Lily Salter's Blog, page 1029
August 6, 2015
“Daily Show” classics: Jon Stewart reveals why he got into comedy in the first place
It feels like just yesterday the fresh-faced stand-up comedian from New Jersey — then described as “sharp” by The New York Times and “overeager” by The Chicago Tribune — was sitting down for his first-ever “Daily Show” interview. He fidgeted with the buttons on his oversized suit like a nervous bar mitzvah boy and, in refreshing contrast to comedy frat-boy predecessor Craig Kilborn, charmed viewers with a particular Woody Allen-ish brand of self-deprecating humor.
Now, after nearly two decades on the satirical-news program, Jon Stewart prepares to sign off one last time.For the next three weeks, leading up to “The Daily Show” host’s August 6 departure, Salon will be taking a look back at some of Stewart’s most memorable moments spanning his 16 years and five months.
Dry your eyes, America: We should be glad Jon Stewart is leaving “The Daily Show”
There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just come right out with it. I'm not sad Jon Stewart is leaving "The Daily Show." I think he's right to leave.
Before any mobs descend upon me, let me stress (oh how I will stress it!): I agree with everyone about how dazzling and innovative and necessary Stewart has been over the years. He has more than earned his place in the cultural Hall of Fame. Among other things, he is one of the greatest media critics of all time.
But everything has a shelf life, and it's been clear for some time that Stewart's version of "The Daily Show" was running out of gas. If you were looking for a perfect symbol of this, you could do worse than read what his successor, Trevor Noah, had to say to a bunch of TV critics last week.
Noah told them he would be making some big changes in the show's focus when he takes over in September—especially when it comes to a certain cable news channel:
“He should be forced to take an IQ test”: Donald Trump’s sickest burns of his 2016 rivals
"I'd like to be civil," Donald Trump said recently of his upcoming debate performance tonight, but as a top campaign aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasich recently tweeted, for his fellow Republican candidates, preparing for tonight's debate with the notorious ham at center stage is like "a NASCAR driver mentally preparing for a race knowing one of the drivers will be drunk":
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Ahead of the first GOP debate, Salon takes a look at a few of the insults The Donald has hurled at his fellow Republicans:
Jeb Bush
"The last thing we need is another Bush,” Trump declared during January's Iowa Freedom Summit, opening a months-long assault on his fellow Republicans -- a campaign that has been particularly focused on the former Florida governor.
"How would you like him negotiating with the terrorists?" Trump asked at a rally months later, noting "it took him four days before he got his answer straight" on the 2003 Iraq invasion. Bush suffered an early campaign stumble when he was unable to answer a question on the wisdom of invading Iraq during a Fox News interview. Trump has repeatedly described Bush as "weak" on the campaign trail.
Bernie Sanders is no Barack Obama: Even if he wins Iowa & New Hampshire, he’s unlikely to dethrone Clinton
Proclamations of a Bernie Sanders surge returned this week, with the release of a new poll showing the democratic socialist senator from Vermont trailing Hillary Clinton by a mere 6 percentage points in New Hampshire, home of the nation’s first presidential primaries. In the survey, from WMUR and the University of New Hampshire, Sanders took 36 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 42 percent; though that result marked virtually no change from a June WMUR survey showing Clinton ahead 43 percent to 35 percent, it confirmed that the Democratic front-runner is perhaps most vulnerable to a primary defeat in the state that revived her presidential prospects following her 2008 loss to Barack Obama in Iowa.
Obama’s victory in the Hawkeye State propelled him from long-shot challenger to viable contender, delivering crucial momentum ahead of the primaries in New Hampshire, where he only narrowly fell short of dispatching Clinton, and in South Carolina, where he thumped the erstwhile front-runner by a 29-point margin. Naturally, a series of better-than-expected polls for Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire raises the question of whether we’re in for a repeat.
Beyond Cecil the Lion: The grisly and unethical world of wildlife killing contests
Across America, wildlife-killing contests (WKCs) — multi-day gun events that often award prizes to the person who kills the most — are increasing in number and scope.More than 250 WKCs happened last year alone. The events are legal in every state except California, which became the first state to ban wildlife-killing contests in December.
The most targeted species is the coyote, but WKCs target a wide range of species: Wolves, bobcats, badgers, foxes, skunks, prairie dogs and birds are all in the crosshairs. "Each of these species is a key part of healthy, functioning ecosystems," asserts the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). "Killing contests devalue native wildlife and glorify wasteful killing, while disrupting natural processes … [WKCs] ignore the ecological value of their target species and can actually exacerbate conflicts with livestock. Peer-reviewed studies on coyotes and wolves demonstrate this result."
