Well, Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that the Daily Show is bad for Americans, so does the Washington Post.
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Meta
I’ve seen a couple of recent episodes where Jon Stewart has been uncomfortable with how quick his audience is to judge and to cheer for the downfall of political leaders. He even compared them to the onlookers at the Salem with trials. I wonder if he is becoming concerned with what he’s started?
It’s hard for me to gauge if the Daily Show is really that harmful. It seems to me that it’s more of a response to cynicism than a cause of it, but perhaps it does encourage cynicism to grow. I don’t think that cynicism is actually that bad, so long as we still have some optimists too.
On the good-bad scale, I would rate one-sided political pundits as far, far worse than the Daily Show. I can’t stand it when extreme, short-sighted viewpoints are favored because they make for good sound bites, when the underlying issues really require a more careful and open-minded approach. I think this is one area in which the Daily Show may actually do some good, because the humor is often grounded in exposing the rediculous nature of such one-sided viewpoints.
I wouldn’t call The Daily Show a response to cynicism as much as a (hopefully) healthy dose of cynicism.
By continually casting politicians in such a negative light (with notable exceptions being John McCain and a few others) the political process is cast in a negative light. It’s not like they are communicating that “well, the system stinks, but its all we’ve got so let’s make the best of things,” The Daily Show communicates “the system stinks.” It’s up to the audience to realize that they are just showing off the dumber sides of the system, but instead the audience (me included) just lose hope in how our country works.
I definitely agree that the one-sided pundits are far, far worse, but how one-sided is The Daily Show becoming? As for punditry, the left side looks to me to be full of mockers who do little more than point out the faults in their opponents in a humorous way, whereas the right side looks to be full of stuffy jerks who happen to be are war-mongers, nationalists, and bigots.
I miss the days when people got their news from journalists who at least tried to repress their bias. NPR and the BBC are still the best sources of news for me in this regard.