It about 10:58 p.m. in the White House, boots should be kicked off and the presidential potato should settle down on the couch, because the acerbic Jon Stewart of “”The Daily Show”” is about to lash out.
All bets are on that Stewart does indeed mess with Texas. And Mars. And ‹ I’ll put at least a fiver on this one ‹ it will be highly entertaining.
Let’s just hope the White House is well-equipped with extended cable.
Politics and entertainment go hand-in-hand nowadays, and people are listening. Whether people (voters) laugh or are outraged seems inconsequential because the point is that they are listening. Such “”entertainment”” suddenly isn’t so fluffy with the current national affairs and a presidential race coming up. Remember, Stewart is beamed to households with eager viewers each night (plus reruns).
Hopefully, all that foreign policy hasn’t worn G.W. out, because it would probably be in his best interest to resist the sandman another half hour to catch Jay Leno’s monologue on””The Tonight Show.”” After all, the president can tell his first lady that he’s late to the sack because he’s doing important campaign research. The president himself should be taking notes, though there are probably legions of late-night tube-watchers in the Bush Brigade who scour the shows to see what’s being said; if they don’t exist, they should.
Someone from every campaign needs to form a committee. Or a subcommittee. Something.
Stewart, Leno and others like them have managed to find truths in political morass and have capitalized on the fact that, at basic levels, America’s elected and would-be leaders provide pure hilarity on a daily basis.
(In fact, I thought ultra-conservative commentator-turned-author Ann Coulter was taking a more absurdly extreme satirical approach in the entertainment industry/Fox News world when she first hit the scene. I discovered I was very, very wrong, and she started to be startlingly less funny.)
Recently, “”The Daily Show”” invited a NASA engineer to speak with Stewart and explain to him why exactly the United States was trekking to Mars, and why the president wanted to send Americans to the Red Planet.
Stewart leaned into the camera and surreptitiously whispered “”I think it’s because he’s given up here.””
Well, then. Maybe this administration has given up and there truly are better opportunities and cheaper real estate in the final frontier.
Where does that leave the MTV Generation? Well, VJs Sway and Suchin Pak deliver hourly, bite-sized doses of news every hour to fight ignorance and light a fire, but even they can’t fight the power of Leno and his memorable jokes.
“”Dean got so cold [in the Midwest] the foam around his mouth started to freeze,”” Leno said in a recent monologue.
Step aside, Sway. Entertainment (MTV) that devotes a half-minute of news (cleverly named “”MTV News””) squashed between bootyliciousness and bar fights on Real World San Diego does not cut it. Late-night shows have the leg up in the race to spread awareness.
Forget the MTV Generation. These late-night news shows are garnering the attention much bigger audiences
Guest and comedian Richard Lewis leaned toward Stewart and pointed at his face. “”I get my news from you,”” Lewis said. “”And Mars.””
Even Newsweek caught on that Stewart has something going here. In its annual “”Who’s Next”” issue, Stewart graced the cover and the title “”Seriously Funny”” was emblazoned across his chest. The issue was snatched off newsstands by consumers across the nation.
Late-night entertainment shows are a force to be reckoned with in the race for the Democratic nomination and the subsequent presidential campaign.
Sen. John Edwards (D ‹ N.C.) announced his presidency on “”The Daily Show.”” Initially, some thought it was a joke, but soon everyone knew it was very real.
Arnold Schwarzenegger dubiously looked at the audience on the “”Tonight Show”” and revealed he would enter the gubernatorial race for the California recall election. It was pure late-night fodder, and it was recognized as such. Hosts pounced and political jokes ensues.
After the esteemed governor of California submitted his budget, Leno claimed that the services for women who have been sexually harassed will be the first thing to go, in a nearly perfect accent that all the late-nighters have perfected to the last spitty syllable.
The truth is that entertainment is what educates voters now, and now it is the time for my favorite politicians (ahem, in Iowa) to figure that out quick.
