The Daily Show's "The Manchurian Lunatic"; with a Cameo by…Reason Magazine

Nick Gillespie | 11.19.2010 12:52 PM




Start your day with Reason. Get a daily brief of the most important stories and trends every weekday morning when you subscribe to Reason Roundup. Email(Required) Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ NEXT: National Assessment of Educational Regress? Double the Money, Smaller Classes, No Improvement. Nick Gillespie is an editor at large at Reason and host of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. Culture Media Share on Facebook Share on X Share on Reddit Share by email Print friendly versionCopy page URL Media Contact & Reprint Requests Hide Comments (71) Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses. Trespassers W 14 years ago Jon Stewart? The stand-up comedian? Mike M. 14 years ago No, Jon Leibowitz, the big government leftist. I imagine he must be feeling pretty sad these days after his Rally to Maintain Liberal Insanity resulted politically in the biggest flop this side of Waterworld. Zeb 14 years ago Huh? A ton of people came and enjoyed themselves. I would call that a success. Mike M. 14 years ago Oh please. Liebowitz and Colbert's core audience is almost entirely liberal like they are, and the purpose of the event wasn't just to rally them to the Mall on Saturday, it was to try and rally them to the polls on the following Tuesday. On that front, they failed miserably. Rudan 14 years ago As someone who DVR's the Daily Show, I enjoyed this. Point of the segment is that Newsmax and Reason may not have much in common except that they are both organizations wealthy people have contributed to with views opposing to Soros. Point being Soros isn't the only philanthropist in the world who gives money to political causes he supports. DHK 14 years ago Mike, why the emphasis on the last name? I'm assuming you call Natalie Portman Natalie Hershlag? Sgore 14 years ago Or Mel Brooks by the name Mel Kaminsky? Or for that matter Jay-Z by the name Sean Corey Carter? Seriously, Mike, What's your emphasis on Jon Stewart's birth name for? I see people doing that sometimes and they never really explain why. In any case, I would agree with Rudan. I don't think the point was actually to suggest the site was involved with any nefarious practices, just to point out the reasoning easily could go in a different direction. Cyto 14 years ago Mike, why the emphasis on the last name? I'm assuming you call Natalie Portman Natalie Hershlag? I don't know about Mike, but I'll call her anything she'd like, as long as she shows up naked with hot grits... Attorney 14 years ago I think [i]everyone[/i] should call Michael Savage by his real name. Michael Wiener. T Ganski 14 years ago You obviously missed the point of the rally, Mike. But then you if you are a Beck fan, you aren't interested in anything but what comes from his demented view of the world. Miku 14 years ago I find it funny how about half the audience at the rally missed the point of the rally. ? 14 years ago It works as reinforcement of the "say 'Koch'" directive that went out a couple months ago, because it's for an audience that's...directed. It doesn't matter what it is. Ska 14 years ago Which is a...good thing? A bad thing? An I-don't-know thing? It depends on the quality of new trolls it brings us. Or even better, dissenters with cogent arguments. Of course I'm kidding. spur 14 years ago Stewart has been flat and predictable for me for a while now - much prefer Colbert - but this piece is right on the money - As a lifelong libertarian I find it odd to call Beck an anti-Semitic embarrassment and praise Stewart but there you go. Anonymous 14 years ago How is Beck an anti-Semite? spur 14 years ago He may or may not be an anti-Semite - I go back and forth between Beck actually meaning what he says and Beck as a performance artist. Having said that 'anti-Semite' isn't a word I like to splash about with any regularity but after watching his two episodes on Soros he hits all the buttons of a classic anti-Semite conspiratorialist... Kevin P. 14 years ago So in other words, you have no idea about whether he is or is not an anti-semite, but that doesn't prevent you from making stuff up. Maybe you should write for the NYT? Joshua 14 years ago Nah - he's a Mormon. They LOVE the Jews. He's angry at Soros because Soros doesn't like Israel. Miku 14 years ago I don't think he realized how obviously anti-semitic most of the people he quoted were. Oh, George Soros sucking the blood out of nations, definitely not anti-semitic, sounds like a good thing to read on national television. Fist of Etiquette 14 years ago Stewart is the same as Beck in so many respects. shrike 14 years ago Beck is a blatant liar and conspiracy theorist and Stewart is a comedian. Not the same at all. Fist of Etiquette 14 years ago Stewart's conspiracies all involve Fox News. He's a one-note version of Beck. Even when the Congressional Repukes had no vote to do or stop anything, Stewart's demons continued to be Fox and conservatives. Which is fine; the world needs opposition voices. He just can't self-righteously claim to be any different that the rest of the 24-hour conflictinator. Zeb 14 years ago He's a fucking comedian. Beck claims to be a serious whatever-he-is. Comparing the two is stupid. Fist of Etiquette 14 years ago I understand the suggestion is as insulting to Stewart fans as I imagine it would be to Beck fans. If Beck played his shtick for laughs, would it make the comparison easier to understand? Is the only reason the similarities of the two cannot be pondered because Stewart has done standup and Beck hasn't? Isn't satire just a different form of social commentary? Neu Mejican 14 years ago Beck does stand up comedy. