The Emperor (Jon Stewart) Needs New Clothes

+ _-/-

No one wants to speak of it, but the sad truth is that as
The Colbert Report has gone off on its brilliant satiric
attack featuring real money on American campaign
financing, The Daily Show has slipped into slow decline.

The viewer can still count on the opening segment being
cogent, funny and satirically engaged either with current
politics or the media's - almost always in this case cable
news's - inept or biased attempts to turn out 24 hrs/7days
a week's worth of news and analysis.

Still even here, Stewart spends an increasing amount of
time milking his material using techniques which used to
be more the style of his correspondents than himself.
Congratulating himself with fake slam dunks after jokes
that misfire or hit just right or dropping into a character
to challenge himself to a duel:  these are all necessary
parts of a comic's repertoire; but they shouldn't play
too big a role.

As to his correspondents, only John Oliver consistently
engages with politics.  Tonight's round table on the
President's State of the Union featured a bit of shared riffing
on whether Biden had a public hair in his jaw during the
speech.  Jokes about public hair sticking to peanut butter
are, of course, de rigeur in this situation, but political satire
it ain't. 

It all smells a bit of desperation.  Stewart  and his staff
must be aware of the shift in quality, the transitional
moment when the protege eclipses the mentor.  The Daily
Show still features some of the best political satire on tv,
but it needs to take a hard look at itself, stop relying
on the enormous good will Stewart's audience feels towards
him and start looking for ways to regenerate.

-_+/+

Stephen Colbert vs Citizens United

- +/-
After attracting 1% of the vote to Herman Cain* - more than the combined total of all the other drop-out candidates and still more even when you add in all the votes Cain had received in previous contests  -  Stephen Colbert drops his run for the Presidency of the United States. 

Why?  Really there was no place further to push his satire after his rally in Charleston on Friday:

Rhetorically asking himself if his candidacy was just a big joke, he pointed out that if you think his ability to raise unlimited amounts of money from undisclosed sources, including foreign donors, and then being able to spend it anyway a supporting-but-of-course-non-coordinating Super PAC liked is a joke, then our whole campaign financing system in the United States is a joke.

Colbert's Speech in South Carolina

In the best tradition of show-don't tell, Colbert has skewered Citizens United and the John Roberts Supreme Court which keeps on competing with Roger Taney's for the worst Supreme Court in American History.

*Since Colbert ran too late to get on the ballot and South Carolina has no provision for write-in candidates, he asked his supporters to vote for Herman Cain.

Stephen Colbert's Run For President

-
What makes Stephen Colbert's run for President different
than every other comedian who has run for President as
an act of satire is the presence of  real money.

Once Colbert convinced people to actually send his PAC
real money, he entered into an unprecedented realm of
post-modernism.  What's especially remarkable about
this is that most of the money is coming from contributors
who do not share his character's political views.

It's hard to know what motivates people in these tough
economic times to give money to a performer to mock
the system.  Is it the desire to be part of something
larger than one's self?   Is it a protest against the system?

Maybe in the end, it's a desire to make clear how absurd
our political system has become, in the wake of
the Citizens United decision, a refusal to play along
with the mainstream media that this huge apparatus that
has become our election process makes any sense at
all.  Or maybe it's just because he asked for it?

Tohternam's Last Note

ANOTHER IMPROMPTU FICTION


Dear Christine,

The news will have been delivered with this letter.
The course of the disease was suprising if not terribly
swift - to me at least.

Forgive me.  I tried for years to interest you
enough so that it would be worth my while to
keep talking to you, but I just couldn't pull it
off. 

Love,

H. E.

Traveller's Haven

<___________________>

After a very uncomfortable trip which left me
feeling very uncomfortable, I found myself in
Pittsburgh hours early for my appointment.  It
turns out the meeting is taking place in a part of
town with no restaurants, no coffee shops, just
auto glass repair places and poor fellows wandering
the grey-day street with no place to be.

I guess I was one of them.  I headed toward Oakland.
All through the walk, my bag got heavier and heavier.
Nature made her demands, gradually more insistently,
but I was SOL until I hit Oakland and saw Starbucks.

People complain about Starbucks, but where else
in any American city can you be sure of a clean rest
room, a place to sit for several hours, inexpensive  food 
and a decent cup of coffee, not to mention WI FI.

Starbucks is also one of the most democratic institutions
in the country.  People can sit without buying, and I'd
be hard pressed to name any other institution where
the races and classes voluntarily mix so easily or so much.
I should also mention the generations, because the young
use it as a study hall but put up graciously with the old
who know coffee is really about conviviality.
 -

/-------------------------------------------------------;{)
----------------------------------------------------- <-/?

Holding Onto A Dream

An Impromptu Fiction

"It's Jane London," said the voice coming through
my cell, "I don't quite know why I'm calling, but I've
been getting some calls from you which sound
interesting."

-Jane London, I thought, the name was familiar.  I
knew I had called her about a film project.  Who
was she again?  I began to tell her I was a director,
best known for ... but then my voice trailed off.
I just couldn't remember who she was, and I was
dreaming anyway, right?  She wasn't really on the
other end of the phone.

Luckily or unluckily I woke up.  The presence on
the other end waited a second or two more and then
hung up.  Suddenly I remembered who London was -
the producer who could get The Return, my dream
project, made.  I would never get through to her
again though I tried many times.

Television's New Star - the Producer

In an earlier post I spoke of Dean Martin as the greatest
television performer of all time.  Partly I ascribed this to
the passing of the live television in which the performer
was in control of the moment.  No one else would ever
have the opportunity, across the spectrum of acting and
hosting that Martin had,  to excel again.

So it's no surprise that the greatest actor in television's
post-live era - or the great majority of its life - also
produced the show he was on.  The producer rules in
recorded television, and only actors who produce  - or
with the celebrity to make them virtual producers -
have much voice in television.

The greatest actor in the actor-producer combo is Jack
Webb.  Many find his political beliefs abhorrent, but
his absolute belief in them give his acting an authority
that needs no acting to make him real.   In the words
of the greatest film director of all time (Robert Bresson),
he is not so much natural as nature itself.

It's impossible to watch the following short clip with
an open eye, ear and mind and not realize Jack Webb's
overwhelming truthfulness to his own nature.

DRAGNET