The Unbearable Awesomeness of Being... Jon Stewart

This is just a quick little tidbit to remind us why everyone in the nation should watch The Daily Show on a regular basis.

Last week, Jon Stewart was "rebuked" (as though!) by Fox News for calling them out on obvious hypocrisy. Stewart responded by hiring a gospel choir to suggest, in song, what the hypocrites at Fox News could go do to themselves. In no uncertain terms. Later that week, the gospel choir and their 33%-bleeped three-word song made a reprise on the show, this time directed at people who threaten death over jokes on TV shows, death threats powered by religion. The songs included Stewart doing some of the lamest, and therefore most amazing, dancing ever done by a comedian on national television.

There was one other thing about them, too... what was it? Oh, yeah. They were completely and totally true!!

Stewart has a tempestuous relationship with Fox News because, like every public media outlet/individual in America (and often the world), he calls them out when they do something stupid, hypocritical, blatantly shortsighted, or obnoxious. This is not Stewart being "offensive," for crying out loud! This is Stewart doing the job the (non-comical) media is supposed to do: acting as a watchdog over the government. Unfortunately, the "real" news in this country has somehow received the mistaken memo that their job is to inform the public of Tiger Woods' adultery and to give little anecdotes about huge stories that don't mean anything and don't tell anyone a flip. Yes, I read the newspapers. But what use is a newspaper when its reporters don't report anything I actually need to know? Or, often, can even understand beneath all the layers of meaningless rhetoric and anecdotal statistics?

True, Stewart's humor is often puerile. He did a five-minute-plus riff on Congressman Dick Sweat. But what separates Stewart from the tasteless, ridiculous shows that are puerile for the simple reason of being so (some of which, like Archer, are good; others, like Family Guy, simply nauseating) is this. Underneath all the bleeped language, funny voices, and genital jokes is what we're not getting from the news media.

News.

And a big shoutout to my friends on Brain Logging and Sponsored by Boredom.