Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” provides one answer to the question: “how does one satirize absurdity?” Answer: through the use of factual reporting. Voltaire once described God as “a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.” The mainstream media and academia – unlike Stewart – are afraid to acknowledge the ludicrous nature of the political system upon whose droppings they feed. To see politics as organized nonsense is to make their careers absurd, and so they are obliged to go on reporting bunkum as “reality.”
Jon Stewart plays the role once performed by the likes of Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, Lenny Bruce, and Tom Lehrer, each of whom allowed the loonies to write their material for them. All these men had to do was collect and organize the official foolishness and present it to audiences that were not afraid to laugh. With the kind of material the statists offer with a straight face, who wouldn’t double over in laughter?
6:03 pm on October 9, 2006
