Daily Daily Show
I’ve taken to watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, which follows it every night. To those who know me this won’t come as a surprise; I am a bit of a political whinge-bag and satire is always very much what’s for dinner. However, TDS (as I’m now going to call The Daily Show) is very American and I’m not. Although you can watch it in the UK on More4, this is a somewhat watered-down edition for us Europeans. So I’m forced to BitTorrent it. I’ve started watching for two reasons: Firstly; I’m unemployed and apart from job-seeking and the odd little project, I’m not exactly super-busy (more on this in a later blog post, though). Secondly; It’s brilliant TV. Not only are these shows full of bad puns and wonderfully delivered swipes at the powers that be, but it’s also pretty educational. It’s all delivered from a centralist / media-critical point of view, but personally I don’t have a problem with that. The past weeks have featured an insightful interview with the Pakistani president and the moment Fox News labelled disgraced Republican creepy-congressman Mark Foley as a Democrat.
It’s quite worrying viewing sometimes but host Jon Stewart gives us Europeans a little insight into perhaps why things are the way they are in the US (and hence Iraq too I suppose). It’s reassuring to hear that it’s not just me who finds the content quite educational, as this Indiana University study claims, despite being ‘fake news’ it’s just as real as the ‘real news’ channels. Whether this is down to excellent TDS reporting, or a poor show from the other news networks, I’m not sure. I’ll hazard a guess and say it’s a bit of both. I heartily recommend my fellow ‘Eurofags’ to download via BitTorrent, tune in via More4, or at least head to YouTube and grab some clips.
October 14th, 2006 at 8:22 am
ian, if you like john stewart, you might enjoy his contribution to the CNN ‘bipartisan’ yak-fest crossfire.
Sadly its in two parts….but I think it goes some way to supporting your ideas about the masked integrity of the daily show:
part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYei1mjbbWU
part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEalfYrxvyY
I was going to embed them but thought that might be naughty in your comments section
Ian
October 14th, 2006 at 8:36 am
tell a lie, its all in one
October 14th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Ha, yeah Ian. I’ve seen that before and it was in a word; legendary.
October 18th, 2006 at 7:13 am
it made my election in 2004, I cast a write in ballot for tucker carlson
October 30th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
This comment thread makes it look like you’re talking to yourself Ian, you may want to go back to your classic names of OMP and Evil Ian… just a suggestion.
October 31st, 2006 at 10:20 am
Another possiblity is; I’m completely loosing it.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
[...] The answer, quite blatantly, is yes. Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American. This has absolutely nothing to do with his current attempt at a bit of Google bombing, it’s just a statement of fact that occasionally needs stating now and again. I know I’ve written about Mr. Colbert before, but I’ve been paying even more attention to his shows recently and he’s really making sense of the world. He just won’t shy away from real controversial viewpoints like some of those cowardly lefty pundits; take Anne Coulter for example. His truthiness knows no bounds. [...]