The Problem With Jon Stewart
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report appear quite similar. They actually could not be more different.
As a teenager growing up in the 2000s, I was an avid fan of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Yes, really (pls no bully).
On the surface, Comedy Central’s two political satire shows seemed very similar: They both aired between eleven and midnight. They both had rock-and-roll theme songs. They both were filmed in New York with a small studio audience. They both had a left-wing host supported by a left-wing writing staff.
But The Daily Show always had a different “feel” to it than The Colbert Report. Not just because Stephen Colbert was playing a character and Jon Stewart wasn’t. And not just because Stewart’s set was blue and Colbert’s was red. After watching old clips of both shows, I’ve come to realize just how different they were. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report had completely different theses regarding the interworkings of politics. I’ll explain it below:
A lot of this stuff is fake
A lot of US politics is, for lack of a better word, fake.
The United States operates under a federal system. There’s the local level, which administers key services like policing, education, and garbage collection. There’s the state level, which administers roads and higher education. And then there’s the federal level, which administers national defense and entitlement programs such as Social Security.
The most important executive in your life is not the President of the United States— it’s your mayor, followed by your governor. Although the federal government collects more taxes from your paycheck than your state government, your state legislature actually administers the government services which affect your quality of life. The federal government even distributes about a sixth of its revenue to the states.
And yet, the workings of the federal government enjoy the vast majority of national media coverage while local media is in decline. Even though there’s certainly a market for high-quality local journalism, it’s cheaper to broadcast the same news to 300 million people than to have hundreds of small organizations for a million people each. For federal news, the movers and shakers all live in one place (Washington DC) but affect a large target audience (our viewers in the United States and around the world). Because CNN, MSNBC, and Fox need to serve the whole United States to maximize profitability, they need to cover the federal government since it’s something every American can relate to.
Furthermore, a lot of federal lawmaking isn’t even done by Congress, but rather by career bureaucrats in the civil service. The number of Americans who can name the director of the EPA or ATF is vanishingly small, but those people enjoy as much lawmaking power as Congress does, if not more.
Federal US politics, as portrayed by the news media, is therefore far less important than is implied to be at its best and completely fake at its worst. Because Congress has delegated much of what little power it had in the first place to the executive branch, it has to pretend like it’s still important. The last remaining vestige of legislative power seems to be the US Senate, which cannot delegate its powers to approve treaties and confirm judges.
There’s no better example of completely fake politics than the debt ceiling showdown we seem to have every two years. First, we start to hear about deadlines, then we hear about how Congress won’t negotiate, then, finally, we hear about the disastrous consequences of a US government default. And then — at the eleventh hour, every single time— the debt ceiling gets raised. The question of What happens if the government defaults? is like asking, What happens if the Washington Generals beat the Harlem Globetrotters?
The debt ceiling is actually the least loathsome example of completely fake politics. After all, the debt ceiling showdowns only waste time and attention. Many political battles are puppet shows to extract money from unsuspecting Americans. The two best examples of this are the Republicans’ so-called “Stop the Steal” campaign and the Democrats’ Russia delusions.
If you had a cell phone and lived in the United States after the last presidential election, you were no doubt bombed with text messages from “Ted Cruz here” or “Kristi Noem here” (which, curiously, didn’t have a Texas or South Dakota area code) asking you to donate money to the “legal defense fund” to challenge the election results. If you actually read the fine print, the “legal defense fund” was not what was advertised. Of the fifty million dollars raised after the election, just ten million was actually spent on legal challenges, with the rest going towards ads. While the Republicans were filing spurious lawsuits and holding rallies, the GSA was copying the keys to the White House for the next administration. It was all just a puppet show to make money.
The same exact thing was true about the Russia investigation, which created a whole cottage industry of books, podcasts, and even television shows about the latest from Robert Mueller. The end result of the Russia probe was a huge disappointment for everyone interested.
Jon Stewart knew it was fake
Have you ever noticed that when a guest on a cable news show is asked a question, he gives his answer immediately without pausing to think? Have you ever noticed how fast cable news hosts and guests talk, but when those same people appear on the canceled Charlie Rose or not-yet-canceled Joe Rogan, the pace of the conversation is slower and much more thoughtful?
Take a few seconds to think about the implications of this.
Cable news is basically pro-wrestling for suburbanites. It’s not exactly “fake” — what you see before you really is happening. But it’s extremely refined, and it exists mostly to entertain and make money. Jon Stewart knew and understood this very well.
The most illustrative clip of Jon Stewart’s worldview isn’t found in The Daily Show, but rather on Crossfire, the old CNN debate show hosted by Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson1.
Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire has been built up to be more than it really was. He went on the show, made a few jokes, and that was it. There’s no real knockout blow delivered here. The clip does contain many little hints about the way he thinks the world works.
First, notice what he’s wearing. Carlson and Begala are both wearing suits, while Stewart is wearing a t-shirt and sweater. Contrast this to Colbert’s various appearances on The O’Reilly Factor, during which he’d wear a necktie. Colbert is sending the signal that while he (putting it lightly) disagrees with O’Reilly, he still thinks appearing on his show calls for dressing professionally. Meanwhile, Stewart isn’t even paying lip service to cable news, as shown by his dressed-down appearance.
When Carlson asks Stewart if John Kerry was the best the Democrats could offer, Stewart responds that, according to the political system where the candidate with the most votes wins, he was. Seconds later, he says that candidates who are never going to win are freer to speak because they won’t have to carry media baggage in the general election cycle. Stewart asks them to “stop hurting America” and says they are on the “side of the corporations and politicians.”
