Blog: Daily Show

The Daily Show, in its thoughtful and mature coverage last night of the CNN/YouTube debate, interviewed several members of Drinking Liberally at their debate watching party.

Nice job hosting the Oscars, but what was up with the repeated refences to "pirating" and "stealing" music and movies? Did AMPAS put you up to it? Did they say, Jon, you can make whatever jokes you want, but you have to make sure to slip in our political positions on copyright as well. It feels really slimy.

It's fine for moviemakers to make social comment with their craft (this year's movies did in spades), and I guess the whole point of the Oscars is to generate more viewership for the movie industry, but for the industry to use the awards show to promote its own profit agenda is like the press writing biased articles about their own business disputes, the way the AP published an article entitled "Democrats caught in own Web spinning after chiding GOP" about a little disagreement over the NY State Democratic Committee's use of news on its Web site.

They also managed to slip in a dig or two about how everyone ought to watch movies on the big screen (where they make more profit). Can't the movie industry celebrate filmmaking and resist lobbying at the same time?

From The Daily Show:

They skipped G, though. Maybe this is it.

If I wrote a book called 100 People Who Are Screwing Up the People Who Are Screwing Up America, Jon Stewart would be prominently featured on it. The Daily Show, more than any other television program, exposes the hypocrisy of the people in power and, through comedy, does it in a way that is very accessible to a wide audience.

Would Jon Stewart disagree with me about whether he should be on the list?

Last Wednesday Stewart interviewed Bernard Goldberg, the author of right-wing hack book Bias and now 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Jon Stewart took him to task for focusing on bad words people say on TV while ignoring a lack of openness and accountability in Washington. Goldberg criticizes Chevy Chase for calling W a "dumb fuck," and Stewart replies, "Once upon a time Thomas Jefferson fucked slaves." It's a good point that some people's nostalgia for the past ignores bigger gains that far overshadow an increase of mere vulgarity.

But Stewart also argues that the media figures Goldberg criticizes are "powerless," and I don't agree. Goldberg asks, "Don't you think culture is an important force," and Stewart replies, "Not nearly as much as government." In the short run, absolutely, but culture has a profoundly transforming long-term effect.

Religious conservatives have been frantically trying to transform culture for years, and now they control government, but our cultural norms continue to evolve toward greater tolerance despite their best efforts. Last week on Fresh Air, gay director Don Roos was talking about the child he and his partner adopted. He asked the birth mother if she was okay with a gay couple adopting the child, and her response was that the gay men on Queer Eye seem like responsible people who would make good fathers. It's culture, not politics, that can transform the fundamental boundaries of what we consider right and wrong.

Government can certainly do a lot of damage, or a lot of good, on economic issues, on foreign policy, and in many other areas, but when it comes to personal behavior, culture blows it out of the water. And I can kind of see Goldberg's point. Ending slavery is certainly more important than Chevy Chase saying a bad word, and the bad words don't bother me, but they do bother a lot of people, and more importantly it's not ridiculous to be concerned with the general livability of the world in which we live, culture included. Progressive leaders need to be sensitive to that.

But it's true that there's a lot more dangerous screwing up of America going on than just by a few potty-mouthed actors.

John Kerry did a nice job on The Daily Show last night. He got in some good digs against the President and sounded (to me, anyway, who will vote for him no matter what) calm and in control. I was disappointed, though, that he didn't have a better response to Jon's central question, "What the fuck is going on?" or, put another way, what does it mean for democracy when one group can consistently and blatantly lie, and except for a few editorials niggling with details, get away with it?

For the last few weeks Jon has been publically wrestling with this question, just as bloggers have been for years, of what this says about the media and how we could possibly get out of this huge hole we're in - and it is a hole, because the more people get away with it, the more they will try it, and that only will reinforce the media's habit of reporting both "sides" of an issue factually and without any context of whether the "sides" are at all credible.

Jon asked Kerry, "Is it a difficult tihng not to take personally," "Were you surprised," and "This election is clearly the most important one of our lifetime, and yet it's very difficult to have [a substantive] discussion". Kerry only responded by saying "Believe it or not, I've been through worse," emphasizing how Americans really want candidates to talk about substance, and how he's going to do just that, which is probably exactly the right thing to do. But it led to an interview where Jon kept trying to get at the central danger, asking Kerry these meta questions, and Kerry responding with core beliefs and policies rather than any profound insight into how treacherous state of our democracy today.

