The “liberals” at Salon and Huffinton Post are aghast at the announcement that Jon Steward is leaving the Daily Show, a show that they seem to forget is on the Comedy Channel. They are raving about the way that he “revolutionized the manner in which news is delivered,” and worrying about who will replace him. Replace him on the Comedy Channel.
Many are distraught because they claim that the public will no longer have a reliable source of “real news” with Jon Stewart gone, again I remind you, gone from the Comedy Channel. How seriously should we take people who rely on the Comedy Channel as their main source of news? Given that most of them are desperate for Elizabeth Warren to make a run for president, I would say the answer to that is, "not very seriously." And their concern seems to me to be misplaced in more ways than merely with respect to the venue of the show.
As best I can determine Stewart drew a nightly audience of 2 million people, which amounts to about 0.6% of the population. So these writers are not concerned about where “the public” will go for “reliable news,” they are concerned about where less than one percent of the public will go. Of every 157 people in this country, 1 person watches Jon Stewart.
The one time they never listened to Jon Stewart was when he told them, repeatedly, “I am a comedian, not a newsman.”
No comments:
Post a Comment