Jon Stewart’s farewell episode of The Daily Show wrapped with a fantastic Bruce Springsteen performance, which Stewart introduced with “Here it is, my moment of Zen.”
Twitter lit up, and rightly so; Springsteen’s song and the mass assembly of current and former TDS correspondents will probably be the most talked-about parts of the finale in the next several days.
But it’s the segment before Springsteen’s valediction that I hope has some lasting impact, because it got at the heart of what Jon Stewart seemed to me to be aiming to do for the last decade and a half.
If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look. It probably isn’t Stewart’s most comedic, powerful or strongly written moment – but it’s a wonderfully sincere take on the pervasiveness of bullshit in civic life. And watching it, you get the impression that bullshit has been his true nemesis all along: that Glenn Beck, FOX News, Dick Cheney and all his other perennial targets were just its manifestations.
Indeed, liberal politics notwithstanding, Stewart has never been patient with hypocrisy, trumped-up outrage or misdirection on the right or left. (That tough-on-all-of-them stance sometimes veered into maddening false equivalences… although I recommend you calibrate for my own lefty views.)
And after Wednesday night’s only-slightly-tongue-in-cheek inventory of the show’s failure to single-handedly defeat ISIS, defang FOX and depose kleptocracy, Stewart’s final rant may point to one big positive contribution he has made to civic life: a generation of viewers trained and motivated to look below the surface of public statements and sniff for the scent of bullshit.
Jon Stewart will be greatly missed at the Daily Show, and who knows how a new host will change it. But either way, I think the big thing that Stewart reminded people of in the last sixteen years is that comedy is more than just entertainment. It is not frivolous. It serves a social purpose.
I think this is what so many people got wrong when they constantly grilled Stewart about his role. They assumed he was being disingenuous about being “a comedian, not a journalist”. I don’t believe he was. He was simply framing the world as it needs to be framed at times in order for truth to be revealed best – current and historic events as a series of absurdities.
Comedy, to me, is all about human nature and its foibles. It’s about trying to make sense of the world by taking a serious look at it in an intelligent way before making jokes. Otherwise, it isn’t funny. Comedy at heart, is a very serious business in this respect. This is what Stewart did so well. He did it well enough so as to confuse the lines between the serious and the funny, which was the common observation all of his critics noted.
He was able to say “now this thing is just crazy”, without having to apologize for a lack of journalistic objectivity required for “serious” news. He revealed that in the end, there really is no line between what’s important and what’s funny, which was perhaps the most disturbing aspect of his approach that his opponents objected to the most.
Many of his colleagues have gone on to do similar work on their own shows. Let’s hope his legacy through the work of others continues. And may Stewart’s own voice continue to be heard in whatever capacity.
Thanks for the post, Rob!
Some very good thinking here, Rob J. And Stewart’s contribution to comedy is a whole ‘nother topic… including the launching of several comic careers, some now well-established and others bright and promising.
The thing I didn’t say in this piece and should have is how that piece passed the torch – not to Trevor Noah so much as to all of us. This sniffing out of misrepresentation and lies? This isn’t the sole responsibility of late-night TV hosts. This is something we all have to do: for our own sake, and for each others’.