Comedy Central Saves America


This morning I turned on the t.v. and scanned the channels I always scan, which are CNBC, NPR, CSPAN, and Comedy Central. I deliberately ignore anything FOX does as lacking credibility, and can't watch CNN because it is nauseating. Watching candidates debate with somebody like Wolf Blitzer asking questions is like watching a lawyer trying to set up a witness with the old, "Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no," technique.

A good example is the question about drivers licenses for illegal aliens. Hillary Clinton isn't stupid, and she knew it was a trap by which a ten second political ad could saturate the electorate with a picture of her and the message, "Hillary Clinton favors drivers licenses for illegal aliens."

Her answer to the question was correct. She said she doesn't like the idea but that she understands something has to be done, and that it is a public safety issue. The people who think that's such a bad idea haven't had somebody run into them who has no insurance because, being illegal, they can't buy any without a valid license of some kind. So we'd rather have millions of people on our streets and highways uninsured, without even the opportunity to take financial responsibility for themselves, rather than take responsibility for the reality of how we have structured the economy.

The responsible position is to protect the public and to know who is in our country. That would be obvious if the question was reframed as, "If an undocumented worker runs over your mom, should you be able to collect from his or her insurance company?" A condition of getting a license is proving financial responsibility. That is the substantive issue.

So the entire country is treated to these jerks discussing how Hillary was waffling on the question when it wasn't a fair question for her to address. It is a question to be addressed by the governors, not the President, and if she doesn't know what she'd do if forced to make a decision, that's exactly what I'd expect any intelligent person to say. It's a complex problem and has been artificially charged up by the right as their fear factor issue. This is not lost on Mrs. Clinton.

And while many of us out here in t.v. land watch this theater of the absurd that has become the American broadcast media, we have found only one news source which agrees with us that it's a goddamned freak show, and that is Comedy Central. So when I saw Tim Russert was interviewing Stephen Colbert, I stopped to watch.

Russert kept referring to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as doing "fake news." Colbert went along with it, but he reminded Russert that people who watch their shows wouldn't "get" the humor if they didn't understand the basis of the humor. That means they are as an audience very well informed people who are not tuning in to a "fake news show," but to the finest satire on television.

I would include myself among that group because these two "fake" news shows are the only ones I always watch. I might catch another show but only in passing. Otherwise I get my news from the Internet and from CSPAN almost exclusively. My personal evaluation of television network news is that it's worse than nothing. When Colbert, at the Press Club dinner, said that the Washington press corps takes the government handouts and types them up, he wasn't kidding. Most "news" is reworked from handouts because it's a cheap way to fill the demand for content which carries the advertising. The bottom line is saving money for the shareholders.

The Comedy Channel can be original and it can tell the truth because it doesn't have to play the self-importance game. My favorite line from Colbert at the Press Dinner was when he told Bush they are a lot alike, because they don't get their truth from books, they get it from their gut. "There are more nerve endings in your gut than in your brain. Look it up. Some of you might say I did look it up and it's not true. That's because you looked it up in a book. Look it up in your gut. I did." (I'm quoting from memory so it may not be exact.)

This is brilliant thinking and it reveals the truth about Mr. Bush and his close associates. They have animal survival instincts when it comes to politics, but they aren't educated people. We might get the news that Bush read Camus, but we don't assume he understood Camus. That's why we tune in and watch Jon Stewart analyze "The Stranger," as being about an emotionally detached person who kills an Arab for no reason, and are highly entertained. You just can't make this stuff up.

But the national media dutifully reports the news handed to them that Bush is reading existential literature, as a public relations ploy to try and counter his reputation as an ass clown whose support numbers exactly mirror the percentage of the American population which believes in an authoritarian god. (Go to the Nov. 25th cartoon in the link to get the connection) You don't have to be a genius to make the connection with approval of violence against innocents as acceptable in some manifestation of "god's will." When you come from an authoritarian father who "owns" the family, everything is "god's will."

Russert sat there and related how he'd asked Dick Cheney about WMD's, and they were a certainty. He asked about the cost of the war and 200 billion was way off the mark as too high. He asked about possible repercussions from Sunni and Shia rivalry and was told we would be greeted as liberators. He asked about Shinseki's estimate that we needed 200,000 troops minimum as was told that was absurd. In other words, he got every single thing wrong. An intelligent person who was trying to get to the truth would probably stop using this person as a source. What's the point? You could do better flipping a coin.

