January 25, 2024 - 1:05pm
In the latest edition of Everything You Once Loved Will Desecrate Itself Before Your Very Eyes, The Daily Show announced yesterday that Jon Stewart will be returning to host on Monday nights.
Stewart’s return comes during a tough stretch for The Daily Show, which has struggled since Trevor Noah’s departure in December 2022, cycling through a roster of mostly uninspiring guest hosts. In fact, it’s not a great time for the late-night comedy sector as a whole. Viewership and ad revenue have plummeted since 2016, as Axios reported last year.
Stewart left The Daily Show back in 2015, on the eve of the first Republican presidential debate of the 2016 election cycle. At the time, Donald Trump’s colourful — often outrageous — campaigning style left pundits wondering whether it was even possible for comedians to compete with a reality so absurd. In an interview with the Guardian, Stewart described his decision to step down as “a combination of the limitations of my brain and a format that is geared towards following an increasingly redundant process, which is our political process. I was just thinking, ‘Are there other ways to skin this cat?’”
After a few promising breaks from progressive consensus — he was an early proponent of the lab-leak theory, for one — Stewart must have ultimately decided that there weren’t other ways to skin the cat. He returned to Apple TV with The Problem with Jon Stewart, a title that proved more apt than the star could possibly have intended. Episode after episode, Stewart slogged and sermonised his way through the latest hot-button political issues — from “misinformation” to “gender-affirming care” to “the problem with white people”. At times, his desperation to recapture his old appeal was palpable. I kept thinking of Jeb Bush’s fatal stumble on the campaign trail, when he implored the audience to “please clap”.
Then there was the sneering superficiality of Stewart’s treatment of a medical scandal I’ve studied closely, which he framed as the brave “new dawn of gender and sex complexity, where those who don’t fit into a simple binary are meant to be seen with humanity”. Stewart studiously avoided asking any of the obvious questions about the sudden profusion of (often objectively laughable) gender identities — despite his usual commitment to asking the obvious questions — and then mocked a caricature of that which he had not bothered to understand. The more I watched, the more the laughter in the studio sounded canned. Or maybe it was just hard to imagine anyone responding so enthusiastically to what Stewart had to offer.
As someone who grew up watching The Daily Show, Stewart’s trajectory over the past few years has been painful to observe — and not just in the way that any bombed comedy set pains the audience. Stewart’s return to comedy raises some uncomfortable personal questions. Did I change? Did he change? In other words: what was I laughing at all those years? Was Stewart always so righteous and insufferable? Had I failed to see it because I’d been righteous and insufferable in just the same way? Were his interviews always so predictable? Somehow, the man whose show I couldn’t miss became the man whose every monologue I could have scripted had I been bored enough to try.
But whether Stewart changed or I did, the times certainly have. It turns out strict orthodoxy is bad for comedians and other living things. Stewart’s return to the late-night circuit is easy to understand. Jon Stewart has a problem (no show). The Daily Show has a problem (no host). But the problem with late-night comedy won’t be so easily fixed. For that, we need climate change.
Eliza Mondegreen is a graduate student in psychiatry and the author of Writing Behavior on Substack.
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SubscribeIt’s much easier to be funny when you actually believe in the righteousness of what you are doing. Increasingly, comedians are on the left because comedians are supposed to be on the left, not because they share the ever more unhinged beliefs being promoted there. Eventually they’ll begin to ask themselves: ‘if Ricky and Dave can do it, why not me?’
Bingo. The Crisis of Authenticity is what drives Left Wing Ideology. Leftism doesn’t really believe in anything except performing outrage on behalf of the “powerless.” Once they achieve power, it’s just a performance of outrage. That’s why they keep cycling through outrages. How often do you hear them talk about “Police Brutality”
anymore? How can people be so passionate about an issue and then literally just stop.
It’s symptomatic of a society turned servile.
Jon Stewart, and others like him, are a prime example why it is important right from the get-go not to go along with lies such as gender ‘spectrums’, climate alarmism, and structural racism. The more publicly you go along with it, the more devastating the blowback when you inevitably say or do something that betrays your true thoughts. We’re slowly starting to see this with those who demanded that the government enforce illegal COVID vaccines and lockdowns upon us.
-Theodore Dalrymple
Maybe Mr Dalrymple is right, maybe not. In the passage above I would replace each ‘communist’ with another word – ‘political’. The message from Unherd is: ….Everyone lies but what can you do?
That’s a very good question, Caradog.
Personally I believe the answer is to ‘cultivate our own gardens’ as Voltaire so eloquently put it.