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....85943.html Brother Wolf 14 years ago uhhh, are your for real? Have you ever watched the Daily show? They are both entertainment news outlets. They both serve to massage the righteousness of each respective political bubble. blubi 14 years ago Stewart, like Maher, is about satisfying a lefty audience by attacking the right, via ridicule. It?s often only funny if you agree with them, whereas comedy should be funny per se. They often go into angry political rants - again that?s not comedy. More like sarcastic vitriol. Colbert, though political, tries to stick to comedy, and when funny it is because it is funny, not because of who he is making fun of. Plus no cheap selfrighteous rants. Brother Wolf 14 years ago yeah, but all comedy has a victim and no comedy is funny to everyone. See: Wiseman's "Quirkology" blubi 14 years ago Victim or target? I joke about myself most of the time, lots of material and noone gets offended. If Stewart is only funny when you agree with him then he?s not funny, just a king in a village of idiots. Zeb is Dumb 14 years ago Like, really, really dumb. Rudan 14 years ago What conspiracies? It's ridiculous to draw a Beck-Stewart equivalency. I'll give you Beck-Olbermann, but you're being ridiculous. shrike 14 years ago Beck concocted the mother of all conspiracy theories when he claimed some now defunct little Shore Bank in Chicago was funded by Goldman Sachs to build a Climate Exchange from software Fannie Mae wrote and that Al Gore, Rev Wright and the Tides Foundation had planned it all. The guy is a serious flake. But he is the patron saint of Teabaggers so he gets a fawning audience who believe his shit. Fist of Etiquette 14 years ago I'll give you that Beck is full of it, but you seem to miss that Stewart has his own fawning audience who seem to blindly follow him as he pushes a clear ideological agenda. Stewart occassionally takes on Democrats, especially when they're not left enough. Beck occassionally takes on Republicans, especially when they're not right enough. Stewart's television show plays it for laughs, except when he asks us to meet him "over here at camera two" and gets embarrassingly self-righteous. Beck's radio show plays it for laughs, except when he goes for an insightful monologue and gets insufferably maudlin. Good God, men, they both had rallies on the Mall. One would have to be part of Stewart's fawning audience to think the Stewart rally was solely to lampoon the Beck rally, any more than Beck's rally was simply to "restore honor", whatever that even meant. cynical 14 years ago No, Beck is also a comedian. He just isn't good at it, so most people don't notice. jay 14 years ago It also probably has something to do with the fact that Beck is on a network called Fox NEWS. While Stewart is on a network called COMEDY CENTRAL. heller 14 years ago Yes, it doesn't matter what you're message is, just what clothes you wear. Paul 14 years ago What about Limbaugh? ManikMonkee 14 years ago "While Stewart is on a network called COMEDY CENTRAL." Actually so are Southpark, they got me on to Reason after doing an interview in the EU reason conference, which in turn got me into Libertarianism Something that I'd been coming to the same conclusions as but hadn't actually read about was already into classical liberalism but knew jack shit about Friedman Rothbard etc to deny that Stewart is political is fucking retarded He was pretty funny when the Republicans were in power but now he's feckin pathetic, although this video is funny as fuck because Beck is a complete retarded fuck wit bigbigslacker 14 years ago His "it's funny because it's true" things falls flat if it isn't true. "It's funny because my audience thinks it's true" is a little better. Bee Tagger 14 years ago I think Beck is just further along the same path that Stewart is taking. Years and years ago I would occasionally hear Beck's radio show and he seemed to be primarily focused on doing satire and sarcasm and generally producing a comedy show with the occasional political commentary but not letting commentary trump humor. I could describe The Daily Show the same way in years past but its going the way of Beck in that humor and satire takes a back seat to politics and the promotion of the host. It was a relatively gradual process for The Daily Show over the years until the Rally to Restore Sanity, which let out the clutch Fist of Etiquette 14 years ago You could also call Stewart the left's version of Limbaugh. Limbaugh made his name by blaming every little thing squarely on the Clinton Administration. And, yes, he often did it with humor. Stewart, like Limbaugh and EIB, was somewhat known before he took on the Daily Show role, but his popularity really rose through the Aughts when he set himself up as the Bush Hunter. For a decade every thing that could possibly go wrong was solely the fault of the Bush Administration. blubi 14 years ago And when Bush was gone Stewart?s "comedy" died. Now it?s Fox and Beck. Stewart is like someone making lame Irish jokes to an audience who only finds it funny because they hate micks. KPres 14 years ago Limbaugh's old TV show was basically the exact same format as Stewart's show. He was pretty funny, too. The only difference was that Limbaugh didn't pretend he wasn't a conservative, like Stewart pretends he's a moderate. Then again, all liberals claim they're moderates. Anyway, It wasn't until Clinton got elected that the humor started to give way. Hugh Akston 14 years ago Is this still about Citizens United? Paul 14 years ago No, it's about Proposition 13. Observer 14 years ago And yet, despite Rachel Maddow's entreaties, Stewart refuses to call himself a "player" in politics. He thinks of himself as a failure in that regard, a mere entertainer. Maddow and Olbermann et al do think of themselves as players, a kind of fourth branch of government--not quite journalists, certainly not legislators, but legislator wannabees without that pesky nuisance of having to get elected and follow the rules and procedures. They perform this function with all the energy and zeal of religious converts. They're dutifully sycophantic to politicians they admire, but secretly wish it was the other way around. ClubMedSux 14 years ago I enjoy Stewart (hell, if I dismissed funny people because they're left-leaning all I would have to watch are re-runs of Penn & Teller's Bullshit), though I'll admit he's been much more inconsistent post-Bush. That being said, my one problem with him is his desire to play both sides of the fence when he pulls his whole, "I'm not a political commentator; I'm just a comedian" schtick. Hugh Akston 14 years ago Also, congrats to reason on officially joining the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy. tkwelge 14 years ago I like how even though only a couple of million people (of the 200 million adults in this country), mostly above 50, actually watch fox news, yet the left keeps on pretending that Fox News is the death star of their opposition. They act like if they can get fox news, then they have "won." I'm a little young, so I might have the narrative wrong, but it seems to me that Fox News simply appeared due to a pretty obvious left leaning bias in the newsmedia, which had existed since watergate in this country. Fox News simply took what the rest of the media was doing and added their own right wing bias. As time went on, Fox decided to become more and more outrageous, eventually dispensing with any illusion of non bias. Conservatives loved it, and leftists decided that they loved to hate it. Between the elderly conservatives watching Fox News and the left wing noise machine keeping the network in the limelight, Fox became a juggernaut. Then people on the left, such as Stewart and Colbert, began to take advantage of the anti Fox News sentiment and built entire careers around bashing Fox News. Left wing news networks have now started to become as outrageous and biased in order to carve out their own markets. Even the news has now become entertainment. It seems to me that the thing keeping this trend going is the fact that people don't ignore the offensive and annoying. They rush them microphones as fast as they can. They repeat what that person says endlessly. They form discussion groups to talk about what was said. Everyone forms their own uninformed opinion, and then everyone simply moves on to the next sideshow. My solution? We stop talking about who annoys us and why, and we start seeking out the smart people who say things that we like and give them a microphone. That's actually one of the reason that I enjoy Reason magazine. Sure, even Reason spends a large amount of its time reporting on other newspeople, but they also tend to search for people who have something genuinely new to say. Yes, some mornings I see stories on reason that are simply restatements of previous issues, but I often find stories about things that I might have never thought about. Of all of the sources of news and information out there, Reason is probably the least predictable. Granted that isn't saying much, but it's a start. tkwelge 14 years ago blegh, reason, Reason, reasons, Reason's. !#!$@#$%@% bigbigslacker 14 years ago I need a ruling on this. Does this qualify for a drink? R C Dean 14 years ago Which is a...good thing? A bad thing? An I-don't-know thing? There's no such thing a bad publicity. It doesn't matter what they say about you, as long as they're talking about you. 1930's German Jew 14 years ago Well... Brother Wolf 14 years ago Good point, but... more bad press could solve a problems.. that people are so ignorant of what Libertarianism actually is (especially many people who actually hold libertarian views, but don't associate with the title) Tolly 14 years ago So...this is funny? I tend to laugh more when Stewart has Obama administration folks on and gently fluffs them up with soft-ball questions. Zeb 14 years ago I haven't seen the Daily Show much for years, but the few times I have seen it recently, he seems to do a pretty good job of ripping into Democrats when they are in charge. He is a liberal and his bias in that way will show, but (in my opinion, you don't have to like it) he does a pretty good job with topical political comedy. sdfsg 14 years ago ------ http://www.onseeking.com ---------- Our company