Writing as a Means to an End, Not the End Itself
So, let’s be honest, right from the top: Seeing a screencap from an infotainment program goes a long way to priming you for the essay you’re about to read, doesn’t it?
Aha! A reaction to Jon Stewart’s return to The Daily Show! And maybe a commentary on some of the issues raised in that first segment?
This will be the second piece in two weeks in which I’ve chosen an image from a major network to frame my article—and I can’t say I’m comfortable with my decision. But I want to sit with that discomfort today, so I’m using the image anyway.
My overriding issue, which I’ve been wrestling with these past few years, is the utter futility of so much writing and related human labour: a concept I’m extending here to reflect on journalism as a broader medium as well. So many people want to be writers, but what do they want their writing to do?
We’ll return to that question in the piece below, for paid subscribers, but first, I want to reflect briefly on Jon Stewart—or rather, on the excitement attached to his return to The Daily Show. After a flurry of news cycles that highlighted our short-term memory with respect to the failures of legacy media, there was such comfort for many in seeing a familiar face return to the “little” screen in a fraught election year.
Jon Stewart is back! He’ll help folks navigate the coming storm! He’ll speak truth to power and counteract the madness of online toxicity!
When I was a young adult, I had an experience at a taping of The Daily Show that mortified me in the moment, and fortified me thereafter. I made Jon Stewart… annoyed, to say the least. I disrupted his warm-up session with the crowd.
Now, I was a silly young person who enjoyed a good, intellectual conversation, and so, while everyone else raised their hand to lob easy queries like “what’s your favourite book?” or “what element from the periodic table would you be?”—in other words, the kinds of questions that allow an entertainer to loosen up before a recording—I asked something serious. I asked Jon Stewart why he thought right-wing media wasn’t able to do news comedy as well as left-wing media. (This was at a time when a few right-wing news sites were trying, and failing, to achieve similar hype and repute.)
I had no idea that asking a serious question was taboo. I was a visitor to New York, taken to the location by friends, and even in Canada, I didn’t have experience in the audience for TV shows or comedy clubs.
And I instantly killed the vibe. I could feel it in the stands, which had suddenly gone very quiet, and I could see the annoyance radiating off him. After processing what I’d asked, Stewart was curt and dismissive of the question before moving on to another.
It was only then, when I’d killed the mood, that I realized the social script I was supposed to be a part of. My job wasn’t to satisfy personal curiosity, or to run an impromptu mini interview from the live studio audience; it was to amp up the performer for his real audience, on screen.
I felt deeply ashamed to have broken an unspoken rule, and I carried that shame with me when I went home. I couldn’t watch The Daily Show the same way again, because now it felt very clear that entertainment came first (just as Stewart routinely said that it did). In subsequent years, the occasional bit of backroom negativity would become public—Wyatt Cenac’s difficult experiences in the writers’ room, for instance—and I wasn’t surprised in the slightest, because I’d snagged on an edge of the illusion myself.
But it was an important lesson, because even though I’m not interested in celebrities—I usually go out of my way to avoid being in a situation where I might meet them; this time I was simply with host friends and following their itinerary—I’d still conflated Stewart’s comedy with his contributions to sociopolitical discourse. Like so many TV audiences leaning on news comedy amid hard politics, I’d confused the work of laughing at those who make the world a worse place with genuine media literacy.
Both of us grew in subsequent years, of course. Stewart poured himself into key legislative causes, like veterans’ healthcare, and in interviews for The Problem with Jon Stewart he pushed back hard on SEC officials, government reps peddling trans panic, and media misrepresentation of media malfeasance—before walking away when topics like China and AI posed a concern for Apple executives.
When The Problem first aired, though, there was still debate about where comedy should begin and end when someone’s work also has journalistic objectives. And that debate continues today—perhaps most recently, in an interview between Audie Cornish and Roy Wood Jr. (also of The Daily Show). In their sometimes-tough chat, Cornish noted that many comedians flout journalistic standards after making ethical errors, with a backpedalling appeal to “it’s only comedy!” that fails to account for the double role such entertainers now occupy in viewers’ minds. Cornish reminds us that news comedy can impinge on journalism’s overall repute, if comedians aren’t careful.
