The Daily Show Backlash Begins In...NOW!

Ah, the press. You can't live with with 'em, and you can't tie them in a sack and throw them in the river. We are now seeing a prickly backlash against The Daily Show, espcially as the planned rally this coming weekend looms near. Why, you ask? I have my own theory, and it's two pronged.

First of all, The Daily Show as well as The Colbert Report, have captured a huge audience of young viewers alientated by the tilted news reporting they recieve from other media. And in media, nobody likes losing to the competition. But what runs deeper here, is that I think a lot of newpaper writers and broadcasters resent The Daily Show because it's not owned by anyone. The program can go in any direction it wants to because it has never explicitly attached itself to any particular political view or party. It has freedom, and in that freedom they have the ability to tell the truth, or at least their version of it, far more often than CNN or Fox does.

Also, one of the great unuttered truths among media types is this: they don't want to admit that The Daily Show and Colbert teams do a better job than they do. This is embarassing because those professionals out here in the media trenches are trained journalists. To the best of my knowledge that's not true of the teams behind these shows. That means they beat them at their own game without (gasp) having a sheepskin giving them the intellectual permission slip to do what they do. And for those who want to continue to spread the smear that the programs refuse to attack the left, do me a favor and actually watch the show as opposed to taking Rush Limbaugh's word for it. Stewart has voiced dissapointment in the Obama administration (on the Bill O'Reilly show of all places) and has continually accused liberal politicians as being outright cowards. And in light of the unfettered rise of the Tea Party without any meaningful rejoinder from the left, who can argue with him? Oh, I know who...pundits who operate in their terminally reality-free biosphere.

But even they have problems with Stewart, they also seem more than a little obsessed with him, maybe due to the paradox mentioned above. From Politico.com, here's a quick condensation of what writers are wrigning their hands over regarding the rally:

David Zurawik thinks Stewart’s being too arrogant; Anne Applebaum thinks it is sad that this is the best liberals can do; James Poniewozik worries Stewart is taking himself too seriously; Rizvi Quereshi worries he’s not taking the opportunity seriously enough; Bob Samuels fears he’s making a mockery of American politics.

 My, my. Such worry and concern over a little 'ol comedy show. If Stewart has the pundits worked up into such a lather over him, then he and his team are absolutely on the right track. But thanks to journalist Ryan Kearney, who puts the backlash into focus from the perspective of those perpetrating it, we can gain some insight:

As the criticism of Stewart's rally proves, we are delusional: Writers often aren't very thoughtful at all. We're just bitter. We loved Stewart because he voiced that bitterness we felt — about politics, about television, and even about our own careers. Now that his narrative has diverged from our own, we fear he'll become just another media figure — or worse, a politician — about whom we're forced to write articles. Some of us, consequently, reject Stewart in the way we might reject a boyfriend or girlfriend who has left us for something bigger: He or she is already gone, but somehow we convince ourselves that the decision was ours to make.

I'm not going to hide behind what should already be obvious by now, and just state that I'm a very big fan of both shows. Just to call out one amazing moment from the show's history, Stewart's grilling of Jim Cramer from Mad Money is not only an interview every American concerned with the press should see, but also an outline to how all media figures, politicians included, ought to be taken to task for mis-deeds. Oh, and Bob Samuels worries that Stewart is making a mockery of American politics? Sir, I think American politics itself has done a far more complete job of that on it's own than Stewart could ever do.

Mike Grefski