
Jon Stewart "hailed MoveOn.Org sardonically for '10 years of making even people who agree with you cringe'" a couple of years back, but apparently all is forgiven on the eve of the "Daily Show" host's Oprah- and Arianna-funded, "non-partisan," Beck-baiting "Rally to Restore Sanity," blogged here and here. MoveOn is in full lock-step mode: "We desperately need to restore sanity in this country." Via email: "Party Saturday! Watch the Rally to Restore Sanity & Make Election Calls." No coordination to see here. Above, "media moguls Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post and wealthiest black American according to Forbes Magazine, Oprah Winfrey," kissy kissy May 2009.
"The program has offered 'an important new model of journalism' that abandons traditional ideas about 'objectivity' or 'neutrality' and instead challenges the underlying veracity of official claims and statements," gushes Geoffrey Baym, a starry-eyed "media studies" professor at UNC-Greensboro who wrote "one of the first scholarly studies of 'the Daily Show" in 2005," according to the Washington Post. Where but in the rarefied bubble of Gramsci-addled academia, with its fellow travelers in the nation's "elite" cultural institutions, would anyone buy the notion of the possibility — let alone the desirability — of an "objective" media? Guess they missed the pamphleteer thing:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. – Common Sense, Thomas Paine 1776.
Enter stage left history-challenged "Daily Show" chronicler Professor Baym:
A staple of the show is a clip of a politician or official saying one thing, followed by the same official saying something contradictory a few weeks or months earlier, followed by Stewart with a look of mock-horror or surprise.
What a revelation. Reminds us of our own Sean Bielat's latest Retire Barney campaign ad, "Same Old Tune."
"Nevertheless," continues the WaPo article, "there are many, including [assistant professor at American University Lauren] Feldman, who don't view Stewart and his program as above politics or partisanship." Doh:
"The Daily Show's" popularity soared as a direct result of its relentless satirical broadsides against the Bush administration. While it certainly hasn't ignored Obama's foibles and missteps, the critique seems less frequent and more subdued … At the same time, much of Stewart's media criticism has focused on Fox News, the most overtly conservative of the three cable news networks.
Double doh. These ivory tower types need to get out more into the effervescent world of dissenting voices — the pampleteers of our day — disintermediating the powers that be via a heady mix of old and new media. Had that WaPo reporter been paying attention, he might have googled "jon stewart oprah arianna" and stumbled upon our own take on Jon Stewart's forthcoming celebro-turfing "Rally to Restore Sanity" as just a parlor game for the amusement of the credentialed gentry, the Ruling Class formerly known as the elite.
Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.
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