The difference is that no other Authoritarian or Totalitarian ideology other than Communist variants hold themselves out as liberating and emancipatory “underclass” movements. These are movements that require continuously expanding layers of State bureacracy to “implement reforms” on behalf of the “Oppressed.”
Any movement that claims to be bottom-up but requires top-down implementation is selling you a load of nonsense. Notice Marx, Engels and Lenin spent very little time on achieving “the withering away of the state.”
The only thing that “withers away” is the distinction between State and Corporation.
That’s a very good description of the totalitarian-creep taking place.
An excellent biography of Lenin by Robert Payne. For anyone who seeks to understand Marxist-inspired communism as introduced to the world by Lenin, this is essential reading. Of particular note is [my paraphrasing] Lenin’s approach to communist government – i.e. once the proletariat has delivered the revolution, a small (c.90, if I remember my reading of the book) coterie of supremely powerful intellectuals would seize and then maintain control by means of terror. No notion of democracy here. This is the vile philosophy that has poisoned the West and produced monsters like Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Kim Jong Un and other tyrants who’ve created so much death and misery in the world and to whom the word ‘freedom’ is restricted to themselves.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Death-Lenin-Robert-Payne-ebook/dp/B07RZ5X2H8
You forgot to mention Pinochet, Henry Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz, Hitler, Milton Friedman, Jacob Zuma, Donald Rumsfeld, Michel Martelly, Richatd Perle, Benjamin Netanyahu , Alberto Fujimori, Papa Doc Duvalier, and a host of others who weren’t of the communist persuasion.
No, not “everyone.” There are many honest people in the world. They just aren’t in politics, or late night talk show hosts for that matter.
The advertising industry is capitalist propaganda writ small. In my study of capitalist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of capitalist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine the advertising industry, it has the same effect and is intended to.
Nobody is stopping you from organizing a worker collective or a Commune. By all means, have at it. The difference between a Capitalist Society and a Socialist Society is that only the Capitalist society let’s you pick the one you want.
What part of ‘capitalist propaganda’ humiliates its audience? It sometimes humiliates the brand that’s involved, as Bud Light and Disney have found out, but those are own goals. Consumers are NOT forced, or even expected, to remain silent.
Advertising is designed to persuade but that’s as far it can go. No one is forced to buy the product in question and certainly no one is forced into silence.
Are you serious? Ever seen an advert for mouthwash? Furniture? Clothing? Exercise?
It’s a common trope in car adverts to compare the dumpy man driving an old car to the younger guy with an attractive wife and happy family in his new vehicle.
In which one of those scenarios are you compelled to buy the product? In which one are you ridiculed publicly for not buying it? People are funny about this; they don’t find ham-handed tactics persuasive enough to reward those ideas with their money.
Do you know, I’ve never in all my fifty plus years seen an ad like that. Can you provide an example?
Oreos. I am forced to buy them.
What part of “no force” do you not get. Honestly, your willful ignorance is annoying. Please stop it, for your sake and ours.
Capitalism*, business, and trade is how nation-states communicate peaceably with each other. Our capitalist system is by no means perfect, but without it we will collapse into war.
*Capitalism is not the same as corporatism (private companies dictating public policy), which is the system we seem to be entering and the one you may be referring to.
Ya. I think we’ve moved a long long way from the free market.
I think you may be wasting your time trying to persuade Unheard Reader. They can’t be wrong and so they argue endlessly when they clearly are.
Today I shall mostly be talking c**p
So Communism and Advertising are merely two sides of the same coin? I wasn’t aware (nor was anyone else) that advertising was a political system that has forcibly murdered millions of people throughout its history, and has a uninterrupted record of failure wherever it’s been tried…
Current Year ”socialism” is just a consumerist social fashion, which you have unthinkingly absorbed by social osmosis (including advertizing), so the joke’s on you.
”Capitalist propaganda” wouldn’t be required, because buying unnecessary items and indulging your baser desires doesn’t require much persuasion.
Brands compete through advertizing to indulge said desires – that doesn’t mean that they are propagandists for a well-defined system.
Your critique of commercial advertising has merit. However if you would read histories of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or even 1984, you would learn something about forced public acceptance of state lies.
Why are you posting about advertising, that’s government propaganda you’re talking about, not Madison Avenue.
You belittle the gravity of what a great man was saying with this silliness.
“Climate alarmism”? Try learning some science.
I’m in the same boat. I used to love Jon Stewart while he was on and even enjoyed John Oliver up until 2016. Even though at the time I was heavily Anti-Trump, Oliver became increasingly insufferable in his self-righteousness and his disdain for people who didn’t agree with him, the more likely a Trump presidency became. The change happened so quickly that I don’t think it is I who had changed when I stopped consuming that garbage. Left-wing comedy – along with the politics themselves – had simply run their course, and revealed themselves to me for what they really are.
