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February 13, 2024 - 10:00am
What’s old is new again. The Daily Show, floundering on increasingly marginal cable network Comedy Central, has turned to the familiar face of Jon Stewart to steady the ship. A quarter of a century on from his first time hosting the programme, Stewart’s pitch remains essentially the same: the Democrats and Republicans are both dumb, but the Republicans are dumber and you shouldn’t vote for them.
Last night’s opening show demonstrated that in 2024 this isn’t enough, as Stewart performed an odd monologue about the stakes of this year’s US election. The comedian led with jokes about Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity based on the recently-released report from special counsel Robert Hur, always carefully softening the blow by noting that Donald Trump is more deranged. Stewart then lapsed into an extended discussion about the implications of election day that somehow managed to reference “coup plans” while helpfully noting that the world won’t end.
Stewart could have restored some sanity to a discourse inflamed by social media. Yet the late-night host instead chose to target ordinary Americans, who were skewered in an extended sequence featuring the show’s correspondents reporting on their sentiments against a green-screened backdrop of a Midwestern diner. Democrats are said to be slightly embarrassed by Biden’s incapacity and secretly lusting for a Taylor Swift presidential campaign, while Republicans are openly lusting for vengeance and bloodshed to be exacted on all who prevented Trump from assuming office after winning the 2020 election. It’s by-the-numbers political comedy of the SNL variant — nothing to see here, and certainly nothing that will appeal to Right-leaning viewers looking for points of commonality with liberals.
Then there was Stewart’s overly enthusiastic and ultimately safe interview of the editor-in-chief of the Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes. He let various claims of hers slide — for example, the notion that “Thatcherism”, “Reaganism”, and “Clintonism” were all largely one thing, economically speaking, yet simultaneously distinct from what Trump is offering — in the course of joining her in stumping for Nato. Well-off Baby Boomers who occupy the political centre might agree with that, but these people aren’t going to turn up in sufficient numbers to save a faltering late-night comedy show on a marginal cable channel in a crowded market.
Stewart, in other words, isn’t the voice for any of these ears. Erring on one side or the other — perhaps hiring Shane Gillis, who has built a surprisingly intelligent comedy brand on the Right after being canned by SNL before his tenure even started, or someone from one of the top-earning Left-wing podcasts — might have at least guaranteed a niche audience of one variety or the other. Last night’s show, however, amounted to more of the same and Stewart, who at one point directed the camera to shoot him in close-up to show how much he has aged, can’t do this vestigial consensus comedy act forever. As things stand, he can’t even do it five days a week.
Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work
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SubscribeWhat’s interesting is that thread running through this article suggesting that people aren’t going to tune in because they can’t find sufficient opinions that they already agree with or there are a sufficient number of people who already agree with him to make the show financially sustainable.
Stewart’s problem then is that – although he will no doubt be dismissed as liberal woke mainstream whatever here – he is not partisan enough. Too equivocal for the left, too rational for the right.
Not sure what point the author was trying to make in highlighting the Thatcher/Reagan/Clinton thing. They were broadly similar and Trump is defined in opposition to them.
‘Stewart’s problem’ is that even boomer liberals are beginning to recognise that boomer liberalism, for which he has been a prominent mouthpiece for twenty odd years, has been a catastrophe for ordinary people in the West, all of whom were much better off before the Clinton-Blair consensus and the associated war-mongering and financial skulduggery, took hold.
There’s some mythical sweetspot between the Reagan-Thatcher consensus Clinton-Blair consensus when all was right in the West.
Yes. There was a time before the boomer liberals took power when working people in the UK enjoyed a degree of job and financial security and access to the housing market.
Zanny Minton Beddoes is well known to Brits as one of the most unhinged of Remain’s jungle holdouts.
“Well known”. I’ve read the economist for years and have never heard of her. Most brits would have absolutely no idea who she is.
You amaze me. How could you read the Economist for years and not know who the editor is and what her biases are? If you don’t want to be brainwashed you need to pay attention to these things.
I pay attention to what’s being said rather than who’s saying it. (you walked into that one…)
The economist makes no secret of its biases anyway and openly acknowledges them quite often.
What a ludicrous thing to say! If I said that about Putin you’d rightly call me an idiot, wouldn’t you?
No. I’d think you an idiot for not having the scepticism turned all the way up though.
Whereas it’s never occurred to you that the Economist has an agenda just as much as Putin does – because everyone has an agenda -and you need to be aware of it in order to make a critical judgement about the magazine’s content.
I used to think like that too, but when I started paying attention to who was saying what, and which powerful groups were backing them, I started to realize how much nonsense I’d been subjecting myself to and to what extent our thoughts are being corralled.
