Patreon Bonus Interview with writer Steve Almond
Added 2022-02-28 23:13:36 +0000 UTCSteve Almond is the author of "Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to our Country?" and has written extensively about Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, and political satire. In this conversation we walk through some Stewart's biggest failures and the limits that come with making entertainment about politics.
An .mp3 version of this interview is attached if you'd prefer!
Comments
There's this struggle in U.S. media where the the first amendment right to a free press often has an ego/power struggle with the other part of the first amendment -- the right to assembly. Add the billions of dollars poured into corporate media and you end up with billionaires paying millionaires to tell the middle class the poor are to blame. But setting moneyed interests aside, the media also produces massive egos, where what they say shifts how the world is made. I'm not sure at what point Jon Stewart became That Guy, but I'm going to guess it was some time around that Crossfire confrontation. If what you say has the power to cancel a show, it would be hard for that to go to your head. Cut to the Occupy protests, where hundreds of thousands of regular people, across the country, banned together to point at the financial industry for destroying the economy. That was the right thing to point at. And they did it loudly, and they were annoying. But they were right. Those protesters regular people were now shaping the narrative, not the media personalities. And in a tiny mass media world where a handful of millionaires are comfortable telling us what we should care about, they don’t like it when suddenly we’re telling them, “No, we’re going to tell you what you’re going to talk about.”
Sela Lewis
2022-04-08 17:57:28 +0000 UTCI think another thing to consider with Oliver is that he does motivate his viewers to take some kind of direct action. There was obviously the net neutrality thing where he encouraged people to spam the FCC website, then there were things like the the time he bought up a ton of debt and forgave it. His message isn't just "let me explain the insanity of the world and poke fun at it" there are also times where he takes that additional step and goes "here is what you can do about it. Here is what WE can do about it." Sure obviously the stuff he does is a "stunt" to some degree but the stunts he does are more meaningful and impactful than the "rally to restore reason" was. EDIT: Looks like you talk about this in your interview with Sophia!
RedX2099
2022-03-01 17:28:32 +0000 UTC
