
Limbaugh is a polemicist, but there is an honesty to it that is lacking in Stewart. With Rush, it's just the big man and a microphone, live on the air; Stewart often tapes (and edits) interviews and has a team of writers to rival Jay Leno's. As a liberal, you know Rush is going to throw punches, but at least no one is going to sneak up behind and break a bottle over your head.
Still, Rush has never been what he was in 1992, 1993, 1994. I was in high school at the time, and remember restaurants advertising "Rush Rooms" where his show was played during the lunch hour. The GOP was in total exile, and the media were treating the charismatic young Democratic president to the full Lewinsky. Rush was the opposition, and while he was too shrewd a showman to be above flinging the occasional piece of dung, it was usually to punctuate a point he'd already made in more thoughtful terms.
I'm sure Stewart will not run fatally short of acolytes braying for fan service, but my suspicion is that much of the audience for his smarmy left-wing irony was a lot less driven by ideology than general disapproval of power in general. As the storm clouds gather on what will probably not be a comfortable couple of years, making fun of Republicans (who are almost completely out of power for the next 2-N years) is going to be devoid of the frisson of rebellion from which its most vital energy is drawn. Chanting "Yankees Suck" isn't nearly as much fun when they actually do.
Jon Stewart is the closest thing the Left has come up with as an answer to Rush Limbaugh. They are both entertainers first, ideologues close behind. The next two years will be very interesting to see what happens with regards to their respective ratings.
Unlike Limbaugh, Stewart never struck me as someone terribly concerned about ideas as such. Like Bill O'Reilly, he was content to meet his opponents on an uneven field, and feed them piece by piece to an audience as interested in ideological diversity as Vladimir Putin. This is not to say Limbaugh's show is on the same level as Firing Line, but then, who besides Tim Russert has come close to that in the past decade?
Limbaugh is a polemicist, but there is an honesty to it that is lacking in Stewart. With Rush, it's just the big man and a microphone, live on the air; Stewart often tapes (and edits) interviews and has a team of writers to rival Jay Leno's. As a liberal, you know Rush is going to throw punches, but at least no one is going to sneak up behind and break a bottle over your head.
Still, Rush has never been what he was in 1992, 1993, 1994. I was in high school at the time, and remember restaurants advertising "Rush Rooms" where his show was played during the lunch hour. The GOP was in total exile, and the media were treating the charismatic young Democratic president to the full Lewinsky. Rush was the opposition, and while he was too shrewd a showman to be above flinging the occasional piece of dung, it was usually to punctuate a point he'd already made in more thoughtful terms.
I'm sure Stewart will not run fatally short of acolytes braying for fan service, but my suspicion is that much of the audience for his smarmy left-wing irony was a lot less driven by ideology than general disapproval of power in general. As the storm clouds gather on what will probably not be a comfortable couple of years, making fun of Republicans (who are almost completely out of power for the next 2-N years) is going to be devoid of the frisson of rebellion from which its most vital energy is drawn. Chanting "Yankees Suck" isn't nearly as much fun when they actually do.
posted by The Snob at
6:18 PM
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