In Twitshit and Turdblossom's vision of America, Everyman is susceptible to utter bullshit. The redeeming factor of things like blogs -- from all sides -- and The Daily Show is that at some level they indicate an unwillingness of a segment of the population to go along with bullshit. My boss and I started in on a political slant yesterday, and I threw up my hands and said," Let's not discuss this anymore. We're never going to agree on who's right and who's wrong. Fundamentally we agree, the current state is un-fucking-acceptable." Laughing agreement and bitiching about stupidity and triviality ensued. Until I got the call about the environmental outrage perpetrated by one of our work shops. For some reason, the mechanics didn't want to use the portajohns provided, and had taken to pissing on the ground outside...which, over time turned into a large environmental issue. In the same shop that morning, all the mechanics decided it was nap time at about 8:30AM. A government monitor came in about 8:45AM. Merriment ensued...
“Hopefully the process is to spot things that would be grist for the funny mill,” Mr. Stewart, 45, said. “In some respects, the heavier subjects are the ones that are most loaded with opportunity because they have the most — you know, the difference between potential and kinetic energy? — they have the most potential energy, so to delve into that gives you the largest combustion, the most interest. I don’t mean for the audience. I mean for us. Everyone here is working too hard to do stuff we don’t care about.”
And then, of course, there was this moment of sheer insight...
Given a daily reality in which “over-the-top parodies come to fruition,” Mr. Stewart said, satire like “Dr. Strangelove” becomes “very difficult to make.” “The absurdity of what you imagine to be the dark heart of conspiracy theorists’ wet dreams far too frequently turns out to be true,” he observed. “You go: I know what I’ll do, I’ll create a character who, when hiring people to rebuild the nation we invaded, says the only question I’ll ask is, ‘What do you think of ‘Roe v. Wade?’ It’ll be hilarious. Then you read that book about the Green Zone in Iraq” — “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran — “and you go, ‘Oh, they did that.’ I mean, how do you take things to the next level?”
Unlike a lot of talking heads, Stewart reads the books. Unlike others, he understands what he's reading.
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