The Daily Show

This weekend, the New York Times ran an article by Michiko Kakutani on Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show," noting a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that found he was tied with Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, and Anderson Cooper as the fourth most admired newscaster in America.

Which should come as a surprise, since he isn't technically a newscaster, or even a journalist.

One can see the success and cultural importance of "The Daily Show" as signaling the death of serious journalism and the death of the American public discourse. Of course, there's some merit to these concerns, and Stewart would probably share them. But one can also see "The Daily Show" as reflective of a broader trend in cultural production and engagement. The state of American public discourse, in this view, isn't any worse than it has been in the past, but is merely changing, and in many ways "The Daily Show" can be viewed as a constructive response to these changes.

I say this for three reasons:

First, "The Daily Show," unlike the emotivistic exchanges that often dominate American popular culture, can be seen as operating from the same standpoint of humane cultural criticism that has been central to Western intellectual life since Montaigne. For example, "for all its eviscerations of the administration, 'The Daily Show' is animated not by partisanship but by a deep mistrust of all ideology," Kakutani writes. "A sane voice in a noisy red-blue echo chamber, Mr. Stewart displays an impatience with the platitudes of both the right and the left and a disdain for commentators who, as he made clear in a famous 2004 appearance on CNN’s 'Crossfire,' parrot party-line talking points and engage in knee-jerk shouting matches."

Stewart's commitment to constructive discourse—a commitment that allows him to say "why I grieve but why I don’t despair"—reflects a sentiment that Montaigne would share.

Second, "The Daily Show" reflects the ways that information needs are changing. "The Daily Show" is not a news program but a program in which information is discussed and made understandable. That "The Daily Show" is understood to be the only news source of many young Americans is a problem. But the program assumes that people already know the basic headlines; it fact, it wouldn't succeed as a comedy show if it didn't. Rather, it makes its money by condensing the echo chamber of contemporary media—from 15 TiVos, no less—into an intelligible, meaningful half-hour.

Third, "The Daily Show" shows that humor is a tool for the constructive engagement of social problems. Of course, laughter can sometimes be deconstructive and cynical, designed to humiliate the other or mask a sense of destructive bitterness. But Stewart's program works because it uses humor to ask questions about the constant stream of cultural production in which American life is situated. But Stewart's questions are more subtle and are interested in finding a place to stand within the confusion. Cynical humor laughs at the darkness, constructive humor seeks to find a foothold to climb out of it.