Unconventional wisdom
'The Daily Show' seizes its chance to be the media's political hotshot in Boston
chicagotribune.com
By Julia Keller
Tribune cultural critic
Published August 2, 2004
If you watched the 2 minutes and 38 seconds of coverage of the Democratic National Convention provided by the broadcast TV networks -- and that seems a generous overstatement of the actual time lavished on last week's event in Boston -- here is a question you may have been left with: "That Obama guy I keep hearing about -- is he Irish?"
And here, conversely, is what echoed in your head if your viewing included a peek at cable channel Comedy Central's "The Daily Show": "Son of a goat herder! He wishes his father got to work in a mill!"
If you watched the cable news networks, you thought, "Gee, why do those folks at the podium keep blathering on when our fearless TV pundits are trying to analyze what they're saying before they finish saying it?"
But if you watched "The Daily Show" every night of the convention, however, you thought such things as, "Wow, I didn't know Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was such a stitch!"
The story of this convention isn't the convention's story. Instead, it is a media story that goes way beyond four days of festivities to anoint Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts as the Democratic challenger to President Bush. It is a story of how a TV show that claims to serve up only "fake news" and has built a devoted following among younger viewers managed, with the willing compliance of the greedy and short-sighted "real news" folks, to increase its profile even more and upend the relationship between media and politics. Maybe for keeps.
Coverage of last week's convention marked the zany zenith of a profoundly important trend. As peppy new media such as Internet blogs and streaming video became major players in bringing people information, the trudging, old-fashioned, grandmotherly coverage -- provided by those familiar broadcast behemoths known as ABC, CBS and NBC -- decided to switch rather than fight.
And switch they did: To "Law & Order" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" and all the other stuff that leaves Americans staring and slack-jawed each evening. The networks forked over to the convention only three prime-time hours (out of a possible dozen) last week, covering only the speeches of Kerry, vice presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and former President Clinton. Thus their audience missed the powerful speech by Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama, candidate for the U.S. Senate, whose inspiring biography -- his Kenyan father herded goats -- drew raves and prompted "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart to posit a humble-origins runoff between Obama and Edwards, son of a millworker.
The networks will be equally stingy with the Republicans later this month, handing over the same miserly three hours and covering only the addresses of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. (You know the counterargument: People who really care can watch cable. But not everybody can or does pay for cable; over-the-air broadcast news is our egalitarian, democratic ideal. Cable typically reaches only about a fifth of the audience that broadcast networks do.)
With broadcast network news slinking off into the corner to die quietly, along came "The Daily Show." It was the biggest show in town, as "The Daily Show" dominated expectations for convention coverage. Print media treated the show's regulars like rock stars. Stewart was interviewed everywhere before he had slung a single zinger about Kerry's chin.
For half an hour each night -- actually 22 minutes when you factor in the commercials, as Stewart likes to remind us -- from Tuesday to Friday, "The Daily Show" dissected the previous night's convention doings. It was a rare case of ludicrously inflated expectations totally and radiantly fulfilled.
There was the show's introduction of the convention, bound to feature "black people; trial lawyers; abortions for everybody; organized labor; godless sodomites" and a final category that changed each night, from "celebrities who believe in their hearts they're helping -- but aren't" to "a parking lot full of egg-shaped hybrid cars." Yet even during a week that "Daily Show" correspondent Stephen Colbert dismissed as "a farce, a scripted, stage-managed event" (sounds as if he eavesdropped on the broadcast networks' strategy sessions to explain why their news departments went AWOL), Colbert and his colleagues came through.
Buried in the mirth were two exceptionally significant observations by Stewart about media -- observations that made you glad about the show's popularity among young Americans, that demographic Holy Grail for advertisers. Last week's "Daily Show" installments were up 20 percent over the same period a year ago, according to ratings figures provided by Comedy Central, and an average of 1.2 million viewers tuned in each night.
The first of Stewart's incisive remarks about the mainstream media's preoccupations came as he chatted on Wednesday's show with Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.
The "real news" people had been falling all over themselves to cover the brief dustup between Teresa Heinz Kerry, the Democratic contender's wife, and an obscure journalist. With a wide-eyed innocence that only he can pull off, Stewart said, "We go to war and the Senate Intelligence Committee comes out with a report and says, `You know that whole thing about the weapons of mass destruction and the links to Al Qaeda? Yeah, sorry about that.' Isn't that what I would imagine to be the scandal of our times -- and yet Teresa Heinz Kerry saying `Shove it' seems to be a bigger deal."
Stewart's second great moment came on Thursday's show after various pundits had skewered the Rev. Al Sharpton for his long, fiery screed about the sacred history of the right to vote -- an issue that, given the problems in the 2000 presidential election, might have a modicum of relevance.
After a clip that showed MSNBC's Chris Matthews drowning out Sharpton's speech with his disapproval, Stewart opined, "Clearly, Chris Matthews and MSNBC had more important things to do than cover the content of a speech that galvanized the convention more than any other." Stewart then rolled a clip of Matthews previewing a chat with an actor from "The Sopranos."
And before you crank out those sourpuss e-mails condemning Stewart for his liberal bias, just remember what he added after the clip from Clinton's speech in which the former president declared, "Strength and wisdom are not opposing values."
Said Stewart: "Unlike, say, power and self-control."
- - -
Backing up Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" are four ace street "reporters" -- all of whom, not surprisingly, have a background in sketch or stand-up comedy. Some of their golden moments at the Democratic convention:
Samantha Bee (a Canadian who has her own all-female sketch comedy troupe) to a bemused delegate: "Think about how it looks -- scheduling this convention so close to the election."
Stephen Colbert (a Chicago Second City alumnus) to flummoxed Democratic pundit James Carville: "This convention is being held hundreds of miles away from ground zero, nearly a month and a half away from 9/11. Isn't that a bit insensitive?"
Rob Corddry (a New York sketch comedy veteran) to some nattily attired fellows: "Excuse me, gentlemen, are you Republicans? You're not? Oh, I saw the bow ties and thought you were Republicans."
Ed Helms (a former New York stand-up comic) to a wary Rep. Richard Gephardt (D., Mo.): "The Democrats are known for having a large tent. And I'm just looking around and I'm wondering: Where are the Republicans?" |
