Soon-to-be-former Daily Show host Jon Stewart said this to Anderson Cooper and Paul Begala while making an appearance on Crossfire, during an increasingly heated discussion about the role television news plays in shaping - as opposed to reporting - what's going on in the world, the difference between what they do, and what Stewart does (or did, for sixteen years, until tonight...). Stewart was positioning himself behind the protective banner of 'fake news', and calling out the folks at "shows with names like Crossfire, and Hardball, and I'm Gonna Kick Your Ass..." for perpetuating division and contention in the American political narrative, rather than discussion and cooperation.
"Why do you argue...?" he asked them tiredly, seemingly rhetorically, and yet it was not at all rhetorical, really...rather, an indictment.
Cooper, from the right, didn't much care for Stewart's sanctimony. Begala, from the left, was naturally more sympathetic, but Stewart was indicting them both as members of a news organization. They were CNN, he charged, not Comedy Central. They weren't supposed to be doing what he was doing, or coming across - inadvertently or otherwise - as though they were doing what he was doing: not contributing to the political dialogue of the times so much as making a mockery of it, or destroying it, through endless (and all-too-often carefully contrived) polarization.
That was in 2004, during the George W Bush v John Kerry campaign, an especially emotional election season on account of the Iraq war. Since then, all media in our midst has only gotten more ubiquitous and ridiculous, and The Daily Show has upped its game in response. Under Stewart's command, and surely with some very talented writers and 'correspondents' at his disposal, it has become much more than just 'fake news', more much than mere political satire. It has positioned itself as a critical watchdog, not only of politicians, but more importantly, the Fourth Estate, television news in particular.
And never mind what some say, Stewart has actually been remarkably fair in his watch-dogging over the years, in spite of the liberal bias he's never attempted to hide. He's called out Fox News and MSNBC alike, for their handling of everything from natural and man-made disaster to the alleged 'war on Christmas'; from the embedding of reporters in places they don't need to be to their attempts to stretch a story beyond what's necessary or logical; from their attempts to roust pre-hysteria from the depths of our psyche over stories that aren't newsworthy yet (like 'Hurricane Watch!' being enacted the minute the poot from a great white shark off the western coast of Africa causes a low pressure system to develop...), to their seeming need to turn everything - everything - into a left/right issue, as though American society no longer identifies itself in any way other than red state or blue state.
And maybe that's true; but if so, is television news reflecting this, or causing it?
And within the political arena, Jon Stewart has been equally consistent. Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck alike have fallen into his cross hairs. Sean Hannity surely, but Hillary Clinton, too, and Nancy Pelosi. He was relentless in his lampooning of George W Bush, but has called out Barack Obama more than once. He mentioned this the other night as a matter of fact, defending his recent trip to the White House, but any regular viewer of the show already knows it. Yes, Jon Stewart is liberal; but he's nothing if not sensible, which is why he's buddied up to Bill O'Reilly, the 'skinny kid at fat camp' Stewart's called him (regarding the Fox News conservative bias), and for that matter why O'Reilly buddied up to him.
During his long tenure at the helm of the well-textured (to borrow a line from Stewart's predecessor, Craig Kilborn), Daily Show, Stewart has brilliantly woven humor with pathos, managing to make the uneasy society we live in - this strange porous borderland between opulent arrogance and apocalyptic self-loathing - somehow funny, and he's regularly preached - sometimes begged for - temperance in the language and the behavior of our news media. His 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear (with fake adversary Stephen Colbert) was funny and entertaining and star-studded, but the purpose of the event, the very wording of the title, should never be forgotten: Restore Sanity. Whatever your views, it's harder and harder to stay reasonable, to stay level-headed, to stay sane, and this is because there is too much news media, too much bombardment, too many sound bites flung at us as though fired out of an M-16...from the left, from the right, from the fringe...forever threatening to cause our political narrative - our 'narrative' of any kind - to dissolve into an indiscernible and ineffectual pool of hot liquid rhetoric. Resisting it has been - I believe - Stewart's consistent, on-going narrative for a long time, and I think it - more than anything else - should be considered his legacy.
Groovy. Stewart deserves it. But it's clear that neither side has gotten the point. The television news blitzkrieg rages on, funnier, more entertaining and star-studded than ever, forced to generate sensationalism, misinformation and completely biased infotainment in industrial quantities just to fill pockets of dead air and satisfy advertisers in the monstrous 24-hour news cycle they created, and are now beholden to.
When the sun rises tomorrow morning, there will no longer be anyone asking that simple but potent question of this circus: Why do you argue? Reasonable people across the country - the middle of the roaders, the new silent majority - should be gravely concerned about the void created by Stewart's departure, and pray that the new Daily Show host, or someone, somewhere, attempts to fill it.
