Bill Clinton's been making the rounds recently, what with the ass-kissing on The View, the fight with Chris Rock on The Late Show. Then Billary made an appearance last night on the The Daily Show, where the former prez went head to head with Jon Stewart and managed to explain our current financial woes with brevity. Like, serious brevity.
The fun starts around 1:55, and ends a minute later, but seriously watch the whole thing:
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All this financial hoo-ha and death of print media is depressing, sure. Kind of makes you wish you could crawl back under your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles covers and take out your Ecto Cooler juice box and hide until the Dow Jones magically soars up 400 points (too late).
Or, if you are anything like me, you spent this week distracting yourself with politically-themed musicals and reminiscing about the days you used to stand in line for Rent rush tickets. Hopefully everyone saw the Les MisBarack video, correct? So good.
But if you are still feeling down, here's The Daily Show's take on Streisand from Wednesday:
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Phil Bronstein, the former San Francisco Chronicle editor who was attacked by a Komodo dragon while married to Sharon Stone, agrees with us: Jon Stewart coud use some new material. Says Phil: 'In a breakfast at the University of Denver, he's predictable. Yes, predictable! Right down to "the t-shirt, khaki pants and a healthy stubble" the Washington Post saw fit to note he was wearing. [...] What else did he say: Network newscasts are "obsolete." Cable TV news is a circus and Fox News is not "fair and balanced." Oh, and some journalists get too cozy with their subjects. [...] He also complains bitterly that Karl Rove is a TV analyst on cable but thinks James Carville is OK because he's not "passed off as a sage." Wait. Jon sees cable news as a circus but thinks only certain people can get away with wearing the red nose and big, floppy shoes?'
Jon Stewart is the Most Awesomest Guy in the world, everybody agrees. The Times hands out puff profiles on the guy — just 'cause. The kids love him and laugh on command, even though he sometimes traffics in Dad Humor, and that's the worst. But he's scored big points among viewers for skewering politicians, and among the media elite for skewering … the media elite. But as with all good things — Mad Men, memorializing Tim Russert, Michael Phelps — inevitably, there comes backlash. So far, Stewart's avoided it. But no longer.
It's time to admit you've grown tired of Stewart's tired routine. Splicing clips where politicians contradict themselves? Fine. But finding new examples of media screw ups every day is our job; Stewart's brand of "You Are Fools And Let Me Show You Why But Won't You Still Love Me?" has run its course. CONTINUED »
There was zero reason for book critic Michiko Kakutani to write up yet another Jon Stewart profile for the Times last week. She didn't have anything new to say, and Stewart didn't have anything new to promote. If anything, is was an exercise in Kakutani criticizing something other than the written word, and 900 others have done it previously, and better. [Photo: Slate]
With all of NBC News' execs in Beijing, David Gregory thought nobody would notice if he took off last Thursday's Race to the White House. His excuse, according to a well-placed insider: He didn't want anything to interfere with his appearance on The Daily Show. Staffers at NBC "found it incredibly bizarre" that Gregory, NBC News' chief White House correspondent, would skip out on his own show to make sure there weren't any distractions for his guest spot on Jon Stewart's show. We're told "nobody" at NBC or MSNBC has ever skipped their own show to appear on another network. (Possible, but we can't guarantee it.) And the option of pre-taping Race and then heading to Comedy Central's studio? Also not a good enough option — perhaps because Gregory thought "all of the execs are in Beijing and won't care" (not an exact quote). So, while Gregory skipped off to joke about Brett Favre with Stewart, Rachel Maddow filled in his seat at 30 Rock. And what'd Gregory ditch for? To get schooled by Stewart on the lack of "news" in "news reporting": CONTINUED »
Chris Matthews. Dan Rather. That daytime anchor on CNN. Who hasn't made the simple mistake of confusing the potential next leader of the free world and the man who wants to end said free world? No, we don't actually believe these newscasters think the two men are one in the same, but with just a single letter separating their names, the brain can play tricks on ya! So: A primer on how to tell them apart.
The Daily Show's only female writer, Emmy winner Rachel Axler, is leaving Jon Stewart's side to write scripts for Amy Poehler's Office spin-off. [VG]
Did you hear that yesterday was historic? It was a day to remember! For eternity!
For the first time in the nation's history, a female contender for president … found herself without a hope in the world. Also: A black guy moved forward to a 1:2 shot in leading the country, so that's sort of worth mentioning too.
If you had seen the coverage in recent weeks and months, one might've thought that Hillary Clinton had been fighting an uphill battle, against the media and those naysayers, who had already declared the nomination for Barack. Except, uh, that wasn't really the case, Hil. Roll tape! (Scroll to about the 4:00 mark.)
Not only do the campaigns hate when legitimate news operations forego sending actual on-air talent to cover them and instead send "embeds" – reporters armed with video cameras and a YouTube account – but they hate fake news reporters even more.
Exhibit A: The Daily Show's Rob Riggle, who tags along on Barack OBama's campaign trial, managing to piss off various NBC News and Newsweekcorrespondents, and everyone else on the bus.
Might Jon Stewart not be the informative news anchor we've always believed him to be? Though he gets much credit for keeping the kiddies up to date with the news, a new Pew study says, perhaps, he shouldn't be getting such kudos. [Journalism.org] After all, if viewers weren't aware of the news before Stewart delivered the punchlines, how would they know what to laugh at? You know, besides the fact that everything on The Daily Show is funny? CONTINUED »
Tina Fey was likely just kidding around during a Reader's Digest interview when she supposedly slammed Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. Whereas she makes people laugh, Stewart makes them uncomfortable. And all that cheering and clapping when he delivers a one-liner about politics? That's "clapter," the Seth Meyers term for queuing up feigned audience excitement.
All that hating, even after Tina kicked Jon's ass in Celebrity Deathmatch.
The Daily Show's signature trick of mashing up cable news soundbites to take entire conversations out of context and create a funny bit is, well, brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that Dan Abrams has been repurposing the tactic for his own MSNBC show, now renamed Verdict. Even we talked about it, and our standards for Talking About Things are fractions of a point among the industry average.
Curious, then, that another show has been borrowing from Jon Stewart's playbook: Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources. And not only is the CNN show taking liberty with The Daily Show's skill set, but they're nearly copying Dan Abrams's copying.
As Rachel Sklar reports, "Kurtz showcased three corrspondents: FNC's Eric Shawn, CNN's Jason Carroll and ABC's Brian Ross, in that order. Earlier in the week on Abrams' regular "Beat The Press" segment, they featured the following: Two clips from Eric Shawn, Jason Carroll on CNN, John Roberts on CNN, and Brian Ross on ABC, in that order."
It's hard to argue sequence-based plagiarism. But it isn't hard to argue Kurtz's team knew all about Abrams' segment, given they featured a clip from the very Abrams show they lifted from.
As they say: Roll that beautiful bean footage! CONTINUED »
Since Eliot Spitzer's scandal broke Tuesday afternoon, The Daily Show's team didn't have much time to piece together a script for their host, or, more accurately, put together a news coverage video montage. But they did yesterday!
It's hard to tell who was less excited about Hillary Clinton appearing on The Daily Show last night: Jon Stewart, or the audience behind her.
Live via satellite, Clinton maneuvers her way around answering whether she would call for Obama to drop out if she had won 11 primary states in a row. Part II after the jump.
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