National regeneration, the cult of manhood, and military adventurism: A quick historical note

[Update: Broken link fixed!]

The American right's somewhat embarrassing mancrush on Vladimir Putin is certainly fueled in large measure by their kneejerk disdain for their bete noire (if you know what I mean) Barack Obama:

Still, the love of oily muscle parading as patriotism wasn't invented this month. Oh no.

Bryan was leading the anti-imperialist opposition to acquiring the Philippines—and anti-imperialists were, in Roosevelt’s words, “little better than traitors.” Questioning the patriotism of one’s opponents in foreign-policy debate became an established practice that has survived to our own time. So have two other Rooseveltian rhetorical tics: conflating the nation and the individual, and confusing physical courage with moral courage. By 1900, he had become a regular on the banquet circuit, warning that “if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and win for themselves the domination of the world.” This sort of talk elevated Roosevelt to the vice-presidency; it also had calamitous longer-term consequences for public discourse in America. National regeneration, often defined in crude physical terms, became a staple of imperial rhetoric. Ever since Roosevelt, advocates of military intervention abroad have embraced his demented dualism, telling Americans they could either “stand tall” or “cut and run.”

Oh yeah – and what Pierce said.

Seven years ago this week in p3: Remember The Half-Hour News Hour?

Of course you don't. And there's a reason.

That week I was writing the second in a series of pieces about why conservative satire – like that sad and short-lived entry by the Fox News Channel – isn't terribly humorous. Part of it was that they learned the wrong lessons from the success of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

But part of it is that American conservatism, as it's constituted these days, simply lacks a crucial ability without which satire becomes, as Saint Molly memorably put it, crude and vulgar.

What's missing is the capacity to retain at least a tiny smidgen of charity; first, that is, to attack the strong, not the weak; and second, to understand that once you're incapable of seeing your opponent – your victim, if you will – as anything but a monster, you still have a wide range of tools with which to go after them, but satire is no longer one of them.

There are people out there on the political scene that I consider monsters. I tend to avoid jokes about them directly, and if I fail to avoid that the result is probably not that funny, anyway.  Conservatives have a tough time seeing anyone who disagrees with them  – or might do so at some point – as anything but a monster. Great for message discipline; death for satire.

And the funny part, so to speak, is that seven years later, conservatives still don't understand, to say nothing of appreciate, Colbert's satire.

Read more of my posts on satire from the link on the p3 List.

Six years ago at p3: I liked Colbert, but didn't get him

Yup, this week marks the sixth anniversary of the launch of The Colbert Report.

I didn't completely get it. That's painful, because I'm a major fan and student of satire and irony. But I didn't get it. I accept that now. I do.

I wanted it to be good, and while I couldn't ignore some of the shakedown problems, I could certainly excuse them. My main problem was that I never watched Bill O'Reilly, so I wasn't prepared to recognize -- let alone appreciate -- a pitch perfect parody of him.

Also I was slow -- as were a lot of right-wingers like Dinesh D'Souza, Bill Kristol, and Tony Perkins, I'm delighted to remind you -- to realize that Colbert's character could be lethal as an interlocutor. Many are the irony-challenged interviewees who thought that Colbert was a safe haven, only to find them unwittingly led by his siren call to make even worse-sounding claims than the ones in the book they were there to promote.

So yeah.  My bad.

A Peabody, one-and-a-half-Emmys, and countless nominations and special recognitions later, the Report is going strong. And with gambits like his characters absolutely-real superPAC, he's taking satire into the highwiare, wait-is-this-a-joke? regions that nobody's quite sure what to make of.

He has the thanks of a grateful nation, and Nation.

Reminder: It's a Lizz Winstead trifecta this weekend in Portland!

Lizz Winstead, stand-up comedian, satirist, creator of "The Daily Show," and friend to dogs and Drinking Liberally alike is burning a path through Portland this weekend (times and ticket prices at the links):

Friday 6/3: Appearing on Live Wire Radio.

Saturday 6/4: Returning to the Alberta Rose Theater for another one-woman show: "My State of the Union: 2011." (Her email this morning: "It's almost an entirely new show also because it a new and even more f***ed up world! Yay!" Can't beat that.)

(It's not confirmed yet this time around, but after her last PDX performance, DL'ers who attended the show got to chat with Lizz over a beer, after the show. Something to keep in mind!)