Your brain is protecting you: How we purge bad memories
The brain is extraordinarily good at alerting us to threats. Loud noises, noxious smells, approaching predators: they all send electrical impulses buzzing down our sensory neurons, pinging our brain’s fear circuitry and, in some cases, causing us to fight or flee. The brain is also adept at knowing when an initially threatening or startling stimulus turns out to be harmless or resolved. But sometimes this system fails and unpleasant associations stick around, a malfunction thought to be at the root of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). New research has identified a neuronal circuit responsible for the brain’s ability to purge bad memories, findings that could have implications for treating PTSD and other anxiety disorders.
The insidious violence of #AllLivesMatter
In the social media battleground over race and policing, the debate seems to be a matter of two warring hashtags: #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter. Recently, another symbolic manifestation of that war—aside from police brutality and killing of unarmed black people—happened in living color, on a brick wall in Ottawa, Canada.
A mural of the late activist Sandra Bland, a woman deeply inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, was defaced just one day after it was erected. The vandals tagged “All Lives Matter” over Bland’s name, and scribbled racial slurs over her face, outraging many supporters of the #BlackLivesMatter movement—and forcing the community to unite for a restoration effort.
More from The Daily Dot: "'Deadpool' finally gets an official teaser -- just not the one you'd expect"
4 ways John Oliver nails America’s disastrous War on Drugs
For some years now, Comedy Central and HBO have played a huge role in educating people about some of the most important issues of the day. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Larry Willmore and John Oliver are all skillful at both educating and entertaining us. They are so impactful that presidential candidates and others running our country make it a priority to go on their shows.
Oliver, with his extensive 15-minute segments on his spinoff show on HBO, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, digs deeper into issues than most traditional news channels. One issue that Oliver has taken the lead on is ridiculing and slamming our country’s disastrous war on drugs. Oliver hits the drug war from all angles. Here are four excellent segments that show Oliver is becoming one of the most influential voices in our country to say loud and clear: No More Drug War.
Oliver Slams Mandatory Minimums and Mass Incarceration
Just last week, Oliver piggybacked off the news of President Obama’s 46 commutations and pivoted to our country’s insane mandatory minimums and their role in making the US the world leader in incarcerating its people.
August 5, 2015
Fox News defeated Jon Stewart: Hosting “The Daily Show” might be the hardest gig in comedy — and it’s clearly taken its toll
It’s not hard to argue that Jon Stewart has become one of the key political figures of our time – someone so smart, funny and gutsy that he has almost brought clarity to this politically unpleasant decade and a half. The appreciations in his final week hosting “The Daily Show” have started to roll in, and he’s virtually got a place on Rushmore ready.
"I'm going to issue an executive order,” President Obama said when he made his farewell visit two weeks ago. “Jon Stewart cannot leave the show.” Last night, Denis Leary said he and Chris Rock would write jokes for Stewart so he could stay on the air. Amy Schumer paid what seemed to be unironic appreciation Monday. Variety columnist Brian Lowry writes that Stewart’s stepping down could be as significant as any similar departure since Johnny Carson left his show in 1992.
Stewart is so beloved – especially by younger, media-savvy liberals – and seems to be at the top of his game. So why, despite some talk about being “restless” and wanting to take some time with his children, does Stewart feel the need to step down? (Can’t Comedy Central give him a nice, restorative vacation?)
How Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley spawned Jon Stewart, Bill O’Reilly and all the horrors of TV news
Like any cultural phenomenon, Jon Stewart has both a history and a prehistory. I’ll have more to say about the longtime “Daily Show” host and his mixed legacy as liberal avatar and Barack Obama doppelgänger before his final signoff, but our topic today involves a trip in the pop-culture way-back machine. Stewart’s prehistory goes back at least as far as 1968, when I certainly hope his parents were not letting him stay up to watch the late-night talk shows.
That was a history-shaping year for American politics and culture in so many ways I can’t possibly list them. It was the year that both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, the year of the “police riot” at the Democratic convention in Chicago, the year Richard Nixon was elected president by peeling white Southerners away from the Democratic Party for the first time since the Civil War. (Nixon’s margin over Hubert Humphrey in the popular vote was tiny – 500,000 votes out of 73 million – but Humphrey only carried 13 states, and the Electoral College was a wipeout.) Each of those events changed the world on its own, and taken together they made America in 1968 feel like a nation poised above the abyss.