Don’t engage with Unheard Reader. Not worth your time.
It’s a sad indictment of the way this message board has turned when somebody arguing that you should debate what has actually been said gets downvoted, while another stating that you can dismiss people’s arguments out of hand simply because of their political leanings is seemingly a popular position.
UnHerd Reader is correct, you play the ball not the man (or in this case woman)
TBF BB, I didn’t say you should dismiss people’s arguments out of hand but that you should understand their biases and motivations.
The hysterical media response to Trump in 2016 was due as much to the fact that, at that time, every major TV and press outlet in the US was owned by a corporation with large investments in China as it was to his outlandish personality.
Do you really think that the corporatist ethos of the BBC has no impact on either the way it covers news stories or, indeed, the choice of stories that it covers?
The Economist has no bylines.
Watch Steve Bannon hit Zanny Minton Beddoes for six https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAfm5L_DOLM
What a pity. I thought Stewart had more sense. In a way, his departure from the Daily Show seemed to mark the begining of the end of his style of late night comedy. Social Media took its bite off both the format and medium as fact steadily became stranger than fiction.
His later show “The Problem With” never quite seemed to find its footing, continuing a measure of Stewart’s critique of the media and politics while at the same time plugging into “Culture Wars” topics. At its best, it occasionally sat down to seriously talk about the issues of our media environment. At its worse it looked like the old chap trying to hang out with the kids and stay hip.
His return seems to say more about how little both the program and format have left to tell us. It was a decent flick back in the day, but the telle-centric society it belonged to is well past us. At best Stewart will try his old hat on for size and find it doesn’t fit the audience. At worst it will fall on predictable partisan patterns.
I didn’t follow the US elections, but in early 2016 I happened to see this oaf say on some occasion, “Well, that’s as likely as Trump becoming president,” and the audience helpfully laughed.
I distinctly remember thinking at that moment, “I wish I could see your face when this happens.”
“Stewart’s pitch remains essentially the same”
Was he also claiming that there was no politics in the show because it’s just about comedy and he’s an apolitical comedian. That old trope is about the only funny thing he’s got left. Much copied (poorly) by our ‘beloved’ (and equally impartial) BBC of course.
The Daily Show was funny in the 90s. If you want a laugh, Comedy Central is the last place you’d find it.
Their attempts to provide cover for Biden’s ‘cognitive issues’ will become increasingly hilarious, even though Biden’s condition is clearly not.
Except for South Park.
The South Park kids’ visit to the Museum of Tolerance said it all.
The perils of trying to rekindle the flames of old. Like movie sequels, this sort of thing almost never works. And this time around, people know exactly who and what Jon Stewart is.
I remember The Economist…
Putting Stewart back on as if it was still 2005 was bound to fail. The audience that made him popular has outgrown him. They’ve gotten older and either had children or built careers or failed to do so and become angry, radicalized, and anti-establishment Bernie Bros or Trumpists. It isn’t enough to glibly question the logic of politicians and wink at the twenty somethings and college students in the audience who think they’re smarter than everybody else. At the end of the day, that didn’t accomplish a lot other than give a lot of them a feeling of superiority that won’t pay the bills or get up at 2am to feed the baby. These days they want actual results, actual change, and they’re not satisfied with glib one liners. Now, there’s a whole new generation of kids even stupider and more arrogant about it than Stewart’s original viewers were, and pretty much every other generation is damn concerned about ever handing over much power to them. Milennials can be insufferable, but they’re mostly sane, sane enough to have outgrown the petty insults, obvious dog whistles, and sly insinuations that made Stewart’s career. Stewart’s time has passed. It’s interesting that the political satire from that era still going strong is South Park, whose vicious cynicism has withstood the test of time better than others. It’s arguably more popular now than it was in 2001. That a program whose quest seems to be to break down any and ridicule nearly every aspect, ideology, religion, political group, and social trend over the years still resonates with modern audiences says a lot about the path we’ve taken since Jon Stewart was a household name. The times they have-a changed.
Like Saturday Night Live and Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and the humor that the Left gives us is just not funny. I realize that this is an esoteric reference, but is anyone here old enough to remember “Krokodil” (Crocodile), the official humor magazine of the USSR? It was, to put it bluntly not funny. If you search YouTube, and understand German (more esoteria, I have lot of time on my hands) there are several videos of German comics who plied their trade in clubs and on the radio during the Hitler era. They were, to put it bluntly again, not funny. Ideologues do not make good comedians. Jon Stewart was brought back to try and attract the younger crowd and bring them back to The Cause. The younger crowd is into video games and Taylor Swift these days. Not many of them are even aware that cable tv is still around.