Jon asked Clinton a similar thing, and Clinton didn't say much either. Bloggers have come up with plenty to say about this, so I'm sure they both shied away from it not because of a lack of opinions but because it wouldn't be smart politically. Which just adds to the crazy messed-up state everything is in where candidates can't even talk about how crazy and messed up everything is.

In this game, you are a political activist who has just arrived on the train from New York. It's Monday morning. The convention lasts for four evenings.

During each day, you first have to arrange for a credential to attend the convention that evening. To do this, you work your connections to find someone who has an extra, such as elected state party officials and lobbyists. At first you have a few friends but not people important enough to have their own extra passes. Through them, however, you can get a low-level pass, and over the course of the week make connections with progressively more important people who can give you better passes.

Also during the day, your connections can enable you to access various parties. When you start the game you can only attend the New York State Delegation breakfast (which isn't a bad thing to attend, actually), but by the end of the week you are going to the Dakota Party honoring the Dakotas' six-person Congressional delegation featuring the Bacon Brothers or a party at the Museum of Fine Arts with music by Natalie Merchant. Plus, there are trade groups holding lobbying parties each day. With the right connections you can get in and meet some Congresspeople and their staffers. Or perhaps you can just waltz right in since some of them aren't checking ID.

After finagling a pass each day and attending parties, you head over to the Fleet Center for the day's convention speeches. The passes come in several colors: yellow (perimeter, which only lets you past security and into the basement of the Fleet Center); purple (fleet, which lets you into the hallways on various floors); light and dark green (hall, which lets you into the balcony from the 7th floor and and upper loge seats from the 5th floor; dark green gives you access to more sections than light green); red (floor, which lets you onto the floor itself where the delegates sit); light blue (backstage, which lets you into the backstage area where really important people hang out); and dark blue (podium, which lets you onto the podium itself but only when you are supposed to be in the seats behind the speaker, a speaker him or herself, staff arranging the podium, or a press photographer during specific photo ops).

Early in the week you only can get a purple pass, but your friends sneak you in to the hall itself by having one of a group come out of the hall holding their green pass and that of another, which you can then use to get in. Later in the week with better connections, you can also wait as bored delegates leave the building and ask them for their red passes. But of couse you need to know the delegates, or be with someone who does, before you can do this. By the end of the week the people you know are getting you backstage, and even an opportunity to have a podium pass, which just might give you a chance to meet the nominee himself.

You meet the bloggers, upstairs in section 320 on the 7th floor (green pass required) and find out that at the press office, any green press pass (which the bloggers have and you can borrow) allows you to trade for a red press pass for one hour to go interview delegates. But finding the press office is itself a challenge, since the Fleet Center is a maze as complex as any video game castle. Poorly marked escalators whisk you from the fourth floor to the seventh even when you are trying to get to 5, and force you to backtrack several stories on the stairs just to try again. And on 6 (accessible only from 5, of course, not from the main stairways or escalators) are even more special areas, including corporate boxes which require extra passes to get to beyond the main color-coded passes.

Once the convention ends for the day, your work is far from over. Once the speeches end around 11 pm there are still three hours until everything has to close. That means finding the hot parties around town, working your connections to get through the door, and even once in a while sneaking in by having a few campaign staffers tell the door people that you are one of them as they go in, counting on the fact that they are too busy to check the IDs of every person. You make it to the high-demand Barack Obama party, mixers from New Democratic Network, and the party in Charlestown honoring bloggers where you can meet Joe Trippi or Jeaneane Garofalo.

Then, staggering to bed around 3 am, you catch a few winks before getting up for the 8:30 New York State Delegation breakfast and starting the next round of the game.

One open question regarding this game: what should be the goal? Meeting John Kerry? That is a good reason to strive for a blue pass, though it's not that important in real life. Just having fun? That's the real life goal, but not so good for a game. Something else? Any ideas?

Anyway, the game I just outlined pretty much describes my week at the convention, except I didn't go to all the events described (I skipped the New York breakfast most mornings, and I didn't try to get a red pass, though others did), and I doubt it's really possible to schmooze so high as to get a blue podium pass in just one week. Personally, the highlight of the week, besides just hanging out with lots of cool people, was getting to talk to Daily Show correspondent Samantha "Sam" Bee and getting a picture with her and fellow correspondent Ed Helms.