Micah Loewinger: This is On The Media. I'm Micah Loewinger.
Brooke Gladstone: I'm Brooke Gladstone. On Monday evening, after nine years away, guess who's back?
Jon Stewart: Welcome to The Daily Show. My name's Jon Stewart. Now, where was I?
Brooke Gladstone: And to be there on Mondays throughout the election season. There was much speculation about how well his pioneering form of political comedy would've aged, but even his critics agreed that he was funny and bracing. When it came to the comedy, there was no problem with Jon Stewart. It was the politics as ever. That was problematic, at least to some, and the focus as always this week was Biden's age.
Jon Stewart: They're both stretching the limits of being able to handle the toughest job in the world. What's crazy is thinking that we are the ones as voters who must silence concerns and criticisms. It is the candidate's job to assuage concerns, not the voter's job, not to mention them.
Brooke Gladstone: To those terrified of Trump reducts, it seemed like a kind of misplaced idealism. Of course, we should talk about Biden's age, but with more expertise, more real political context, more comparisons with Trump, which is why many of Stewart's viewers might have preferred the take of his erstwhile protege Stephen Colbert.
Stephen Colbert: We are where we are unless something drastic happens, it's Biden versus Trump. Voters are just going to have to choose between a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory or a contemptible malicious elderly rapist with a poor memory.
Brooke Gladstone: Stewart's first show back as part-time host drew nearly 2 million viewers, the most for a daily show installment in almost six years. It was tight and smart. Cannily anticipating the objections of the skeptical. Here's Jordan Klepper.
Jordan Klepper: You must be so proud of yourself of all these little satirical bits exposing the absurdities of our political process.
Jon Stewart: Well, it was fun. We had a fun day. We had fun making this stuff up.
Jordan Klepper: Oh, I bet it was, did you save democracy yet?
Jon Stewart: No, I didn't.
Jordan Klepper: your '90s brand of snark and both centrism "Oh, George Bush is dumb. Al Gore's so boring." Wow. Searing Jon.
Lili Loofbourow: Klepper specifically accuses him of basically demotivating a generation of people who watched him by teaching them to just laugh and therefore accept the status quo.
Brooke Gladstone: Lili Loofbourow writes about television for The Washington Post.
Lili Loofbourow: The more I thought about Stewart, I watched him a lot and his effect on me I think was to actually model a political affective orientation towards politics.
Brooke Gladstone: What's that mean?
Lili Loofbourow: He has called it spitball throwing from the back of the room, like his style of comedy. There's this idea that you're the kid at the back of the class puncturing the pretensions of the teacher in front. He was modeling a way that you could watch the news as an outsider who can see through the structure and see the hypocrisies that are operating underneath
Brooke Gladstone: In the past, did it teach people to laugh instead of act?
Lili Loofbourow: I'm not convinced that it was his job to motivate people to take to the streets, but there's a reason we love comedy. It does make us feel better. It makes us feel like, "Oh, other people think this is ridiculous too." In creating that sense of companionable despair, I think that yes, there is a way in which that can be demotivating.
Brooke Gladstone: How about now?
Lili Loofbourow: Yes.
Brooke Gladstone: Didn't you see a move towards activism in his remarks. I could have done without him diminishing the importance of voting. I thought that was gratuitous.
Jordan Klepper: People are going to tell you to rock the vote and be the vote and vote the vote and get out the vote.
Brooke Gladstone: His remark that the days leading up to and every day after the election is as important as the election itself did seem to be a call to action.
Lili Loofbourow: Well, absolutely. I think that's what's different where that becomes confusing. I think incoherent is where, yes, he's mocking, get out the vote efforts, which literally are people civically engaged, volunteering, trying to help the country, precisely the call to action that he is giving. He was exhorting people to a state of constant vigilance, like before November 5th, and after every day you have to be working to make the country better, but in the process, he can't help. Also, mock people who are making those phone calls. I think that he has not quite figured out what he's trying to say.
He was so involved in trying to help 9/11 first responders. That was a very targeted effort and he did incredible work there. I think there is a way in which he has not quite connected the dots on how he thinks politicians, volunteers, parties, and people should ideally intersect. I find that a little exasperating too, just on a personal level, because the exhortation to constant vigilance is precisely the position that people were put into during the Trump years. I think the reason the Trump years were so hard for so many people was that there was this demand for unceasing vigilance.
Brooke Gladstone: Exhausting.
Lili Loofbourow: Exhausting.
Brooke Gladstone: One thing that jumped out at me that I didn't see a lot of commentary about in his premier episode. A moment in his interview with The Economist editor in Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, in which he reduced these epic battles over fascism and equality and decency to woke versus anti-woke. That concerned me a bit. It seemed to be an awfully broad brush reading of a very complicated time.
Lili Loofbourow: Yes, I thought that moment was interesting. It was a disappointingly facile reduction, I think, and also frankly, a concession to conservative framing, which I was kind of surprised to hear him use. Perhaps in his zeal to not reflexively engage in what he has in the past called conversation stoppers. He has in the past objected to calling people who are arguably war criminals war criminals because that prevents a conversation from happening.
Perhaps along the same lines, he's disinclined to call people who are fascist fascist, Godwin's law. It's this idea that once you call somebody a Nazi, it's over because you've gone into hyperbole. Reasonable discussion is off the table table. I think that he may still subscribe to some version of that, and so as a result, I think his framing is strange and disappointingly basic.
Brooke Gladstone: That said Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the show?
Lili Loofbourow: He was electric. To see him sit back in that chair, it was watching Jon Stewart come back as Jon Stewart in a way that I have not really seen him. Also watching The Daily Show come back as a Daily Show that I also have not seen in a long time. That feels like a very particular combination that works. It was a mixed bag in terms of content, but in terms of style, he has really, to my surprise, not missed a step because that was not true on his other show. He seemed sadder and angrier and very, very quick to confront people adeptly. It seemed like he had taken a turn towards a more dour and grim approach to things that was not in evidence on Monday.
Brooke Gladstone: Jon Stewart, good for democracy, bad for democracy.
Lili Loofbourow: Oh gosh [laughter] Honestly, I don't know if he can move the needle for democracy anymore. His argument for coming back was that he said that he thought that this side needed to be as relentless and tenacious as the other that was coming up with these counter-narratives. I don't think he's necessarily wrong, but I also don't think that coming back one night a week to a television show is the relentlessness that is required. I'm very curious to see where he takes this.
Brooke Gladstone: Me too, Lili. Thanks so much.
Lili Loofbourow: Thank you.
Brooke Gladstone: Lili Loofbourow is the TV critic for The Washington Post.
Micah Loewinger: Coming up, older leaders are a global problem. In Uganda, the president changed the constitution to stay in office after he'd aged out.
Brooke Gladstone: This is On the Media.
