[lbo-talk] chavez, bush, the devil and jon stewart

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

J. Tyler wrote:
> And Stewart cannot for a second take refuge in the "comedian" label.
> He's funny, yes.  But he's not a comedian.  He's a political figure
> and satirist, and he is that by very deliberate choice.  As an
> American, he has no business taking on Chavez, except as a media
> pawn to advance American imperial adventures there, which I am sure
> Stewart does not wish to be (and which is why I characterize it as a
> mistake).  If he wants to be serious (and, make no mistake about it,
> he does), he should focus on only one thing: the U.S. government.

At his entertaining appearance on CSPAN, at a journalists' breakfast,
Jon Stewart discusses his role on his show:
http://www.c-span.org/Search/basic.asp?BasicQueryText=jon+stewart&SortBy=date

We should keep in mind that The Daily Show is dependent on mainstream
media for setting context... and people like Stewart and Rob Corddry are
very explicit about this. They poke fun at people who take their show
too seriously, as that's emphatically not the role they end the show to
fill. If they were an activists' show and not a comedy show, they
wouldn't be where they are.

Otherwise, we'd already have the Chomsky Channel.

Tayssir