Saturday, March 04, 2006

Frailty, thy Name is John Stewart!

So there's been a huge discussion (read: Flame war) over at Metafilter regarding an opinion article written in the Boston Globe by a Harvard grad. regarding John Stewart. This fellow is of the opinion that Stewart and the Daily Show, I suppose representing the spearhead of a greater trend towards lampooning politics as buffoonery and pure idiocy in any iteration, is dangerous to the future of progressive politics in America:
Associer
Stewart's daily dose of political parody characterized by asinine alliteration leads to a ''holier than art thou" attitude toward our national leaders. People who possess the wit, intelligence, and self-awareness of viewers of ''The Daily Show" would never choose to enter the political fray full of ''buffoons and idiots." Content to remain perched atop their Olympian ivory towers, these bright leaders head straight for the private sector....

Most important, this disturbing cultural phenomenon overwhelmingly affects potential leaders of the Democratic Party.

You'll find that in the first half of the argument a long and tedious section where our Harvardian commentator outlines a "fictional composite of a typical apostle of the Daily Show," and bemoans how his hipsterish (my term) irony and cynicism will lead him away from political or social activism. But the point is maid succinctly enough in those quotations, I believe

Now, the discussion is raging about whether Stewart does or does not represent some form of parodic commentary / whether he is actually raising people's political conciousness by showing the absurdity... (It's unsurprising to think that most of the people who read Metafilter are fans of the Daily Show, myself perhaps included at an (ironic) distance of course)
However, I think that a point which hasn't been pressed either in the article or the zealous defense of Dailyshowism is that it's an absurd form of Idealism which places Stewart as the cause of this disengagement and anti-politics. I think, irrespective of my own beliefs about the situation, we have to come to terms with the fact that Stewart is popular because of a preexisting condition in our (a)political life. What is causing this parody unto hatred? Is it cynicism, disenchantment? is the end of history truly here, dispelling any of the former gravity of politics?

Now, I do have my opinions on the matter (to be insulted separately from the questions above, please). I think on the one hand it is a problem of the past twenty to twenty-five years, which among other factors have witnessed:
The frustration of any sort of putative alternative to liberal democratic capitalism,
The weakening if not crippling of the welfare state and collective labor's power within Western nations, The capitulation or death of Social Democratic movements, etc.

I don't even necessarily think that all of these things were good ways to do politics or see political change, but what they did represent was an opening or allowance for a certain type of discussion or discourse which has evaporated since. The language of momentous change or difference has so evaporated in contemporary discussions in politics that they resemble Linear or Zargotron B more than political speech. Capitulation here has on the one hand been a ready-made source of cynicism and irony, and on the other has solidified a particular state/economic system as the state/economic system. I don't even have to believe that there's a better way out there to realize that nobody even asks the question anymore. So then in comes the Daily Show, merely playing nursemaid to a group of smart but totally disinterested youths. The Daily Show isn't hurting the future of the American left, there is no American left. Perhaps its only active function is to provide succour to our ennui, to validate our apathy and provide us with any number of reasons not to get involved (Not least of all is so that we don't end up skewered on the Daily Show).

As if to bolster the sinking feeling I get in the pit of my stomach and bring this rant to a catastrophic halt, another nearby Metafilter link points to a study coming out of Emory about our "Millenial" generation (a.k.a. 'Gen Y.,' 'e-generation,' blech), and the obiesant and accepting good boys and girls we are. Just a brief quote and I'm done:

Over the past year, Epstein has surveyed more than 800 students at Emory University and four other institutions, about half of whom are Millennials, and half GenXers. Among the most striking findings of her survey:

  • Nearly 70% of Millennials agreed with the statement that “Authority figures should set and enforce rules” – compared to around 40% of GenXers.
  • 60% of Millennials agreed with the statement, “I trust authority figures to act in my best interest.” Only 40% of GenXers agreed.
  • Nearly 60% of Millennials said they “felt comfortable asking for special treatment,” while only 40% of GenXers felt that way.
*The author reserves all intellecual property rights regarding neologisms coined in this post, which include but are not limited to: Harvardian, Dailyshowism

2 Comments:

Blogger Robot said...

There seems to be a contradiction here. Usually in American history, when authority figures are trusted by the public, they are trusted to make changes, and not sit back and watch the end of history. In the 1900s and 1910s, the new generation of American youth supported authority. They loved Teddy Roosevelt and, to a lesser extent, Woodrow Wilson. Abraham Lincoln was allowed to seriously curtail civil liberties because he was trusted more or less by the North to do so. My point is that these were not stagnant presidencies. They were some of the most dynamic in our history. So, I'm not sure how we can at once trust authority and yet remain at an ironic distance. We either trust them or we don't -- and if we don't, it's not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, wouldn't you rather have a generation that trusts authority but watches the Daily Show in addition, demonstrating that their trust is not blind or uncritical?

2:47 PM  
Blogger shrf said...

Good point robot, there do seem to be contradictory currents at hand here, but let's see what we can get out of it in the way of a consistency.

Begin with the premise that most people of our generation wholeheartedly trust their leaders and are more than willing to follow the rules set by authority/society. From this point, any real thought of political engagement with said authority is effaced or considered abhorrent. Having accepted authority and voluntarily displaced themselves from the political/social sphere, they then watch the Daily Show or whatnot. This is not real criticism, it is parody, one which says "oh they're all idiots" but then fails to truly criticize the politics at hand or promote some idea of the value of change. What is this sort of criticism more than the utmost of superficial nonsense? We attack politicians beause of the stupid things they say and the silliness of legislative wrangling, but there's no engagement with politics in this sort of criticism, only a mild engagement with the "political." Trust allows us to laugh at the silliness and seeming stupidity of a horrid system, because if we didn't trust our government we'd be horrified, not chuckling, yes?

3:02 PM  

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