I enjoyed Jon Stewart's the Daily Show as much as the next person, but this article makes me <i>really</i> appreciate how much I dislike all of its successors. The whole "Progressives Yell At the Camera About Things They Read on Twitter" genre is thoroughly saturated at this point. And criminally unfun. Even Jon Stewart's new show I have found to be unnecessarily doomful - not only does it host it's own fair share of misleading stories, crackpots, and pitchfork sharpening - it's just not <i>fun</i>.<p>I think the thing all of these shows are forgetting is the Daily Show was FUN. <i>In spite of</i> "Stewart taking things personally."<p>The Daily Show was <i>literally a parody</i> of the pearl-clutching, panic-driven serious news shows on cable at the time. They brought levity and lowered the stakes.<p>Instead these shows have become the "serious" shows.
>Only occasionally did the series fully deliver on its initial promise of using Noah’s outsider’s gaze to satirize America.<p>The issue I had with Noah on the daily show was that criticism and satire from an outside comes across completely different than from an insider.<p>Stewart and Colbert were insiders, so when they satirized the US, there was a level of self-deprecation, and the idea that we are going through through this absurd madness together.<p>Because Noah didn't have this shared identity with the viewer, the satire generally fell flat and came across as mere ridicule.
I loved Noah's run on TDS. I would've preferred Stewbeef of course, because I love me some J-Stew, but Noah was alright and grew into his role in one of the most tumultuous times of our nation's history and the world around us.<p>Anyone who criticizes him for "shitting" on America, it's institutions, and it's people, are just mad that they belong to the groups he was shitting on. It's ok! Be mad. It's funnier that way.
No one owes anyone anything in terms of expectations. As long as he's happy and isn't harming any other people, it's for him to decide to quit and go do something irrelevant, if he wants to.
Is there any other country that loves commentators that come and shit on it’s citizens? I can’t imagine India paying Brits big money to crap all over them, but in America we have Trevor, Piers Morgan, John Oliver.<p>I never got the appeal frankly. Maybe we can listen to Noah and become more like the paradise that is South Africa.