Could Jon Stewart Have Put Sunday Morning Shows Out of Their Misery?
He reportedly turned down an offer to host Meet the Press. If so, too bad for NBC--but probably best for him
According to New York Magazine, before NBC hired Chuck Todd to take over Meet the Press, the network wanted to revive its flagging Sunday show by hiring a professional comedian to host it. Sounds like the sort of desperate, cynical move Jon Stewart would make fun of on The Daily Show. Except, says New York, that host was Jon Stewart:
Before choosing Todd, NBC News president Deborah Turness held negotiations with Jon Stewart about hosting Meet the Press, according to three senior television sources with knowledge of the talks. One source explained that NBC was prepared to offer Stewart virtually “anything” to bring him over. “They were ready to back the Brinks truck up,” the source said. A spokesperson for NBC declined to comment. James Dixon, Stewart’s agent, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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Jon Stewart is one of the reasons the Sunday Mouse Circus is dying. Because he and a few others do the job teh Sunday Shows are supposed to be doing -- pointing a camera at the grotesque, lethal dysfunction which Conservatives politicians and media have inflicted on this country and asking why the fuck are we allowing this to continue -- and doing it infinitely better than any one of them ever could.
But of course, the work Jon does -- planting his feet and telling the truth with twist of funny -- is the absolute mirror opposite of the business model of the network's gasbag cavalcade. The two cannot occupy the same space at the same time without something going "boom", and I suspect that the real bosses -- all of the defense and oil companies whose advertising dollars keep the Mouse Circus afloat -- would much rather watch John McCain get his 1,000th televised Sunday Morning tongue bath than watch Jon Stewart tear down the entire bath house one moldy brick at a time.
I have no idea if Salon will be replacing the big hole "Tom" leaves behind, but based on the recent trends in media consolidation, mindless deck-chair-shuffling, the mad dash towards the nonexistent Center, and the frantic jettisoning of anyone or anything outside of the charmed circle who has the temerity to want "money" in exchange for their services, I would not be surprised to see, say, a "Mallard Fillmore" or maybe just a one-page-per-week reprinting of every Chick Tract ever published being brought on-line to fill the Tomorrow void.
Unless of course they can throw enough cash in the air to coax an edgy, sure-fire powerhouse like "Dondi" or "Cathy" out of the grave of retirement (although given "Cathy"'s last strip I would consider the latter unlikely.)
On the upside, Glenn Greenwald will still be on hand to mete out brutal retribution against people who disagree with him.
In ‘Daily Show’ Role on 9/11 Bill, Echoes of Murrow
By BILL CARTER and BRIAN STELTER Published: December 26, 2010
... Though the scale of the impact of Mr. Stewart’s telecast on public policy may not measure up to the roles that Mr. Murrow and Mr. Cronkite played, Mr. Thompson said, the comparison is legitimate because the law almost surely would not have moved forward without him. “He so pithily articulated the argument that once it was made, it was really hard to do anything else,” Mr. Thompson said.
The Dec. 16 show focused on two targets. One was the Republicans who were blocking the bill; Mr. Stewart, in a clear effort to shame them for hypocrisy, accused them of belonging to “the party that turned 9/11 into a catchphrase.” The other was the broadcast networks (one of them being CBS, the former home of Mr. Murrow and Mr. Cronkite), which, he charged, had not reported on the bill for more than two months.
“Though, to be fair,” Mr. Stewart said, “it’s not every day that Beatles songs come to iTunes.” (Each of the network newscasts had covered the story of the deal between the Beatles and Apple for their music catalog.) Each network subsequently covered the progress of the bill, sometimes citing Mr. Stewart by name. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, credited Mr. Stewart with raising awareness of the Republican blockade.
Eric Ortner, a former ABC News senior producer who worked as a medic at the World Trade Center site on 9/11, expressed dismay that Mr. Stewart had been virtually alone in expressing outrage early on.
“In just nine months’ time, my skilled colleagues will be jockeying to outdo one another on 10th anniversary coverage” of the attacks, Mr. Ortner wrote in an e-mail. “It’s when the press was needed most, when sunlight truly could disinfect,” he said, that the news networks were not there. ...
Jon Stewart had to put one of his core principles out of its misery like a Downer cow (from Salon)
As Stewart persuasively argued, "We've all bought into the idea that the conflict in the country is left and right, Republicans and Democrats." Furthermore, an insidious, attention-grabbing news media "amplifies a division that I don’t think is the right fight ... [because] both sides have their way of shutting down debate."
"It's become tribal," he declared, and the major culprits aren't Tea Partying loons -- they're the CNNs and Foxes and, yes, MSNBCs of the world. "The problem with a 24-hour news cycle is it's built for a particular thing -- 9/11," he explained, noting sagely that "O.J.'s not going to kill someone every day." Meanwhile, "The real conflict is corruption vs. non-corruption, extremists vs. non-extremists."
The Maddow interview was a stunning example of the increasing greatness of Stewart, a man who, unlike every faux or ostensibly real cable news pontificator out there not named Anderson Cooper, is distinguished by his compassion-rich lack of objectivity. Other pundits may have opinions and stances galore, but few possess Stewart's fearless embrace of that oft-overlooked essential quality -- empathy. ...
He was at times maddeningly indulgent, granting reasonable doubt to George Bush for our ongoing nightmare in Iraq and Afghanistan by asking, "What is their intention? Is it to save American lives?" He questioned how helpful it is "if the place you start is 'he’s an evil man who lied to us' ... I do think he believes Sadaam was dangerous." And he told liberal America, to its intense discomfort, "You have to examine your own orthodoxy."
Jon's problem is that, for all of his formidable comedic and observational skills, he is still in an almost catatonic denial about the country in which he lives. He obviously, deeply wants us to be something more than we are. Something better than we are. A place where people with different but sincere and well-reasoned beliefs can fight hard, come together afterward to figure out a good-enough compromise, and then move on to the next thing.
You know who else wants that? Every fucking Liberal I know.
But this simply is not that country: not some feisty middle-brow Camelot with a couple of equally wacky, equally flawed and equally honorable political philosophies contending in an arena with rules and referees. Instead, this is a country where one political party is ruled by loathesome men with grotesque motives on behalf of a tiny clique of plutocrats and bulwarked by an electoral army which is kept constantly tweaked to the point of near-riot by a carefully-cultivated media cocktail of rage, ignorance, bigotry and God.
What Jon cannot face is that he will never have the country he wants -- that we all want -- by clevering and cajoling and joking and reasoning it into existence.
We've tried that for the last 30 years.
Facts bounce off these people.
Reason. Does. Not. Work.
What Jon Stewart seems unwilling to face squarely is the simple fact that this nation cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free. And that for the nation he wants-us-to-be to stand any chance of rising up out of the rubble of what-we-are, the Right as it is constituted today will have to be electorally and culturally destroyed, root and branch.
In the face of the absolute depravity of the Right and the absolute cowardice of the Villager Center, Jon Stewart showed remarkable courage by the simple act of telling the truth on teevee.
But that's the problem, Jon.
The world you want will never, ever come until you take on Capone.