Getting Really Stewed

Normally, last night I would have posted the video of Monday’s The Daily Show, since that’s when Jon Stewart hosts.  I didn’t though, for a specific reason – I disliked it so much that I had a visceral reaction to it.  It’s not that I disagreed with what they were saying, but I thought it was so off-base to the point of irresponsible.

To be clear, I didn’t think it was all “wrong.”  Some was spot on.  Just like I thought their show the night of the debate, done live, was spot on.  I posted that here  -- and although it was brutal to President Biden, it was deserved, and (importantly) Stewart was just as harsh on Trump.

What The Daily Show did on Monday night was look at the reactions by those who have been critical of immediate knee-jerk calls for Biden to drop out of the race, like those done by the New York Times and the cover of The New Yorker, and elsewhere.  And that’s fair for the show, too.  Even though I don't agree with the instant calls to drop out, (since that's not only reacting with little information, but also no change could even be made officially ​for almost two months at the convention), Stewart’s criticism about these defenses of President Biden were sharp and well-reasoned, and I don’t disagree with his concern and point he was making.

The problem was that in making his point, Stewart transcended argument and became whiney and almost thin-skinned, as if he’d been personally attacked, even though there’s been no criticism of The Daily Show.  And personal as my opinion, of course, is, I don’t say this solely as a subjective reaction to Monday's broadcast, but because --objectively -- in the first half-hour of the show (before the closing interview), The Daily Show spent it almost entirely making the argument and showing video why President Biden should drop out...devoting only about two minutes to Trump, and the remaining 28 minutes (counting commercials) shredding President Biden.

That’s not arguing, that's not making a response.  That’s a screed.  And an irresponsible one, because there’s a reasonable likelihood that President Biden will stay in the race (rightly or wrongly), and therefore either he or Trump will become leader of the country.  And, if so, The Daily Show made the case for 28 minutes out of 30 why it shouldn’t be President Biden.  And honestly, I can't believe that Jon Stewart or perhaps anyone on the show believes the alternative should win.  But that's pretty much the argument they made.  There were good jokes, and a funny sketch.  It just was cringe-worthy after a while.  And “a while” was maybe 10 minutes.  The point was absolutely valid.  And it should have been made.  But it could have been made impactfully in that amount of time.  Everyone would have gotten it, and clearly.  But going on and on and on and on, for 28 minutes, made the show and Stewart come across as something they never are – insecure and defensive.  To the detriment of the presidential race.

It’s one thing to make a valid argument (which Stewart did), but it’s another to then veer off into directions that not only are unsupportable, but almost completely miss the point they thought they were addressing. 

Here's what I mean.

There were three main issues that Stewart tried to make that I found utterly inexplicable he was making them. Because he's smarter than that. Yet he let his run-on harangue get in the way of sharper, critical thinking.

The first was when Stewart responded to people complaining that those who call for President Biden to drop out are not doing the same about Trump.  And Stewart’s ridicule of such complaints was to joke about how, “Oh, my, no one has complained about Trump for the past seven years??!!”  And the audience roared.  Except – that’s not the point.  No one has said that the media has not ever addressed bad things about Trump.  Of course they have, a lot -- not enough, for me, but they have.  That's not in question.  The point is that they haven’t called for him to drop out of the race…like they are with President Biden.  Those are two totally separate issues:  reporting on someone’s problems and making an editorial call for them to stop running for president.  And Stewart didn't grasp that very easy distinction.  And if anyone thinks that's nitpicking and the same thing -- I would note that the media has criticized President Biden in the past, as well, but none of those who immediately have called for him to drop out decided that since they'd reported his problems before, well, that's good enough and there's no need to say anything more and call for him to drop out now.  Even they themselves knew it wasn't the same thing.  (I will add that this includes The Daily Show which, for all its past criticism of both Trump and Biden, did not call for Trump to drop out of the race, despite his early dementia, felony convictions and delusional lying throughout the debate, only President Biden.)

The second major issue was when Stewart tried to explain why people are so upset about President Biden at the debate, but not about Trump’s debate performance.  His argument (and a bizarre, unthinking argument it was) was that the reason is because Biden didn’t live up to what was expected of him, while Trump did live up to what we all expected of him.  After all, we thought Trump was an out-of-control liar, and that’s what he was during the debate.  I stared at the TV aghast.  Seriously???!!  That’s it?!!  No, sorry, that is not living up to expectations, it is living down to them.  You don’t get bonus points for people thinking you are a white supremacist, pathologically lying fascist and proving them right.  You are supposed to be shredded for it.  But not to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.  To them, Trump did a good job being his malignant narcissist self, so he’s off the hook.  Just Trump being Trump.  Sorry, no, that is normalizing dysfunction.

And the final issue Stewart made that was mind-boggling was that Trump was not the only existential threat to democracy – because electing an elderly man who had cognitive problems was a threat, as well.  I was flabbergasted.  That is just so thoroughly wrong-headed.  Trump is an existential threat to democracy – because he has said he is, because he has said he wants to be a dictator, because he has said he wants to throw out some of the U.S. Constitution, and because the people he will be surrounding himself with will support and enable him in those efforts.   Trump is someone who has has been convicted of 34 felonies, was found liable by a jury of rape, convicted of fraud, echoes Adolf Hitler, wants to build internment camps, and expert psychiatrists and psychologists have written at length that he is showing signs of early dementia, which is not normal, like old age, but a degenerative disease.  That is why he is an existential threat to democracy.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, is none of those things.  He is someone who has spent 50 years in government defending democracy, and is someone who – if it turns out he weakens and flails -- has surrounded himself by mature experts in their fields who support the defense of democracy at home and abroad and will keep government running smoothly...which is how a functioning government actually is supposed to work.  That's why there is a cabinet, and departments.  You just hope the President puts good, decent people in place, even if he's the sharpest President ever.  Further, President Biden doesn’t want to end NATO, nor give Russia an OK to attack our allies, nor praise autocratic despots like Vladmir Putin, Kim Jong-Un and Viktor Orban.  And if the very worst happens, and he can’t continue to do the job, then the 25th Amendment will most surely kick in, and the Constitutional line of succession will kick in and VP Kamala Harris will take over as president.  Joe Biden is not only not an existential threat to democracy in the U.S, he is not a threat to it in the slightest.  And that difference between should be pretty obvious to most reasonable people.

And Jon Stewart is a very reasonable person.  And thoughtful and insightful.  And funny.  Those on The Daily Show are reasonable and funny, too.  It’s a very good show, it’s smart, very funny and well-done, and I enjoy it even when I don’t agree with everything in it.  And on Monday, I even agreed with some of it and thought, as well, that they did a good job on some things I didn’t agree with.  But – for the core of the show, for the bulk of those 28 minutes out of 30 – they lost their minds, went on a screed, were missing the very points they were trying to make, and were irresponsible.

It happens.  I’m sure the show and Stewart will be more on track next week, and the weeks following, even when I don’t agree with it.  But on Monday, they did thoughtless damage.  And if they can call out others for doing so, the same holds for themselves.