struggling to make sense of the political process.

I begrudge Jon Stewart for his vacations. Does he know that his weeks off leave me with two equally untenable problems: Either to watch no news and be pretty much completely unaware of the world outside of my normal 10 mile movement radius, or to watch cable news and become way too angry to sleep (which will in turn make me angry and beget a truly nasty self reinforcing cycle of tired cynicism)?!

I bet he’s pleasantly unaware of my dilemma. I hate him for that. But come Monday my sleep deprived resentment combined with restless inquisitive energy (both, since I will inevitably be unable to choose either horn of my dilemma) will cattle-drive me back to Comedy Central, and by then I will have developed a marginally psychopathic mental stew of resentment and desire that is more appropriately reserved for injectable narcotics.

I’m not actually sure that The Daily Show is good in any absolute sense. It’s comedy. It’s cocooned in irony that rhetorically precludes others from leveling the charges of hypocrisy, subjectivity, and lame reporting, from which Jon Stewart makes his living launching. This is deeply unfair. But it’s also right. Because when it comes all the way down to the prima facie burdens of respective shows, The Daily Show promotes itself as a comedy show that may include news. CNN and Fox News and 3TV all, both implicitly and explicitly, promote themselves as news shows which may be entertaining. But both The Daily Show and all the major cable and local news shows are primarily concerned with entertaining you. It’s understandable. Entertaining get viewers which raises add revenue which pay salaries (and investor dividends, but that’s a different issue). But this means that the Daily Show is being honest in a way that a news show cannot be, and that Jon Stewat’s ability to make fun of CNN (for example) in ways that CNN would be (i.e. appear) foolish to respond to in kind, is for good reason.

But I also suspect that Jon Stewart could become a proper newsman, and I would watch and like him still. Maybe not. But probably. There is some of what Stewart does that is serious, and I think, better than 85% of other journalism out there (televised) and about 98% that you can find on COX or Dish Network. I see this most often in interviews. During his finer moments I see a man trying to be rigorously aware of both political (realpolitik) situations and the abstract normative arguments which we pretend underly them.

He is trying to make things sensible and true. And he usually fails. He is a comedian after all. But he seems to be trying. Which is more than any other talking head is offering.

(Caveat: the News Hour is really fine work. But it is undeniably and dreadfully boring)