Sunday 6/5: Leading her workshop for satirical writers -- learn about writing on deadline and see your work performed! -- From The Page To The Stage In 8 Hours.

Do. Not. Miss.

The unforgiving minute

Consistent with my theory of why conservatives can't do satire well, Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog explains Howard Kurtz's failure to understand that Jon Stewart putting the needle to Obama doesn't mean Stewart and the entire left have given up on him.

Minute's up.

Happy birthday to one of the most trusted journalists in America

For many people, simply replacing laddie-boy wannabe Craig Kilbourn as host of "The Daily Show" would have been service enough. But not Jon Stewart. That's not an achievement to rest on--it's an achievement to build on.

The moment when all doubt was removed regarding Stewart's value to America:

Ah, me. I just can't get enough of that one.

Here's a Jon Stewart Fun Fact to know 'n' trade: Jon proposed to his wife via a special crossword in the New York Times with the help of Times crossword editor Will Shortz.

Many happy returns.

(Hat tip to Wendy.)

Let the word go forth, the torch has been passed to a new generation (Subject to permission from the Commissioner of Major League Baseball)

[Updated below.]

This has been coming for years:

Out of 9409 self-selected participants, 44% selected Jon Stewart as the answer to the question "Now that Walter Cronkite has passed on, who is America's most trusted newscaster?" in a Time online poll.

Brian Williams got 29% of the vote, Charlie Gibson got 19%, and Katie Couric--apparently no longer riding on her post-Palin interview bounce from last fall--got 7%.

In Oregon, Stewart and Williams stole votes from Gibson and Couric; the numbers were: Stewart 50%, Williams 32%, Gibson 14%, and Couric 5%..

Stewart won 40 states, Williams won seven states (only managing to match Stewart's Oregon numbers once, in Vermont), and Gibson won two states (including a whopping 57% in Tennessee). Stewart and Williams split Kentucky, with 34% each. In her home state of Indiana (she got her start on the NBC affiliate there at the same time Letterman was across town doing the weather at the ABC affiliate), Couric polled a disappointing 2%.

Although even to be Jon Stewart is not to be omnipotent, it seems:

Remember last week, when President Barack Obama threw out the first pitch at baseball’s All-Star Game? And remember the ensuing fuss about his form? And remember how Jon Stewart sliced through all of the crap with his typically incisive wit?

Alas, you’ve got no choice but to remember that last part. It has disappeared from the Web, apparently at the behest of Major League Baseball.

Stewart dissected the media hubhub about Obama’s pitch–and in particular Fox News’s analysis of it–on his July 15 show. But if you watch the archived version of that show at Viacom’s (VIA) “Daily Show” Web site, you’ll find that the bit has been cut out of his opening monologue. It once ran for two minutes and 43 seconds, but now the archive stops short at the 55-second mark.

And if you try to watch that episode on Hulu, the Web site owned by News Corp. (NWS), GE’s (GE) NBC and Disney (DIS), you’ll find that it’s gone altogether, replaced by a message blaming “rights issues.”

"Birthers" will probably jump on this as the latest proof of Illuminati-style conspiracies protecting Obama, but the answer points to a more fundamental and ominous truth:

Stewart is bad, but Bud Selig, it appears, is badder.

[Update: Tristero makes a good point:

Until the so-called news media stops providing access to jokers like the birthers, then the best news reports in America will be produced by a professional comedian.

Obama's DOJ: Making the world safe from The Comedy Channel

This argument is certainly preposterous on its own merits:

A federal judge yesterday sharply questioned an assertion[…] that former Vice President Richard B. Cheney's statements to a special prosecutor about the Valerie Plame case must be kept secret, partly so they do not become fodder for Cheney's political enemies or late-night commentary on "The Daily Show." […]

[An attorney in the case] told the judge that if Cheney's remarks were published, then a future vice president asked to provide candid information during a criminal probe might refuse to do so out of concern "that it's going to get on 'The Daily Show' " or somehow be used as a political weapon.

But what's downright revolting is that the argument wasn't made by one of Cheney's defenders (well, at least not strictly speaking); it was made by "career civil division lawyer Jeffrey M. Smith" of the Obama Justice Department!

