A “Meet the Press” roundtable on Sunday questioned whether Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” is having a detrimental effect on U.S. politics, an interesting turn of events considering Stewart just 10 years ago helped prompt the cancellation of CNN’s “Crossfire” after he accused it of “hurting America.”
NBC News’ Chuck Todd began the discussion by referencing a recent Salon article, titled “Jon Stewart’s expiration date: Why liberalism needs to outgrow the snark,” that stated: “ ‘The Daily Show’ tends to inspire glib cynicism more than outrage or understanding.”
Todd asked the panel of comedians, including Lewis Black, writer Laura Krafft and standup comedian W. Kamau Bell, to respond to suggestions that Jon Stewart is actively dumbing down American politics.
“You could say we’re somehow dumbing down something that’s been dumbed down over the course of my life,” Black said. “We’ve moved closer to living at the corner where satire and reality intersect.”
Krafft defended Stewart, saying that U.S. voters can go to real news outlets to get their information and that they don’t need to rely on “The Daily Show’s” glibness.
Bell added that “The Daily Show” adds some much needed levity to the cynical nature of political discussions in the United States: “Have you been on Twitter, on Facebook? … The cynicism is there. If anything, ‘The Daily Show’ gives you hope.”
Bell also argued that comedy shows like Stewart’s are necessary because they say the things so-called left-wing news outlets are afraid to say.
“Comedy gets to bark,” he said. “But the weird thing is Fox News also gets to bark. Sometimes the left-leaning media is afraid of barking. So they play a clip of ‘The Daily Show.’ ”
In 2005, then-CNN president Jonathan Klein announced that the network was canceling “Crossfire,” specifically citing Stewart who said that year that the show and others like it were bad for Americans and bad for U.S. politics.
(H/T: Mediaite)
