Not that we aren’t flush, but I just thought of another presidential candidate.
Tag Archives: Jon stewart
The Daily Medicine Show
A grandfather I never met lost his tiny Georgia grocery story (in which dad was born) during the Great Depression. He couldn’t bear asking customers, all neighbors and friends, for money they did not have and would not see again. Eventually, he gave away so much that he had to shutter the business.
So he started a medicine show, a common sight of the era. By horse and cart, medicine shows traveled from town to town to sing, dance, tell jokes and, hopefully, sell ‘remedies’ and trinkets to monied spectators. A traveling Tonight Show and souvenir shop.
Dad was too young to hit the road, so his eight brothers and sisters handled the entertainment. But my uncle Fonnie laughed so much at his own jokes that grampa had to cut him from the non-star roster.
I wonder what gramps would have thought of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. 
Noah is the high-profile replacement to Jon Stewart. The South African-born standup comedian is clever, young and leading-man handsome — a trifecta in the cable TV derby. But something is missing in the retooled show.
The writers are the same. So is the left-leaning humor. But the bite lacks.
Perhaps it’s a matter of age. Political humor requires a certain world weariness. Stewart, 52, had it in spades. 
So does Larry Wilmore, 53, whose Nightly Show follows The Daily Show and who would have seemed a natural replacement to Stewart. Like Stewart, Wilmore is terrific at exasperation. 
Noah, on the other hand, is terrific at tourist-like bewilderment. The 31-year-old often wonders aloud about an American political system that has become as cartoonish as Daffy Duck. His observations are on the money, and should be fodder for eternal material.
But politics in the U.S. is humor we know all too well, and the jokes feel somehow dated and retold. Just substitute Marco Rubio for Boss Tweed. 
And then there’s the Fonnie Syndrome. Noah has a megawatt smile, and his laughter at punchlines feels genuine. Certainly, Stewart chuckled all the time at a good zinger. But Stewart laughed at the absurdity of a broken system, not the humor of his joke. There’s a razor-wire difference, and perhaps it comes from a half century of experience with red tape buffoonery.
It’s unfair to judge this early, and Noah may soon find his wheelhouse. It took Stewart the first six months of his 16-year stint to become a canny political satirist. And Comedy Central will not give a rat’s ass about wit if the millennials keep the Nielsen numbers high.
But The Daily Show had such a dry and knowing sense of humor it bordered on informational. Stewart eventually became a Post-It note reminder of the forgotten, the hair-pulling pundit for those who had to close their stores, join medicine shows and tap dance to the Muzak of The Department of Bureaus.
To lose that would be no laughing matter.
Why Donald Trump Is Good For Democracy
Damn I miss Jon Stewart.
He would be having a field day with the Republicans. Donald Trump continues to trounce the GOP presidential wannabes, despite his tendency to blow your mind straight out of your ass with his racism, chauvinism, and general disdain for anyone not named Donald John Trump. Hell, even his hair wants out of the race (his head looks like it threw up on itself),
yet there seems no levy strong enough for Hurricane Donald.
But given Stewart’s contrarian instincts (when is this guy going to run for office? Jesus, if Al Franken can dork his way to the Senate, what’s to keep Stewart from the Oval Office?), he might have given a heartfelt thank you to Trump.
Not only for the punchlines, which are endless. But also for revealing, like a reality show, what America truly craves: Someone to own it.
Stewart even had a name for the current American political landscape: Bullshit Mountain. But, in all honesty, you couldn’t blame Trump for adding to the pile, currently at new heights thanks to Democrats and Republicans alike.
Listen to contenders in the ’16 field, and they spend more time explaining what they’re not than what they are. Not a racist, not a homophobe, not a tax-n’-spender, not an atheist, not a comin’ for your guns. It’s a strategy of pre-emptive apology, lest they offend and, gulp, go viral.
Not Trump. He’s one of the few politicians to admit wealth, though all possess it. Trump not only will tell you “I’m rich,” but he’ll pull out the checkbook to brag: $8.5 million and change. Ask him about a balanced budget, and he’ll say “I’ll hire accountants.” Foreign’ policy? “I’ll kick their asses.” As him if he’s a racist, and he can’t help but tell you he is, usually punctuated with an “and fuck you for asking.”
The result? The latest GOP poll numbers, if the election were held today, according to the AP:
Donald Trump 28.3%
Ben Carson 11.6%
Jeb Bush 8.0%
Marco Rubio 6.6%
Ted Cruz 6.1%
Carly Fiorina 5.8%
Mike Huckabee 5.3%
Scott Walker 4.7%
John Kasich 4.1%
Rand Paul 3.2%
Chris Christie 2.7%
Rick Perry 1.8%
Rick Santorum 0.9%
Bobby Jindal 0.6%
Lindsey Graham 0.5%
George Pataki 0.1%
Jim Gilmore 0.0%
If you don’t recognize most of these names, you’re not alone. But, for the record, the man in second place is the Detroit-born neurosurgeon who said in a March interview that homosexuality was “absolutely” a choice, explaining that “a lot of people go into prison straight, and when they come out, they’re gay.”
Regardless of your political spin, it’s hard to miss the parallels between Trump and Carson: Successful business men, not weaned on politics, willing to own their positions. Analysts say that Trump could redefine traditional campaigning, because he isn’t dependent on the Koch brothers (or any other lobbyists, for that matter) for cash. At this point, who could blame anyone ready for a slash-and-burn approach to governance?
We may regret that approach.
The polls suggest we crave something else: sustenance. That just doesn’t flourish doesn’t grow on Bullshit Mountain.
