Joe Bageant and Jon Stewart

There was a time when I'd catch Jon Stewart's show now and then, and do a little chuckling. Now I just get bored. The targets are always easy, and his particular brand of smug satisfaction and heavy-handed elitism leaves me cold.

I think the shtick that finally sent me over the edge was the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear of last October. It probably made good television and all, but it looked to me like just another way to make fun of people who are really fucking scared about the way their lives are disintegrating in the wake of our brave new economy, and grasping about for any way they can to understand it.

I guess Stewart actually stood up at the end of the event and said something about how that's exactly what he wasn't trying to do — that he didn't mean to make fun of anybody's fears. But if Stewart has one great talent, it's his ability to anticipate criticism and wriggle out from under it. Which is another reason he gets on my damned nerves.

Anyway, who cares, right? He's a cable television personality. Something that interests me just about as much as the life cycle of a fruit fly. But I caught this snippet of Joe Bageant, the author of  Deerhunting with Jesus, talking about Stewart on YouTube recently, and I thought it was a perfect example of why Bageant's fast becoming one of my favorite writers.

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