The queasy irony here is that Stewart and Colbert are parasites of the dysfunction they mock. Without blowhards such as Carlson and shameless politicians, Stewart would be out of a job that pays him a reported $14 million per annum. Without the bigoted bluster of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, The Colbert Report would not exist. They aren’t just invested in the status quo, but dependent on it.
That's a superficial analysis of their roles in national media. Quoting Stewart's salary is beside the point. His starting $1.5M salary as the host of a late night show paled beside Leno or Letterman. It simply scaled with the size of his audience and the subsequent spending by his sponsors. Which is true of virtually every entertainer in history.
Past that "you can only do comedy because people's behavior deserves mockery" is a :very-intelligent: tier critique. Agitation is agitation. You don't get bonus points for delivering your critiques dead-pan. Neither does a DailyKos blog post garner additional acclaim because the writer failed to get paid for it.
What's more, what Stewart and Colbert did that was so laudable wasn't simply making jokes. The back half of each show was dedicated to platforming a host of low-profile activists, investigative journalists, and alternative political voices. Colbert spent a sizable chunk of his show spotlighting the influence of SuperPACs on political decision making. Stewart hosted a litany of anti-war activists during the Iraq War. He hosted critics of the banking system in the run up and aftermath of the '08 financial crash. Both spent hours of deadpan serious conversation debunking the perceived threat of the national debt, highlighting the values of universal health care policies relative to the privatized insurance, delving into the history of forgotten or under-reported tragedies ranging from the Haditha massacre to Mỹ Lai.
They were excellent agitators. They went far beyond the cheap cynicism of Bill Maher or the angry rants of George Carlin. They platformed and advanced the cause of progressive activists for decades.
The biggest sins these two committed involved walking away from that shit. Stewart's retreat into animal rights, after having to practically drag Senators out of their offices to get a vote on funding medical treatments for 9/11 emergency service workers, was hugely disappointing. Colbert folding up shop so he could hobble himself to Letterman's old hicking post and abandon anything even remotely confrontational in his platform sucked.
But to say they failed to challenge jingoism and hysteria at the height of their careers is flatly false. They made their bones doing exactly that. And it was this iconoclasty that garnered them an audience bigger than most major news networks.
That's a superficial analysis of their roles in national media. Quoting Stewart's salary is beside the point. His starting $1.5M salary as the host of a late night show paled beside Leno or Letterman. It simply scaled with the size of his audience and the subsequent spending by his sponsors. Which is true of virtually every entertainer in history.
Past that "you can only do comedy because people's behavior deserves mockery" is a :very-intelligent: tier critique. Agitation is agitation. You don't get bonus points for delivering your critiques dead-pan. Neither does a DailyKos blog post garner additional acclaim because the writer failed to get paid for it.
What's more, what Stewart and Colbert did that was so laudable wasn't simply making jokes. The back half of each show was dedicated to platforming a host of low-profile activists, investigative journalists, and alternative political voices. Colbert spent a sizable chunk of his show spotlighting the influence of SuperPACs on political decision making. Stewart hosted a litany of anti-war activists during the Iraq War. He hosted critics of the banking system in the run up and aftermath of the '08 financial crash. Both spent hours of deadpan serious conversation debunking the perceived threat of the national debt, highlighting the values of universal health care policies relative to the privatized insurance, delving into the history of forgotten or under-reported tragedies ranging from the Haditha massacre to Mỹ Lai.
They were excellent agitators. They went far beyond the cheap cynicism of Bill Maher or the angry rants of George Carlin. They platformed and advanced the cause of progressive activists for decades.
The biggest sins these two committed involved walking away from that shit. Stewart's retreat into animal rights, after having to practically drag Senators out of their offices to get a vote on funding medical treatments for 9/11 emergency service workers, was hugely disappointing. Colbert folding up shop so he could hobble himself to Letterman's old hicking post and abandon anything even remotely confrontational in his platform sucked.
But to say they failed to challenge jingoism and hysteria at the height of their careers is flatly false. They made their bones doing exactly that. And it was this iconoclasty that garnered them an audience bigger than most major news networks.