Guilt By Jon Stewart
One day my interrogator told me that, ‘We have video evidence of you working as a spy,’ and then when he put the DVD of The Daily Show in the laptop, I just thought, ‘Oh my God.’
The myriad of arguments against torture aside, do pro-torture advocates really want to place themselves in the same camp as folks who can’t tell that The Daily Show is satire? If there is a more relevant argument to demonstrate why the mindset of folks who support torture is not worthy of American ideals and values, I’ve not seen it.
In all seriousness, though, Bahari’s full interview with CBC’s Nancy Durham (sorry, not able to embed it) is well worth the thirty-eight plus minutes of your time.
The comment that most caught my attention was when Bahari said that it was important that the West engage Iran so Iran understands there are consequences to its decisions. Think about that for a moment: a man who was imprisoned and tortured for 118 days on clearly fictional charges of espionage, who was told regularly that he would be executed without ever having the chance to see his unborn child, whose mind and spirit became so strained that he seriously contemplated suicide thinks that engagement with Iran is the right course of action.
Perhaps the “Obama is an appeaser because he wants to engage countries like Iran” meme will ease up a bit in light of Bahari’s commentary. Or perhaps they think Bahari himself is a pro-appeasement Manchurian candidate set loose by the Iranian government. Maybe they saw it on the Colbert Report…
November 23, 2009 23 Comments
Stewart v. McArdle
Jon Stewart also shapes peoples’ decisions. Video is a medium with powerful claims to reality–people tend to think that if they saw it, it must be true. This makes it uniquely good at manipulating its audience with skillful editing. I’m very sympathetic to Stewart’s deep critique of financial shows, but I don’t think the way to go about it was to string together a bunch of very misleading clips. Nor to imply that Santelli, who has been vocally against all bailouts from the beginning, was merely frothing on the forclosure program because ordinary taxpayers were finally getting a taste of federal largesse. But Stewart carefully claims he’s just an entertainer, so he has no obligation to hew to journalistic standards on things like quoting out of context.
Deep critique? “Satire” is more like it. Stewart doesn’t do deep critiques. That’s why he uses cheap shots and lots of video editing. He’s making a satirical point in a twenty minute tv spot on a late night cable comedy channel. He doesn’t have time for deep critiques. When you want to make a point, and you want to be funny, you don’t have much you can accomplish in the way of depth. Poignancy must be done via wit, not “deep critique.”
This last line from Megan’s post is baffling. Maybe somebody could help explain it to me:
Financial journalism isn’t, as Stewart argues to Cramer over and over, entertainment. So how come Stewart acted as if it was?
I just fail utterly to see what she means by this. Stewart used his pedestal as an entertainer and social critic – not journalist mind you – to take a swing at financial reporting and the lack of integrity of financial journalists, anchors, and the shows in general. He was making a very specific point: these shows should be reporting. Not entertaining. The Daily Show exists to entertain. It doesn’t report because it is fake news. Any reporting it does is by its very nature, fake. It does do satire, which is really the entire point of fake news to begin with. And satire is entertainment, sure, but it’s also a very effective critical medium.
March 13, 2009 25 Comments
