Colbert vs. Stewart

[bobquasit]

My comment on an article over on the Washington Post about Colbert vs Stewart:

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The Daily Show has funnier sketches and supporting players (not surprising, since Colbert's on-camera supporting team is much smaller). But Steven Colbert is a far more incisive and effective interviewer than Jon Stewart, who has a tendency to take it easy on his guests.

All in all, The Daily Show is marginally funnier, but Colbert is more biting and newsworthy. But both shows are funny and great.

If I had to vote for one of the two for President? Colbert. His in-your-face speech at the 2006 White House Correspondence Dinner was one of the most impressive acts of political courage that I've seen in the past twenty years.

Which is, I'll admit, a sad commentary on the state of American politics: that a truth-to-power speech by a comedian to a criminal President and criminally negligent Washington press corps ranks as a major act of courage. Nonetheless, it does.

Comments

[goddessgrrrrl.livejournal.com]

I personally find the Colbert Report funnier than The Daily Show, although they are both very, very funny.

Which one would I want running the country? Hard to say. I'd be happy with either. I tend to think Stewart might make a better leader, for some reason, although Colbert will ALWAYS get points in my book for the Press Association dinner speech. And I think he's incredibly hot, too ;-)

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't say that Colbert's speech was "political courage"; what did he really have to lose? It's not as if his viewer base were fans of Bush or fans of the mass media news people; quite the opposite actually. About all he lost was ever getting invited to speak at one of those things again; it's relatively clear that from then on out the organizers will never invite anybody who might potentially be controversial or will do any serious criticism of the news media. If he'd truly been in danger of losing his job, then we'd be talking courage. Mind you, it did take a lot of nerve (in a positive sense) to do what he did rather than a more normal for such an event bit of mild tweaking of the press.

Of course I don't have cable so I can't be a good judge of the broader issue. From the small amount of stuff I've seen; from the little I've seen I prefer Jon Stewart. Hmm, actually, and I suppose I admire that Stewart during the Democratic Convention of 2004 told Ted Koppel to his face that the news media was flat out not doing its job and that why people paid attention to a "dancing monkey going ook, ook" pointing out stuff the media paid little attention to like Cheney flat out lying.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

You don't think it's even slightly possible that Colbert's show might have been cancelled - or that he even might have been killed? Look at what's been done to people like Connie Chung, Dan Rather, and Phil Donahue! And it's certainly no secret that reporters who ask questions that the White House doesn't like lose their White House press passes, and even their jobs.

This is a pretty vengeful bunch, and they have a lot of power. They haven't been told off to their faces very often...make that never. Could Colbert really have been sure that he wouldn't be punished or have his career destroyed for speaking as he did? I certainly thought it was a possibility!

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

I can guess with near certainty that in US history no comedian has ever been killed by the Federal Government or the Washington press corps because of something they said in a routine, extended or otherwise. I can certainly see the possibility that some Conspiracy Theorist might figure that some comic who made a controversial statement and later died (of an accident, or chemical abuse, or whatever) was actually killed by whatever bogeyman the Theorist picks, but that's not saying a lot. I seriously, seriously doubt that Colbert ever thought, "Gee, somebody might kill me for this."

His show getting canceled is a bit of a possibility, sure. The Smothers Brothers show back in the sixties was canceled despite high ratings due to its political content, and Bill Maher lost his ABC show because of overly frank statements at a time when people didn't want to hear them. However, Colbert's bit at the press dinner were pretty much the same thing he does on the show, in spirit at least. It would be absurd for Comedy Central to cancel him over something that wasn't all that different from what he normally does and most likely boosted his ratings. Comedy Central from what I can see has a fair amount of stuff that is offensive to somebody so why would they care if the press corps think (as they were saying at the time) he was rude or vulgar or doing something inappropriate for the setting?

The reality, I suspect, is that the Powers That Be know of the dancing monkeys but they're not really afraid of them. Heck, some of the Powers might well figure that Colbert and Stewart are helpful to their goals because (some suggest) the viewers of the shows become cynical and end up not voting. Republicans like vote suppression.