specializes in manufacturing from located in CHINA and Canada,With more than 6 Years of experience,we are mainly . dealing with are:Nike shox?Christan Audigier t-sh irt?Ed Hardy?COACH Bag?New Era cap .Tiffany_Ring. More products. Safe Payment.Paypal Fast Shipment.5-7 days you can receive your order product. No min order request.You can order only one product Free Shipping.The price on our website are including everything. --------- http://www.onseeking.com ---------- dsfdg 14 years ago ------ http://www.onseeking.com ---------- Our company specializes in manufacturing from located in CHINA and Canada,With more than 6 Years of experience,we are mainly . dealing with are:Nike shox?Christan Audigier t-sh irt?Ed Hardy?COACH Bag?New Era cap .Tiffany_Ring. More products. Safe Payment.Paypal Fast Shipment.5-7 days you can receive your order product. No min order request.You can order only one product Free Shipping.The price on our website are including everything. --------- http://www.onseeking.com ---------- Com'on man 14 years ago Again, I am growing tired of the likes of Reason and Cato trying to pass themselves off as libertarian when obviously they are conservative! How does the whole liberal-tarian thing work out, when if you aren't a progressive you are a de facto conservative? sage 14 years ago Drink! bigbigslacker 14 years ago I've met maybe two progressives who were open to new ideas. Daze 14 years ago Reason magazine and Newsmax, same diff. creech 14 years ago "Forbes" put the Koch Brothers at number 56 on the list of the most powerful people in the world. A Chinese commie was first, Obama second, yet another commie fourth, etc. etc. So there are 55 authoritarians, and lefties (or leaning,as far as I can tell) ahead of Kochs but we are supposed to be shaking in our boots over them. Tanya 14 years ago Uh, I don't think all publicity is good publicity. It's kind of sad that I watched TDS since its inception in high school and only stopped watching a few months ago when he crossed the line from "hilarious comedian who makes fun of everyone and the stupid" to "partisan hack who shills for the administration and pretends to be a real journalist when convenient". It also stung that I read a sizeable portion of the think tanks/magazines/libertarian published cited by him. "If this were a fair fight, George Soros against this waves arm is about even". Fuck you Jon Stewart. I used to trust you, now you just flat-out lie and exaggerate. The puppets were funny. Adonisus 14 years ago It was a fantastic episode. Everytime the man channels whatever outer space entity that lives in Beck's head, it's a good episode. I would actually love to see The Jacket as a guest on the show. I think him and Stewart would get along fine. heller 14 years ago I love the people who think Stewart isn't comparable to Beck because he is on Comedy Central. Never mind that Stewart proselytizes constantly and treats his own views seriously, meaningless labels are what we should be focusing on! Just like it doesn't matter what Reason actually says, if the Koch brothers fund it, it must be a pro-corporate conservative tool. Dumb people are always looking for an excuse not to seriously think about something. Max 14 years ago Oh my God! Reason magazine was mentioned by Jon Stewart! Has Nick Gillespie shit his pants? Can Nick Gillespie shit his pants with that copy of Atlas Shrugged shoved uo his ass? Yonemoto 14 years ago Actually, it's KMW that has Atlas Shrugged where the sun don't shine. Nick Gilesspie is hiding two chicks up there. If you don't pay attention, Max, eventually people will figure out that you're just a sock puppet. Nick 14 years ago The only difference between Beck and Stewart is delivery. They're the strongest for their respective sides, which is interesting since neither are 100% shills for their party. 90%, maybe. Cyto 14 years ago Congrats to Reason on being a key player in the vast right-wing conspiracy! Who knew? I think it is illustrative of the insight and understanding of the political landscape by the left that they have no clue that "libertarian" is not just another made-up word for "Right-wing theocrat republican". I suppose they are blinded by their own Odyssey of terminology - Progressive being the current term of art. It also shows that they see the world firmly through the "two team" model that only sees their team blue and team red. Communist "progressives" aren't communists.. not because of ideology but because it is not a good political label right now. Same goes for the socialists, fascists, Marxists.... you name it. Libertarians stand for liberty. That should be a pretty easy concept to grasp, but for some reason only the fringe groups say what they mean. It kinda sucks that we are in the same bucket with the PETA people and Nation of Islam as the only groups with a core ideology that defines them and they will unashamedly champion. Hobo Chang Ba 14 years ago It was fairly humorous but one or two of those ladies were cackling so hard I bet their chairs were covered in cathartic emissions. Please log in to post comments Mute this user? Mute User Cancel Ban this user? Ban User Cancel Un-ban this user? Un-ban User Cancel Nuke this user? Nuke User Cancel Un-nuke this user? Un-nuke User Cancel Flag this comment? Flag Comment Cancel Un-flag this comment? 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