But Russert's point was that he can't go after the Vice President and challenge him when he interviews him, because, I guess, it would be bad form. He can't grasp the point behind this question, which is, why would he want to interview Dick Cheney? Why not find somebody who knows something, and who knew the answers to these questions back when the media got it wrong? And if he interviews Cheney, why would he keep pretending his words are worth more now than they were five years ago? With Stewart and Colbert we don't get the pretending and the ass kissing. That's why we value them as a national treasure.

One thing a reporter has to know when trying to find the truth is, who to ask. To keep asking a source who has proved to be so unreliable he qualifies as delusional is just stupid. But this does not compute to somebody working in a corporate setting, because the essence of the matter is the corporate structure You ask him because he is the vice president and thus your boss' boss. You are on down the food chain, and can do what you want so long as you don't mess with the pre-recordings.

In other words they can't think outside of the box, regardless of how confining the box becomes. We go to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to escape the box and take a breath of fresh air before being plunged into another day of watching the mismatch between ideologically produced maps of reality, and the reality on the ground. And any one of us who has studied history knows that cruelty always seems to ride in on that night mare. When you know you're right you ignore all evidence to the contrary and force your beliefs to fit, like Evil Roy Slade fitting a size four shoe on a size seven foot. (This movie goes into re-release January 8th and will be available for ten bucks or so. It's a comedy classic, with something to offend everybody:

"There's a rider coming Roy."

"Kill him."

"It's a woman."

"Wound her.")

After Colbert, Russert had on Howard Kurtz, who has written a book called "Reality Show." He is a columnist for the Washington Post. He points out that Stewart and Colbert are liberals, and he dismisses the idea as silly that liberals expect a journalist to argue with the Vice President. This prompted Russert's recollection of his passing along the fictitious information from Cheney that convinced us to support an illegal war. And while having this discussion they kept referring to Comedy Central news as "fake news," seemingly not noticing that their news was the real fake news precisely because they don't feel permission to challenge authority figures from their cushy corporate jobs.

Kurtz says that he's really happy about Fox News because the conservatives believe it's accurate. He doesn't say it is accurate, because that isn't the central issue. The issue is perception versus substance, which goes to the heart of the problem with the current administration. All of the emphasis is on how things play in the media, not the accuracy of the information. They are playing to demographic audiences with product. That is a long ways from describing what's actually going on, which is why Jon Stewart can show the contrast and get big laughs. We aren't getting our information from Stewart, we are appreciating a great American satirist's pulling back the curtain the Wizard hides behind.

The reason Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are so popular with the young, and the young at heart, is that they are pointing out that the networks think in terms of product and audience, not getting to the truth.  The only way this could be put back together would be to separate news from advertising again, as it used to be at CBS. If we had ethical government regulation of media, the News would have no advertising, and would be the public service the networks provide in exchange for their making money on public airwaves. The political debates should likewise be free of entertainment television kitsch.

That isn't going to happen, and so the news media is going to become increasingly ridiculous as a source of credible information on what the government is doing and why. For example, I shifted to CSPAN and Joe Biden was relating being in Iraq, and realizing that we aren't leaving, because we're building permanent bases. We're occupying the country. On the other CSPAN channel I tuned in to Dr. Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council, who mentioned that when the Bush Administration held a security summit while they were riding high winning a war against a country with no navy or air force, and no WMDs, they didn't invite Iran. Iran was our ally after 911, and expected to be included in that summit. We insulted them, just like Truman insulted Ho Chi Minh by ignoring his overtures of cooperation and friendship.

So now we're getting ready to bomb Iran on the advice of Dick Cheney. Parsi pointed out that right now the Iranian people like the Americans, but, he said, when the first bomb falls that's all over. It's the same thing we did in Vietnam, but this comparison won't show up on the news as context to prevent our repeating a past foreign policy blunder. It would be "controversial," just like the health risks of tobacco, global warming, and evolution.

As in other countries where the media and the government are in collusion to keep the population behind corrupt government policy, it is the social satirist to whom the ordinary people always turn for a brief reconnection with sanity.

Posted: Sun - November 25, 2007 at 05:20 PM