On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Mark Jeffries <[email protected]>wrote:
> As Jon Stewart temporarily leaves "TDS" to try out being a film director, > here's how John Oliver assumed the host position last night--right at the > Moment of Zen: > > > http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-6-2013/moment-of-zen---john-oliver-takes-over > Salon takes some real parting shots at Stewart: http://www.salon.com/2013/06/07/do_we_need_a_break_from_jon_stewart_too/ I would say about 67% of this is unfounded, and smacks of the kind of lazy television criticism we so often see these days, in which a critic tries to get attention by attacking whatever show is popular. Stewart's show has been been understood as primarily satirizing the media at least since the Bush Administration, so this is really nothing new. My own politics make me sympathetic to the critique that Stewart too often indulges in false equivalency, but again, he has been doing that for a long time. And the last few months have been a satirical puzzle, as the parade of fake and overheated "scandals" touted by the conservative talking points of the week have not been serious enough to justify becoming the lens through which the executive branch is portrayed, but there has been enough reality to at least some level of concern and inquiry that it would not really due to do nothing but lambast Fox News for bringing it up. In the Williams interview Stewart did hint that if he was going to be around over the next few weeks he might focus in on Holder's criminalization of journalism, which I think is the right instinct. The 33% that is justified is I think a product of two things: 1) Stewart has for a while now seemed to be less energized about his job, enough that I have been wondering since before the election if he really still had the fire in the belly to keep doing it much longer; and 2) as he mentioned last night, Stewart has been spending a lot of time in recent months working on his film project, with a lot of staff doing things that he usually does. >From the two or three accounts I have read of how TDS typically works, Stewart is something of a taskmaster, and while he may not be a micro-manager exactly, he does seem to engage in rigorous quality control over every aspect of the show. It seems likely that he has not been doing that as much the last 8 weeks or so. Stewart said several time this week that he would miss the show (the staff, and the audience) more than the show would miss him. I am not sure if that is true. I love John Oliver (more than apparently the Salon article author does), and I expect him to do a good job, but I wonder how much Stewart really will miss the grind of doing the show. I suspect when he returns it will be either to a highly recharged battery and increased focus on the possibilities of his job, or an announcement sometime in the following 6 months that he will be leaving the show at some fixed point in the future. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