Let me see if I've got this: Cheney conspired with others in the Bush Administration to out an undercover CIA agent as political payback because her husband wrote a perfectly accurate NYTimes op-ed piece disagreeing with one of the smaller lies Cheney told to get us into Iraq and keep us there--and the Obama "Change You Can Believe In" Administration doesn't want to compel Cheney to cooperate in the investigation because it might provide fodder for Jon Stewart?

As Jim Naureckas of FAIR asks:

Do they still teach the First Amendment in law school? […]

Here's an alternate plan: How about instead we allow the media to criticize and even satirize the statements of public officials, and make sure that officials cooperate with criminal investigations by subpoenaing them if they refuse to do so?

Disgraceful.

But at least maybe it will provide some fodder for Jon Stewart.

Uh-oh: Jon Stewart asks conservatives to join him at Camera 3

I took a shot at this general theme yesterday, but I have to say Stewart does a better job of handling those who "speak crazy to power."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
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Saturday tunes: "Change your shirt, 'cause tonight we got style"

Thursday night, Jon Stewart--rested up from 22 minutes of head-butting Jim Cramer a few nights earlier--had Bruce Springsteen on as his guest.

The interview ended up with this exchange:

Stewart: I do what I do because of Bruce Springsteen, and I'll tell you why: You introduced me to the concept of "the other side." You introduced me to the concept of "you go through the tunnel, and you take a chance, and you can work to get away from your circumstance, and by working to get away from your circumstance you can make something better of yourself." But there's no guarantee. What I loved about what you do and your music is it's complex. It's that you can work to change what you do, but when you get to the other side you may be in Iraq and you may be gunned down in the street. But you know what? The joy of it is chasing that dream, and that was my inspiration for leaving New Jersey and going to New York, and . . . [crosstalk] . . . I just wanted to thank you personally from the bottom of my heart for giving me something to put into the dashboard as I drove the U-Haul van through the Holland Tunnel.

Springsteen: Well, all I can say is, "You have done well, Grasshopper."

There's no doubt--none--that they were talking about this song:

Props to Mark, who--some thirty-plus years ago--sat me down and made me listen to this song.

The unforgiving minute

Somewhere, tonight, CNBC's Jim Cramer is watching Jon Stewart sit there, being absolutely smitten with Bruce Springsteen, and wondering who he could have screwed to get a soft-ball treatment like that.

Minute's up.

Congratulations to Jon Stewart . . . but:

Why is a satirist having to do the heavy lifting on this, instead of the "news" media themselves?

It's been linked to and embedded a zillion places over the net today, but in the extraordinarily unlikely event that you haven't seen Stewart take CNBC's Jim Cramer to the woodshed from last night, get some popcorn and go here.

(Hard drive rebuild should be completed this afternoon or tomorrow morning, after which I should be posting at the usual rate again. Did I miss anything else while I was gone?)

Blumenauer, chimps, crocodiles, and pythons!

The founder of the House Bike Caucus (check the lapel pin), and OR-3's favorite son, gets the "Daily Show treatment" tonight.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

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And believe me, Congressman: I have a great deal of respect for you, but I don't even want to know where the "tutu and wine" thing came from.

Oppositional television in the age of Obama

After the defeat of McCain and Palin in November, a lot of folks wondered aloud if "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" could survive without a Republican in the White House.

I was never worried: The point of satire is to ridicule the excesses, vanities, hypocrisy, and dishonesty of those in power. It's true that Second Age of Bush provided an embarrassment of riches for the two shows' writers to work with. But to imagine that the Obama administration, or any administration, will give them nothing to work with--would be so transparent, modest, self-consistent, unerring, and uniformly benificent that there'll be nothing for satirists to sink their teeth into--is to have a fundamentalist's faith and trust in our government that is almost un-American.

And, of course, the armory of the contemporary American satirist is by no means limited to barbs about the executive branch of the government: There are the antedeluvian minds of the Senate Republicans. There is the endless jockeying of interests and agendas in the House. There's the Supreme Court--why, the continued existence on this earth of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas alone amounts to a Full Employment Program for Comedy Writers. There's Big Banking. Big Media. Big Pharma. And so on.

Anyone who sits at the far end of the gap of mystery and miracle that separates the power elite from the rest of us will always be fair game for satirists. Don't worry for them. If there's enough material out there to keep even Leno going in prime time five nights a week, certainly there's plenty of work for good purveyors of topical humor, too.

If you want to know the fellow whose future I'm more concerned about, it's Keith Olbermann.

