Fans like their dose of 'Daily' news Stewart dishes some seriously funny stuff
By Gary Levin
NEW YORK -- Let news shows have their pontificating pundits and their what's-it-all-mean blather this election night. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, which prizes its role as a ''fake news'' show, is going a different route.
''We're having a panel discussion with a gentleman who was a body stand-in for Arnold Schwarzenegger; Ronny Cox, who was a villain in Total Recall; and Marc Singer, who played the Beastmaster,'' Stewart says, ''certainly to get their perspective on what a Schwarzenegger win would mean to them.''
And The Daily Show's team of veteran correspondents, including Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell, will camp out at candidates' headquarters. Or pretend to, anyway.
It's all in a day's work for The Daily Show, which airs Mondays through Thursdays at 11 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central.
The show is taped at a small studio on Manhattan's far West Side, where 100 boisterous fans give Stewart a rousing welcome after a warm-up by writer Paul Mercurio.
An announcer in serious tones begins the show amid blaring trumpets ''from Comedy Central's world news headquarters in New York.'' The opening segment riffs on real-life news, recently finding humor in such topics as the outing of a CIA agent and espionage at Guantanamo Bay.
The rest of the show often includes a remote segment from one of the show's ''senior correspondents,'' who make unsuspecting sources part of their comedy conspiracy, or a diatribe from commentator Lewis Black, who told viewers that Congress made a ''huge mistake'' by quickly enacting legislation to back the FTC's ''do not call'' registry. A celebrity guest -- from movie-hawking Jack Black to MSNBC's Joe Scarborough -- rounds out the show, though Stewart says those segments are the equivalent of a ''smoke break,'' saving writers from coming up with five more minutes of comedy in the 22-minute show.
''One of the joys of being fake news is we don't actually have to break news; you can just react to something you found interesting the day before,'' Stewart says in an interview in his cluttered, brick-walled office. He has changed from the suit and tie he wears for the taping to casual long-sleeved T and jeans. ''We're not like a lot of your news organizations, with their immediacy,'' he told viewers on a recent show. ''We're a 24-hour news channel, if you consider it over two months and add up all the half-hours.''
Yet last week, The Daily Show jumped all over news that candidate Schwarzenegger apologized after the Los Angeles Times reported that he had groped or sexually harassed women. Guest and Arnold campaigner Rob Lowe called the candidate ''a born leader and a born winner,'' but Stewart demurred, forsaking the newsman's objectivity. ''I'm a complete outsider, but he does appear to be in over his head in the whole idea of, uh, running a state.''
Is it possible that Daily Show viewers -- most of them male and most in their 20s -- get their daily news from a comedy show that exists to mock those who make it?
Stewart is dubious of studies that suggest late-night TV is a big influence. ''I'd be awfully surprised given the magnitude of media available. Younger people are far more inundated with information than we ever were. We're suffocating in information.''
That deluge is how the show's 11 writers dig for comedy.
A researcher combs through major newspapers, the Associated Press and cable news channels, and 10 writers brainstorm on ''headline material,'' the lead news segment.
By 11:15 a.m. they meet with Stewart, and by 12:30 they have written jokes for the night's show.
After a rehearsal, the show tapes at 6:30 in front of an audience.
Says co-executive producer Ben Karlin: ''We do our best work when the public's ears are all perked up to what's happening in the world of news, which is why the Iraq war was so good for us''-- comedically speaking.
A favorite target is the Fox News Channel, but Stewart says that's not liberal bias: Republicans -- and conservative-leaning news outlets -- are simply richer comic territory. ''What makes them successful is also what makes them mockable, and that is they have the clearest point of view of any of the networks. It's harder to mock something that doesn't know what it is.''
Stewart enjoys the show's ''creative freedom'' and has signed a contract that will keep him there through the 2004 election. Yet he concedes he's restless. ''I like doing different things by nature.'' He was a contender for ABC's late-night job that went to Jimmy Kimmel, and he is considered a potential David Letterman replacement.
Still, he isn't pining just yet. ''I look at the late-night guys and what they've been able to build up over time, and I must say I'm very admiring of it; I just don't know if I can do it, personality-wise.''