As for me, I went forward even more affirmed in the belief that it is best not to meet famous people simply to say that one has met them—and also, to avoid cults of celebrity wherever possible. I still enjoy comedic approaches to the news—Last Week Tonight, for example—but I offset these outings with a wide range of other media.
I listen to a conservative legal podcast alongside a technical-detail-oriented liberal one, and to business podcasts that give me a clear sense of the language used to keep profit centred even in conversations paying lip service to the environment, consumers, and employees. I follow media outlets filled with right-wing militant views on global events, and also anywhere that houses nuanced conversations about resistance fighting, marginalized global conflict, and socialist/anarchist mutual aid projects.
I have my preferences, but I both detest poor argumentation for views I hold dear and want to know how other points of view are rationalized among those who hold them. Also, only a diverse range of media inputs will help to trace the development of a breaking news story, and to study changes in its representation across the spectrum.
Above all else, though, I treat legacy media networks as mere “conversation-setters”: the places that give us our major news cycles. This does not mean these outlets are always accurate in their reporting, and it certainly doesn’t mean they should be expected to prioritize that which serves their civic audience best. It simply means that they are the loudest parts of our media ecosystem. When a story breaks on one of those networks, it can and will spread further, faster—so help us all.
Many legacy media outlets are also serving an entertainment-first function. Even if they don’t frame their form of it in punchlines, they’re still trying to get a rise out of us. They can give us late-breaking data—and do—but not necessarily with civic health in mind.
So, considering the “entertainment” function already dominating major networks, when I first heard about Jon Stewart’s return to The Daily Show, I fully understood the contrapuntal comfort that his presence would offer viewers agitated by other news programs. Whereas their mission was to shake people up, his now would be to reassure and soothe. People can now watch upsetting news broadcasts elsewhere, and tell themselves, “Oh, I can’t wait to see how Jon tears into this topic tonight!”
Relatedly, I now also know better than to take The Daily Show’s brand of humour as even close to real media literacy training, let alone genuine activism.
This is comfort viewing.
And it may well comfort some of the afflicted, as well as the comfortable.
But as even Stewart noted in his opening episode, the real work needs to go much further. As he explained,
The next nine months or so—and maybe more than that depending on the coup schedule—they’re gonna suck. You’re gonna be getting emails with insane subject lines like, “Hello Jon, It’s Chuck Schumer. Donald Trump is right behind you with a knife. …Donate?”
You’re gonna get inundated with robocalls and push polls and real polls and people are gonna tell you to rock the vote, and be the vote, and vote the vote, and finger-bang the vote. And it’s all going to make you feel like Tuesday November 5th is the only day that matters. And that day does matter—but man, November 6 ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at, or November 7. If your guy loses, bad things might happen, but the country is not over—and if your guy wins, the country is in no way saved.
I’ve learned one thing over these last nine years, and I was glib at best and probably dismissive at worst about this: the work of making this world resemble one that you would prefer to live in is a lunch-pail [expletive] job, day in and day out, where thousands of committed, anonymous, smart, and dedicated people bang on closed doors, and pick up those that are fallen, and grind away on issues ’til they get a positive result, and even then have to stay on to make sure that result holds.
So the good news is, I’m not saying you don’t have to worry about who wins the election. I’m sayin’, you have to worry about every day before it and every day after it, forever. (Although I’m told that at some point the sun will run out of hydrogen.)
To Stewart’s opening list of things we’ll have to endure for the next while, we might add “news comedy that appears to fight injustice while still both-sides-ing an issue so as not to alienate more of the viewing public”. Because that’s also part of what the above speech does. However inspiring, Stewart’s address neatly sidesteps the fact that a Republican victory in November will hurt many marginalized groups already affected by emboldened right-wing actors, perhaps long before it hurts others.
Yes, “the country is not over”—but many people have legitimate fears for their well-being and even lives after November 5, based on legislation attacking both right now.
Still, news comedy is only ever a problem if we fall prey to the cult of celebrity, retain undue expectations of legacy media, and fail to diversify our news inputs to study the rhetoric and content within any given cycle.
The work of true media literacy is ongoing, and best done daily.
When we try to build a better world, we have to think that way, too.
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