Dark Bilious Vapors

that I don't pay more attention to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or that The Daily Show seems to be the last refuge for the television viewer who actually wants substantive coverage of important issues facing the country. Catching up on my blog reading, I find this perceptive post at The Talent Show:

There's been plenty written about the blurring of the lines between entertainment and news, but the standard story only covers half of the picture. While news outlets move closer and closer to the hellish infotainment depicted in Network (if you haven't seen it lately, rent it!), the flip side of this is that some entertainment shows are now filling in the void left by the news networks.

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As the interview [of "author" Stephen Hayes] continued, Stewart elaborated on his point that the Bush Doctrine is meaningless if it isn't applied evenly throughout the world and in the process ripping apart the argument that Stephen Hayes makes in his book, The Connection. Here we have a guy who's written a book claiming that Saddam Hussein worked with al Qaeda, and he's getting his ass handed to him by a comedian.

The way The Daily Show should work is that they mention a news item that we're familiar with in order to set up some jokes. Unfortunately, with the news often beating stories to death rather than dig up new ones, The Daily Show is now in a situation in which it's doing a better job covering important stories than the "real" news.

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As far as I'm concerned, we should just stop calling The Daily Show "fake" news. True, they're a comedy show, but how is what Jon Stewart (et. al.) doing much different than what what Bill O'Reilly does? The only big difference I see is that The Daily show mixes it's news with comedy while the O'Reilly Factor mixes it's news with bombast.

Len on 06.24.04 @ 08:37 PM CST