Jon Stewart returned as Tucker Carlson
Not as the Tucker Carlson of today. Tucker Carlson has just become Alex Jones, but worse.
Jon Stewart became the Tucker Carlson he once ended on MSNBC. Perhaps a far cry from his modern day self, Tucker Carlson with a news agitators outside of the strictly right wing space they usually occupied. Tucker was someone who would go in and shake up the cycle. Do what today the YouTubers would call “drama-baiting” and “grifting”, two traits he has only honed since.
Tucker Carlson isn’t funny, or at least non-Conservatives don’t think he is. Talk to Conservatives though and they think Rush Limbaugh is funny, or Ann Coulter is funny. See to a lot of Conservatives just saying outlandish, reactionary, crap, often racist crap, is hilarious. It’s the humor they grew up with. “What do you do when you see a n***** running towards you? Stop laughing and reload”. Were jokes that really got told. That’s the kind of surface level cringe humor Conservatives traffic in.
It is also why they are so very rarely funny. Comedy is about juxtaposition, and subversion, and insight. I don’t like the idea that all art is political because it isn’t. Most comedy isn’t. What are the politics of “my dick, my dick, haha, check out my dick?” Don’t pretend that’s not hilarious. Art does, however provoke thought, but also maybe humor has its limits. Or rather, maybe humor in certain situations is only for a select few comedy legends like Carlin or Pryor. However the point is whatever manic New York energy Jon Stewart brought to his stint on The Daily Show, but it doesn’t fit the time anymore.
He became what he hated. A talking head who spewed speculation and hyperbole about Joe Biden’s age and mental fitness. He’s mad that he’s not talking enough, to him, the press. Last I checked, and I have a few history books to back me up on this one, The President doesn’t need to spend every waking second talking to the press. He has his own platform on social media now — something I recognize was as ubiquitous when Stewart last sat in The Daily Show chair. He has granted interviews, but most importantly you can judge him by what he has accomplished.
Real deep thought here. Close to Deep State QAnon levels of insight — the President isn’t really the President.
Crazy, I know. If Joe Biden dies tomorrow we’ll still have a President; and then presumably a new Vice President in short order. We’ve survived this very situation multiple times with multiple, often very electorally popular, Presidents. They’ve literally died of old age (for the time) in office, or of a disease, sometimes even easily preventable ones. Because the President isn’t some action figure like Captain America who is cool and we play around with, he’s someone who represents a series of ideals and ideas through the members of his cabinet, the judges he appoints, the policy directives he pursues — that is what you are electing. Not a person — a set of ideals.
Shit, I think that’s what you’re actually supposed to learn from Captain America. Crazy.
Let’s go over the elephant in the room. I’m going to do my best to paraphrase Jon Stewart’s long monologue
“Look at me, I’m Jon Stewart. Biden old. You see Biden old. I old too, but Biden, also old. Other man funny fascist man, but Biden old. Woo Woo Wee Waa something something Rally to Restore Sanity Boo-yaa”
Laugh riot. Anyway,
He brings up in his segment a poll that has been floating around for a bit now namely that 86% of Americans feel Biden is too old to be President. Count me, and now and future Biden voter, as one of that 86%. I think he is too old. I will vote for him. So will you.
How do I know? The numbers say you will. Just like the numbers said Brock Purdy was going to lose that Super Bowl to the Chiefs. The same numbers that benched my quarterback, Mac “Noodle Arm” Jones. Those kinds of numbers. Because they did. They did in 2020.
It’s also not clear that age is a disadvantage for older candidates. Older leaders tend to have lower approval ratings than younger ones, according to a 2022 study co-authored by Damon Roberts, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Colorado Boulder. But in his research, voters expressed relatively equal openness to supporting hypothetical candidates who were 23, 50 or 77.
There are also just a lot of old politicians in office these days. “I don’t think that Biden in particular looks super out of place in the political scene right now,” Mr. Roberts said.
“People are thinking about the election through the lens of other things,” said Margie Omero, a principal at GBAO, a Democratic polling firm. “Biden’s record, Trump’s record, what they see as the future of the country, legislative accomplishments, the fight for abortion rights.”
This is an entirely likely current map considering the best current polling data. This is where Biden stands today electorally, looking out over the current map.
It is simply not true that as much as people want to make Biden’s age the issue or even an issue, it is not an issue to voters. It is an issue that shows up in opinion polling which polls often to get very specific types of feelings like this confirmed by the people who commission them.