It became contemptuous instead of generous.
No it’s always been contemptuous. I hated it when the conservatives who didn’t know better would let themselves be Shanghai’d by gotcha ‘interviews’. I’m a conservative, but hubby is a lib and watched it every night. It was never generous except to its own side.
Trump, and Brexit in the UK, seemed to unhinge a large number of people and organisations round about that time, and then #metoo and COVID required them to remain in dour bunkers according to political affiliation, with genuine humour for its own sake taking a back seat to using jokes as a vehicle for virtue signalling. I’m thinking particularly about the Guardian, whose politics aren’t really my cup of tea, but it’s free, and it had some entertaining columnists (Marina Hyde, John Crace) whose obsessions with Brexit just hamstrung their humour. Maybe it was the same with John Oliver.
The comedian-cum-pundit – which Stewart somewhat archetypes – I’ve always found rather execrable. They pontificate and then immediately hide behind their trade as a joke maker, disclaiming any intellectual accountability. When finding themselves in an actual conversation with someone armed with facts, they become unserious and appeal to the audience for interference.
Yes, the old “but I’m just a comedian” defense. He straddles between dual personae, becoming the sneering judge or foppish fool whenever convenient. It’s a nasty hypocrisy.
Yes, Stewart has always been this insufferable with a few comedic moments sprinkled in to break up the predictable. He is as reliable a tool of the left as the average American journo. The people who find him funny largely do so because they approve his choice of targets, not because he’s particularly clever.
I was a huge fan of “The Daily Show” when Craig Kilborn – who really looked like a glossy news anchor – was the head of the team. We even went to see the show live in NYC (studio was freezing, we weren’t allowed to put on our coats, and guest Suzanne Somers was about 5′ 1″ and 100 pounds). Kilborn did what he was meant to do: make it look like he wasn’t in on the joke.
When Stewart took over, I was baffled. His deadpan, cynical looks to the audience said from the get go that he was going to deliver one-sided snark. It went downhill from there and became unwatchable as Stewart became addicted to the clapter and made it all about him.
Doesn’t really matter. The target audience has changed. They’re not going to watch an old man babble on their grandparents’ TV sets. They’re watching podcasts and TikTok dance videos.
Kilby was a legend. Absolutely hilarious.
“Has Stewart always so righteous and insufferable?”
You didn’t notice?
“Had I failed to see it because I’d been righteous and insufferable in just the same way?”
That is a strong possibility
Note to the author: the Daily Show struggled with Trevor Noah at the helm (in both viewer numbers and quality). I kept watching for a few days but gave up quickly even though I had liked Noah as a guest-comic before Stewart left. I might try the same with the old boy but won’t hold my breath.
With President Joe Biden slurring his words so often and stumbling around stages, we are living in wonderful times for late-night comedy.
How could Jon Stewart miss? It is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Only, of course, Stewart would never comment on Biden’s incoherence and incompetence as that would be a “threat to democracy”.
I have not watched late night comedy in years.
It stopped being funny and just became a predictable script of left wing, nasty, sarcasm. If you are an old, white, progressive who is angry at the world, sure…at least you can commiserate. For the rest of us it is just boring torture.
Even Saturday Night Live sucks.
At least Bill Maher is still around and pretty good.
In fairness, SNL has always sucked. It created stars like Eddie Murphy despite itself.
Interesting you say that because I now find him repellant.
Greg Gutfeld on Fox is the new Late Night King. The essay on the not-very-heralded return of Stewart would have been more insightful had the author entertained why Gutfeld is hitting it out of the park.
Yes, he was always insufferable. Now he is Krusty the Klown trying to be serious, or like Madonna still trying to be sexy.
He was never funny. He carefully toed the party line. What is missing is the Pavlovian response and shares from a slavish media. That made him seem funny. His ratings at Comedy Central were never spectacular.
Also over the orthodoxy. Jon used to be funny and insightful. But like you, I’ve changed. Gender ideology changed my perspective and my politics. I see it as growth. Jon appears stuck trying to rebirth a career on ideas only the unscrupulous and unstable can tolerate.
You’re not funny unless what you’re saying connects somehow with the truth.
That’s why left wing elites like Stewart and Oliver (never understood What America liked about that reject from the UK) are not funny. They’re not truthful.
I watched Stewart once and never again. The answers to the writer’s questions are—yes, he always was that righteous and insufferable, and let me add, smug. And yes, his audience probably could be described the same way. But rather than insulting people I haven’t met, maybe I should instead say that his audience enjoyed seeing him ridicule people and causes they didn’t like. There may have been some element of “the enemy of my enemy” at work.