Caring is Creepy
Since I still don’t have anything interesting to say, I’ll steal things from other people…
From Notes from the (Legal) Underground (who got it from Professor Althouse), an article from the City Journal arguing, basically, that Jon Stewart is really popular because he’s liberal, not because he’s hilarious (although the piece’s author seems to enjoy The Daily Show’s less partisan moments). To each his own, I suppose. I admit that his show is slanted to the left (I thought the book was much more even-handed, though) and that he hides behind the “we’re just comedy” a little too often for my tastes, but whatever. He’s still hilarious most of the time.
The article takes a couple lame stabs at liberals (”It speaks volumes about contemporary liberalism that in “progressive” circles, such stuff passes for brilliant satire.” Ooh, burn!) and the media (Aaaaah, the liberal media, OMG!!!!1), but that’s fine, too, although I’m not sure where all the conservative comedic geniuses are hiding. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour was terrible, that’s for sure. (Yeah, I know that wasn’t really political. I just wanted to rip on Jeff Foxworthy and the “Get ‘er done!” guy. I enjoyed Ron White, though.)
But this quote went over the line:
It is safe to say that the vast majority of Stewart’s young fans have no more a coherent political philosophy than they do a sense of history. What they do tend to have, in the contemporary vernacular, is attitude: a set of poses, ranging from an easy familiarity with drug culture to a bemused contempt for religion, that define one as hip. Jon Stewart confirms that view of themselves in every broadcast.
Ooh, we lack a coherent political philosophy! Ouch, my sense of self-worth! (Sarcasm pose!) Scaring the old folks by insinuating that their children and grandchildren shoot up heroin to make baby Jesus cry is just totally fucking played out, man.
I’d try to come up with a coherent response articulating my contempt for lazy writers who simply lump all (or “the vast majority” of) young people (or liberal young people, or liberal young people who watch The Daily Show, or whatever) into a mass of drugs, God-hating, and incoherent political philosophy, but unfortunately, I don’t have a caring pose.
Because caring is for losers.
April 20th, 2005 at 9:35 am
While Stein is making a huge generalization, I think there’s a portion of the population that he’s dead on about. There’s a large group of college students who find that it’s cool to be liberal. In fact, there’s a whole dorm of people at IU who seem to be anti-establishment, Bohemian, and for lack of a better word, hippies. However, insiders will tell you that it’s basically a bunch of kids who can’t fit in except, inronically, by not conforming. So being liberal, whether they believe it or not, is just their way of fitting in. On the flip side, and not mentioned in the article, is that a ton of college students give up their beliefs and take on a conservative view if they think their profession demands it (B-school students, I’m talking to you).
April 20th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
Yeah, well, growing up where I did (Nebraska), it was “cool” to be conservative at my high school & tons of people mindlessly went along. Maybe they did all go to college places & suddenly adopt a poser-liberal cool attitude. But probably not — first of all, about half of my class of 700 didn’t go to college…
April 20th, 2005 at 11:10 pm
Of course, in certain groups, it will be easier to fit in as a liberal or a conservative or whatever, and there will be people (perhaps significant numbers of them) that go along in order to fit in (even if fitting in means being “different” like everyone else). It’s just the sweeping generalizations that I object to–this one more than most. I mean, is this stuff really “safe to say” about “the vast majority” of Daily Show watchers? C’mon.
If I said, “All generalizations are bad,” would you hurt me?
Y’know, because I made a generalization about generalizations! Ha! I crack myself up.
But no, really, I think writers should be careful about using generalizations, because the world is nuanced, and it’s just lazy to ignore that.