He’s completely right about cable news, by the way. Stewart himself never explains why cable news is bad, but his point is made for him when Tucker Carlson interrupts him with a “we have to go to commercial now.”
Jon Stewart, his writing staff, and his correspondents are all solidly on the left, and this was reflected in The Daily Show’s content. But the real focus of the show wasn’t politicians or political parties: it was the media and the political apparatus itself, and how both systems make politicians and political parties behave.
Jon Stewart was also well-aware of the grifter industrial complex. In his 2020 movie Irresistible, there is a plot twist at the end where it’s revealed the citizens of the small town out-grifted the grifters, staging their political climate to attract political consultants and national media to stimulate the local economy with money from political campaigns and Super PACs.
“We don’t look at it that way,” Stewart replied when Paul Begala asked which candidate he found funnier. “The absurdity of the system provides us the most material, and that is best served by the theater of it all.”
Stephen Colbert thought it was all real
The Colbert Report was a very different show. Stephen Colbert played “Stephen Colbert,” a parody of Bill O’Reilly. The chief target of the show, rather than the US political system itself, was the conservative movement and conservative media.
Unlike The Daily Show, which was in the rafters making wisecracks about current events like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppets, The Colbert Report was actually on the stage. Stephen Colbert would appear in character on shows like Meet The Press, a show Jon Stewart has never appeared on. Colbert would do a Doritos-sponsored mock run for US President in 2008, and would go so far as to hold rallies in his hometown of Charleston, SC. Jon Stewart almost never left the studio during The Daily Show. And, last but not least, Colbert would form his own political action committee.
The year was 2011. This was the most ambitious bit of any from The Colbert Report. Colbert did it all, filed the forms, raised the money, ran the ads, and even hired Trevor Potter, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, as his general counsel.
Later, in January 2012, Colbert decides to make a second joke run for the US Presidency. Under federal law, candidates for president are not allowed to operate or coordinate their activities with Super PACs. Naturally, Colbert transfers control of his PAC to his friend and business partner, Jon Stewart.
The next day, Stewart opens his show wearing a tiara, wondering what he’s going to do with all the new Super PAC money. He decides to hire celebrity chef Mario Batali to cook him a meal, then chew his food for him in a lavish display of wealth.
Notice the difference in tone of Colbert’s coverage of the Super PAC versus Stewart’s. Colbert was talking about running ads and influencing elections, whereas Stewart was making a show of blowing the money. When Colbert started the bit, he did so under the assumption that SuperPACs are these big, evil organizations that can persuade the American people into voting for Charles Koch for President by running ads on Iowa daytime TV. But just how effective is money in politics, really?
Hillary Clinton spent twice as much as her opponent to narrowly win the popular vote and lose several traditionally Democratic states.
In 2020, Democratic candidates for Senate outspent their Republican opponents in twenty-one races. They won thirteen of them and lost nine. The eight states Republicans outspent Democrats in were all deep-red states they had no chance of losing.
Truck driver Edward Durr defeated one of the most powerful Democrats in New Jersey and spent less than $200 to do so.
There is a relationship between money spent and elections won, but I believe that this relationship often works in the opposite direction, more than we’d typically imagine. The candidate with the voters who are more numerous and more excited will probably more likely to win in the first place, and therefore will raise more money. Political TV ads are therefore basically just million-dollar yard signs — they don’t really convince anyone, but they are a signal that a campaign has enough momentum to win.
Much has been written about how the Lincoln Project was nothing more than an elaborate grift, but truth be told, the Lincoln Project just got caught. Every political operation in America has the same business model as the Lincoln Project. Political consulting is very lucrative — you typically make ads that don’t convince anyone, you buy some expensive airtime for them, and then you get your 10-15% commission even if your candidate loses.
And there is nothing more the political consultant class loves more than the doomed opposition party candidate in a safe seat. All of these candidates raised millions from unsuspecting donors, run expensive campaigns paying ludicrous sums to political consultants, only to lose by a landslide:
Randy “Iron Stashe” Bryce in Wisconsin’s first district, formerly represented by Paul Ryan. The fightin’ first!
Kimberly Klacik in Maryland’s seventh district. The fightin’ seventh!
John Cummings in New York’s fourteenth district against incumbent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The fightin’ fourteenth!
Amy McGrath in the US Senate race for Kentucky.
Until he found out it was fake
In June 2019, on live television, Kamala Harris would accuse her future running mate of being a racist for opposing busing. Her campaign, of course, had t-shirts to commemorate the moment armed and ready as soon as the debate concluded.
In August 2020, Stephen Colbert would confront her sudden change of heart.
It’s a terrific clip. When Colbert asks her how she overcame her “bedrock principles” to become “pals” with him, she immediately starts laughing.
“It was a debate!” she says while cackling.
“So you don’t mean it?” said Colbert.
“It was a debate!”
Colbert laughs along to save face, but come on, it’s obvious that she’s laughing at him. For a split-second, you can see this reaction on his face, as if he’s just been told that Santa Claus isn’t real.
And can you blame her for laughing? Wouldn’t Hulk Hogan find one of WCW’s own pro-wrestling announcers not knowing the whole thing was staged hilarious?
A very special thank you to @__spicywhite for editing this article.
Tucker Carlson, by the way, has barely aged since 2004!