The Holy Grail of Influence

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http://www.esquire.com/print-this/jon-s ... 1?page=all

I'm talking of course of Jon Stewart and his amazing balancing act, something I've greatly admired and wondered at for years.

I will warn you up front; this is a long article with some coarse language and a lot of unnecessary words, but I highly recommend making the slog and watching some of the embedded clips.. I have no partisan interest here, I don't think the article is any kind of a "take down" or anything like that, I personally like Jon Stewart, I just can't think of a better current example of soft power and how to wield it.

Last edited by Dox47 on 20 Sep 2011, 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting article. I don't know that I agree with all of it, but I'm not exactly privy to any insider information. I must admit that I adore Jon Stewart. I've been a fan since his stand-up days, but I remember wondering if he'd really be a good fit for the Daily Show when he took over for Kilborn who, at the time, I though was doing a pretty good job.

Stewart and the show have evolved significantly over the years. It has gone a bit serious. Some of that, I think, is Stewart's desire to please and the changing times. He knows the audience wants more than just some cheap laughs. We went from a decade of jokes about dress stains to a decade turmoil and war. You gotta adjust the tone.

My favorite line was, "See, he really is just a man, and a man from New Jersey at that." In spite of his tremendous success, that part is still true. In comedy, humility is not just an asset, it's a necessity. Even with multiple awards and ratings through the roof, if you lose your footing, you're done. I think Stewart's fully cognizant of both his roots and his branches. The dance is carefully choreographed.

The political discourse in the United States has become so polarized and so shallow that someone like Jon Stewart has become a pundit.

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan. And I think that he has as good or better a grasp on events as anyone. But his success and celebrity are due, in part, to a political culture that has a stunted attention span. And here's the measure: how many of Jon Stewart's fans will actually read the entire article? How many will get bored 30 paragraphs in? 20? 5? How many will click on the clips and ignore the text?

It is, of course, the right of every citizen to vote in ignorance. But what kind of government does that create?

I agree and it's something I find admirable about him. He's disingenuous about this, which gets annoying, and they called him on it. I'm tired of hearing him refer to himself as "just good enough for basic cable". He has toned down that schtick after getting former presidents Carter and Clinton and current president Obama as guests. It would be just too disingenuous to pretend little influence after having those guests.

But it isn't the guests that impress me. What really impressed me is how he made it his mission to get healthcare for 9/11 first responders. He used intense shaming tactics- as he should! Congress/senate should be ashamed of themselves for fighting that. I like to think that his show had some influence on the passage of that bill. And then they made it for conditions except cancer. But I digress.

I don't watch much television news. With the exception of breaking news coverage, I get my news purely as text, both from the daily paper and from magazines like Newsweek and The Economist (yes- paper, no internet newsfeeds). TV news tends to be too shallow to be informative for anything more than minute-by-minute coverage of disasters. Analysis isn't possible. When they try to analyze, they turn into annoying talking heads saying controversial things to keep people from changing the channel. Or even worse they try to do minute-by-minute analysis of events in progress and wind up saying idiotic things like, "we can see the van turning the corner into the courthouse now. Soon they will park and we will be able to see them. We hope."

The Daily Show uses old footage to do analysis (sort of) in a way that other shows also could but inexplicably don't. They use old footage montages to show politicians flip-flopping, obfuscating and sometimes just plain lying. Print media does the same sort of "last year he said..." comparisons but the quotes in print just aren't as compelling as watching a montage that really makes the lies obvious.

One of the things I really like about the profile is how it emphasizes the power of the "nice guy" persona, something I've been preaching in here for a while now. Stewart wields real influence because of his perceived niceness, not in spite of it, and I think that's a very valuable lesson to absorb, especially in these parts. The power of rejecting partisanship should also be noted, no one really has any doubts about where Stewart's politics personally fall, but he's done a good enough job over the years of being an equal opportunity targeter of jokes that he doesn't get lumped in with the firebrands and the shouters and is instead taken rather seriously; ironic as that is.

I think David Brooks kinda pulls the same nice guy shtick on the Right although it is less popular over there.
and Brooks is not nearly as funny.

For whatever reason, liberals in entertainment seem more likely to be there as entertainers first and liberals second; not so much with conservatives, and it tends to show. I've seen many an explanation floated for this phenomenon, though I suspect that there's no one reason for it.