Fond Memories

How foolish we were

In college my roommate watched Jon Stewart every night of the week. This was years before Colbert had his own show, at the tail end of the Bush Administration and beginning of Obama’s—I imagine this was peak Stewart, but can’t say for sure because I never watched before or after living with that roommate.

It was obvious Stewart was not some sort of intellectual, but I didn’t mind the program being on. There was even this sense that Stewart was “above” the fray of political battles and so could be less “biased.”

At that time, the best thing to be was “unbiased,'“ i.e., contemptuous of the American people. Since politicians couldn’t be contemptuous, they always had to be regurgitating sound bites in order to move the stupid American voter a couple percentage points in the right direction. Political debates between politicians and especially presidential candidates were unbearable!

Everyone was either genuinely contemptuous of the American voter or pretended to be—because everyone pretends to be unbiased. Stewart “made fun of everyone.”

It turns out the only difference between someone like Stewart and the politicians was that Stewart pretended to be above it all and the politicians pretended to genuinely care. Both were pretending, and neither was anything but a grift on the American people.

Anyway, the news now is that Stewart and Colbert may have their programs cancelled. They are going to try to spin it as if they are being cancelled by TRUMP but the fact is they have always been blowhards and nowadays this is more obvious because they are now old blowhards; on top of this, the internet is allowing people to ignore the mainstream media.

link to news story

And here is a little message for Bill Maher