September 17, 2004

9/17 - Upcoming Daily Show Book: sadly, the cutting edge of mass communications in America

A lot of people have suggested to me, "You should get Jon Stewart involved in ocean conservation." I've already looked into it. Last spring I spoke with his manager about having him host our Hollywood Ocean Night. He said that Jon does not want to take part in anything that is politically partisan. I tried to say the event would be a straight-forward non-partisan look at the oceans. He replied, "it's about concern for the environment -- EVERYTHING to do with concern for the environment is partisan by definition." End of discussion.

Anyhow, over the past year we've converged on the subtitle of, "Bad News and Comedy for the Oceans," to describe what we're doing with Shifting Baselines. Rather than give a detailed justification for this, now you can just read the upcoming book by Jon Stewart in which he explains why they do what they do with their show (which was chosen as the top news show by tv critics this year). Here's a quote from an article about the book in USA Today in which Stewart explains the popularity of his satirical approach:

"It's more a sign of frustration with the information people are receiving than a sign of our entrepreneurial spirit of journalism. ...It's a '(expletive) you' to real news, not a 'hallelujah' for our fake news."

And by the way, if you think he doesn't really care about what's going on in the world, all you had to do was see his interview with Chris Matthews of Hardball last week. He definitely cares. He just also understands the hopelessness of the information explosion in our society.

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Jon Stewart: showing he cares by pretending to not care

Posted by Randy Olson at September 17, 2004 01:28 PM