He's not really a satirist, of course, although he gets in his share of snark and ridicule in. But when his "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" took off following the first of his "Special Reports" in August of 2006--Rumsfeld had compared opponents of the Iraq war with the "appeasers" of Hitler in the 1930s, and Olbermann went ballistic--he became one of the more highly-positioned voices of opposition in the mainstream media.

A lot of that clout got squandered over the next couple of years, I think. He's often mentioned his worry that airing his first Special Report might cost him his job; as time went on I think that worry was replaced by the worry that not airing Special Reports might cost him his ratings bump. By last spring his Special Reports were too often about ephemera like his objections to how Hillary was campaigning that week.

In part that's because the "Countdown" format and formula call for the rapid descent each night from the important (usually Story #5, presented first) to the silly (the remaining four stories of the evening). As Doctor Beyond pointed out to me last week, by the night before the Obama inauguration, KO was directing his trademark bombast toward the fact that . . . wait for it . . . Obama was going to leave the carpet (famously designed by Laura Bush) in the Oval Office. (In fairness, the Special Report that night was about prosecuting the Bush administration personnel involved in the practice of torture.)

That's why I was especially pleased last week to see "Countdown" break the two-part story of government whistleblower Russell Tice, who revealed that the NSA had been spying on American journalists and news agencies, plus "tens of thousands" of other Americans. (Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here.)

While I'm not worried about the satirists on Comedy Central, I'm waiting to see what happens to Olbermann under a non-Bush administration. "Countdown" format notwithstanding, he's not as liberal (certainly not progressive) as suggested by those "Special Comment" segments; he was, like a lot of Americans, disgusted by the incompetence and dishonesty of Bush and his administration, and unlike the rest of us he had a platform. He was right, of course, but what now? On MSNBC, Maddow will lead the charge to keep Obama pushed to the left as much as possible--but will Olbermann do much more than kibbitz? Will the left be as fond of him when he doesn't have Bush to kick around anymore?

Time will tell. I'd like to see him continue to thrive, if only to keep pushing O'Reilly into gratifyingly foolish outbursts, but time will tell.

"Daily Show" convention coverage: How they do it

Did Tuesday night's episode of The Daily Show, from the Democratic National Convention, strike you as being a little . . . well . . . off its game?

Here's a backstage account of how that episode was put together. The logistics alone would daunt lesser mortals. To an observer, the striking fact isn't that it wasn't the all-time best show they've ever done; it's that they managed to get the show done on time at all.

You can see the full Tuesday episode, segment by segment, here. Wednesday's (which was much stronger, by the way) is currently on the TDS main page, here (after which it'll be moved to a link by date in the right column of the TDS home page).

Schneidering the top news of the day

A classic "Daily Show" moment--come on, and bring your juke box money!

Colbert and Perkins: "Why do these judges keep seeing gay things in the Constitution?"

There have been two famous Tony Perkinses. Last night, Stephen Colbert interviewed the scarier of the two, the head of the conservative Christian think-tank the Family Research Council.

I was slow coming around to the Colbert Report interviews. Part of the reason, I now understand, is that I never watched O'Reilly, so I never really appreciated what a lovingly detailed skewering of that program the Colbert Report was. My loss.

But one of the mysteries of the Report is that right-wingers continue to come on as guests. I would be fascinated to understand the thinking behind their decision to do so. Is it that Colbert's access to the 18-35 demo is simply too good to pass up, regardless of the personal price? Is it that they imagine they can outwit and outmaneuver one of the top satirists currently in the business? Is it that they don't understand that it is satire, incorrectly imagining that the Report is safe haven--and thus are unprepared for a host who will gleefully drag them to an even more extreme-right position, if he can?

Whatever the reason, last night Perkins appeared on the Report to promote his new book. The result--centering around a discussion of gay marriage--can't have done Perkins much good, although it was funny as hell. (Scroll down to the Perkins interview.)




Perkins can't have sold a single copy of his book with this appearance; what was the idea?

In any case, Perkins' mounted head will be hanging next to Bill Kristol and Dinesh D'Souza, among others, in Colbert's trophy room.

(Note: Now that Viacom has bullied all Report and Daily Show clips off of YouTube, the least they could do is add the code so that they can be embedded from their proprietary sites. They can't seriously imagine that it would hurt ad revenue or viewership to get free promotion from the blog world--especially since the video clips have built-in commercials [viewers may be exposed to the oxygen-wasting Mo Rocca following the Colbert clip, for which I can only express my sincere regrets]?)

