The Daily Show (The Audiobook) by Chris Smith

He wanted the news to hold politicians accountable and for shows like Crossfire to promote real debate rather than partisan yelling. Jon Stewart wanted Crossfire to stop being a part of the problem. Tucker Carlson wanted to challenge Jon for not asking hard hitting questions of politicians, and then he wanted Jon to be funny. Everyone else wanted him to be part of the news media. This exchange encapsulates the tension around the role of The Daily Show. Jon Stewart felt like his role as a comedian on a fake news show was to expose the bullshit that goes on in the news media. Thanks Corporate Overlords! I don’t think you can get the full impact of Stewart’s Crossfire appearance just from reading a description, so I embedded a video, please watch it before someone takes it away. I discovered that a lot of those clips have been taken down. I did go to YouTube a lot to look for clips. Yes I know, licensing fees, blah, blah, blah. If any book was crying out for video clips, it was this one. Kindle books don’t take advantage of their potential to be multimedia. My one complaint is that at times so many people get to have their say that I can’t remember exactly who is who.

I became a regular consumer of Daily Show clips on YouTube.Ĭhris Smith’s oral history of The Daily Show during the era of Jon Stewart is very good. Despite that, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show were an important touchstone for me. It came on at a time in my life when I worked a lot and having cable or tv wasn’t important to me. I’m not going to make any pronouncements about Trump, I don’t want a future America to say “hold my beer” and come up with something worse. Bush will get a footnote as the guy in the White House during 9/11, and who started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You say Bush is going to go down in history as the most WTF President? Haha! America 2016 says “hold my beer.” George W. I’m sure, I’m 100 percent sure, in one hundred years, in one thousand years if society’s still standing, they’re going to say, “That guy was president? Like, what?” I know that to be a fact. Various writers, producers and correspondents were reminiscing about how the 2000 election gelled for them what they wanted to do with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.īEN KARLIN Bush, it will go down in history, it’s unbelievable that guy was president. It probably wasn’t the laugh they were expecting, but that’s life in Trump’s America. I wasn’t far in to the oral history of The Daily Show when, for a changed, I was the one who had to stop. He’s old, a slow walker, likes to sniff thoroughly, and will often take a rest in other people’s yards. I read books on my tablet while I walk my dog in the morning.

The Daily Show (The Audiobook) by Chris Smith