That’s what this election is about. The issues. Not opinion polls. Nikki Haley is running her campaign right now on opinion polling and polls. She will constantly talk about how 76% of Americans “don’t want a Trump/Biden rematch” and a fat lot of good that is doing her. She might be the most qualified and talented candidate I have seen in years, even scoring a coveted Saturday Night Live appearance, but despite the fact that half her party is out of Trump, many more say they won’t vote for him if he goes to prison, or really raped that teenager sex trafficked minor, or is convicted for trying to overthrow the federal government, none of this is saving her.
For the people still onboard the “Biden old” train to funnytown — let’s actually take this proposition seriously. So Biden steps down. Then what? I notice many of these old white guys wanting Biden to step aside are none to eager to support Kamala Harris. It’s not like this is being driven by excitement for her at all. Although she would be the first in line, right? Ignoring the potential racism and misogyny behind marginalizing Kamala Harris is this whole “Biden steps down fantasy” — you would have to have some sort of primary.
There is no way they could organize one this quickly, to resolve the matter quickly, because that would be necessary, that would please everyone. Gavin Newsom is irksome to many progressives in the Democratic party — a man who was nicknamed Gruesome Newsom for the way he handled his state’s homelessness epidemic.
Gretchen Whitmer, JB Pritzker, Katie Porter, and Alexandria Oscasio-Cortez among others would all be new to the national stage. We have zero idea what scandals could mar their campaigns, and how they would be received by moderate voters.
There is also just no reason, either historically or presently to willingly give up the power of incumbency.
But maybe I’m being harsh on Jon Stewart, maybe he is just a comedian. Maybe this is just a job to him. Maybe he doesn’t want to seem like a partisan hack, except that only makes sense with equal choices.
There’s a concept called “punching down” and I’ve always found it fraught, because that is not really what it is. There isn’t some magic hierarchy of races, genders, sexes, ages, and sexualities that exist where an Asian guy can make fun of a white guy but not a black guy. So the idea of “punching down” isn’t entirely useful. What you’re actually doing is places yourself at eye level or below of the subject. Comedians often do this by clowning on themselves; maybe as their primary bit, as a means to give them a position from which they can criticism the powerful and even some that are not. If I’m a piece of shit, I can criticize other pieces of shit.
This isn’t a choice between an old guy, and probably a second old guy, it’s the choice between government that works and an out and out fascist. It’s a choice between a guy, however old you think he is, and whether or not you think his “puppet-masters” are actually doing his job, has a record of accomplishment from The CHIPS Act, standing with union workers, presiding over the greatest era for job growth of any modern President since FDR. The whole bit ignored all of this in favor of Biden old.
The problem with Crossfire and Tucker Carlson is not that he lies — that’s a huge problem, obviously — it’s that he saw politics as a grift, a dodge, and a game to get rich. Whoever gets in the way of that grift be damned. That’s why he had to get more extreme, more superficial, more glib in his analysis. That’s why he had to embrace more extreme viewpoints, like when Jon Stewart made the tone deaf decision to come out as a Wuhan virus Truther. I am told this is satire, and I myself read it as that, but the timing was awful, and the execution poor. Maybe he should have left that one to The Colbert Report, even though many Republicans thought that wasn’t satire either.
At the end of the day, comedy is an aesthetic in many ways. An artifice. It can be deeper than that, of course, but that’s where it starts. You can often tell from a single frame you are looking at a comedy. Jon Stewart, and Comedy Central, imported that aesthetic onto the news. Jon Stewart has smart enough, at the time, to give it depth an insight. His silliness and embracing of the shitshow aspect of politics contrasted against the buttoned up George W. Bush administration, that imported the aesthetic of competent leadership. However that is not the era we live in now.
These are not two equal candidates or equal parties. This isn’t a race between some douche and a turd sandwich.
The reason so many comedians avoid politics is obvious: you better have something powerful to say, otherwise you will just alienate half your audience. You better be able to cut through the bullshit and reach some deep inner truth, otherwise you’re just a hack who reached for the stars when he could have just reached for their scrotum.
This was a shameful performance for a man once crowned “The Most Trusted Man in Journalism”. It makes me feel bad for defending his platforming of John McCain and Bill O’Reilly as other thing other than hollow and swallow “both sides-ing”.
He didn’t do that. On Monday Night, Jon Stewart made his triumphant return to the airwaves as a Fox News News coorespondent.