Team America

October 21, 2004

Here's a handy place to put all of your angry comments at my Team America diss in today's Spectator.

UPDATE: Much of the mail to the Spectator over this apparently controversial piece is posted here.

The Daily Showboat

October 18, 2004

Well, the neighborhood cool kids may never invite me up the rope ladder to their palatial hipster treehouses again, but I'm saying it anyway: Jon Stewart's trite political lectures from his recent book tour are not incisive, funny, or even sound factually. They're boring. From today's Spectator:

All the praise and attention the media have spent the past four years lavishing on The Daily Show has finally gone to Jon Stewart's head. The cover of Newsweek, on-air heart-to-hearts with Bill Moyers, a Number One New York Times bestseller, and old institutional hands like Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather groveling at his feet in every possible forum have all conspired to launch the comedian into a celebrity stratosphere where the air is so thin he forgot it was humor and impeccable comedic timing that opened the door to this particular kingdom, not his political acumen.

A sure sign of Stewart's atrophying sense of humor was his Friday afternoon appearance on CNN's Crossfire. Much lauded out in the hazy blips of the blogosphere, the appearance was nevertheless a boring, soulless, and, worst of all, completely humorless exercise in hubris. From the get-go it was apparent Stewart had no interest in telling jokes or even busting out any of his trademark understated cerebral mocking. He began by explaining he thought the show was "bad" and accusing the hosts of "partisan hackery," before launching into his main self-righteous dialogue between…well, mostly between himself and his sizable ego.

Read the rest.