(Hat tip to Doctor TV, who noted "Perkins looks like he doesn't know what hit him.")

Stewart interviews Feith: More of this, please

Last week the AP ran a story about a study by a journalism think tank (No! Don't go for the easy jokes here, people! You'll hate yourself later!) comparing "The Daily Show" with the talking-head shows elsewhere on the cable dial:

The Project for Excellence in Journalism also said it was surprised at how much the Comedy Central late-night program resembles "The O'Reilly Factor," "Hardball" and other cable news shows in content.

Well, if the study considers any of those three programs "news shows," there's already a problem. But let's continue:

The Washington-based organization asked its researchers to study a year's worth of "The Daily Show" tapes — hardly a grim assignment — after hearing the frequent claim that many young people learn about the world from Stewart instead of more traditional news sources.

For more about this "frequent claim" (makes it sound like celebrity gossip, doesn't it?) see here. Back to the AP story:

Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director, said he doubts this is the case. He considers "The Daily Show" more of a political satire in the tradition of newspapermen like Art Buchwald, H.L. Mencken and Russell Baker.

"They're not making jokes about Dan Quayle is dumb or Gerald Ford is clumsy," he said. "They're not making jokes that you could get if you live in the country but don't read the news ... . You can't get the jokes if you're not watching the news. The jokes are designed to make you think more about the news."

A Comedy Central representative had no immediate comment on the study. Stewart has consistently ridiculed the idea that he's somehow a newsman, saying he's just a comic.

Chicken or egg: Do "Daily Show" viewers come to learn more about current events, or does the fact that they pay attention to current events make them more likely to watch and enjoy a show that caters to--or perhaps even flatters--their interest?

Of course Stewart insists he's no newsman, in part because if he were ever accidentally to become one it would mean an immediate drop in his power to influence.

But he's no mere comic, either; he's a satirist. That puts some special claims upon him, regarding both knowledge and ethics. Stewart may touch on the same topics as O'Reilly and Matthews, but the resemblance stops there.

I think the important question isn't, "Why are informed people paying attention to a good satirist?" That's pretty clear. The important question is, "Why do we have to wait for a satirist to do the work that news reporters should be doing?"

As a case in point: Why do we have to wait for last night's appearance on The Daily Show by former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, currently making the rounds promoting his blame-shifting book War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, to hear him actually asked hard questions?

Here are both parts of the extended interview:

Part 1:



Part 2:


Feith's expression at the end of the interview seems to be a combination of shock at being asked such presumptuous questions, plus mystification that it was done so politely.


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Shocking announcement

Jon Stewart:

At eleven o'clock a.m. on Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race as though they were adults.

Spitzerfreude*

[Updated below.]

*Pleasure at the misfortune of Eliot Spitzer

Returning to a theme we've explored before: Conservatives can't do satire well because they can't distinguish it from mean-spirited wish-fulfillment.

Case in point: The fall of Eliot Spitzer. Don't expect to find a lot of "There but for the grace of God go I" humor from the right-wing media over this. Expect instead a lot of "Forget about us! Look at him!" chortling. Conservative humor will never advance beyond the larval stage until it can say, "Whew--glad to see someone besides us making idiotic mistakes like that."

Consider the treatment Spitzer's story got on "The Daily Show" last night. You can tell it's "liberal" humor, but certainly not by its choice of targets, which is fairly ecumenical. The giveaway is its stance and tone.

And they don't let up in the next segment--if anything, they twist the knife harder.

Name-calling without even a glimmer of self-awareness isn't satire; it's just name-calling.

By the way: If that is in fact Samantha Bee's husband in that second clip--and I'm betting it is--then I must grudgingly concede that he is indeed worthy of her. Not every husband would submit to the indignity of that sketch just so his wife could skewer a shortly-to-resign state governor.

And what the hell: La Bee is just so damned funny when she's deadpan, let's watch one of her all-time triumphs, even though it isn't on-topic.

(And for anyone who's wondering, I haven't said anything about the Spitzer mess because I don't have much to add to Lance Mannion's take.)

[Update: This just in from Doctor TV:

Jason Jones is Samantha Bee's real husband (if you recognize Canadian marriages).

So there you have it.]