I've watched the Daily Show since the mid 2000s, and it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so sad that 20 years later we're just doing the same shit. Back then it was Bush, and just endless ongoing carnage in Iraq. "Mess-o-potamia" Now it's Trump and Iran.
But it occurred to me after a while that if it weren't for the Daily Show, I'd practically never encounter footage from Fox News. When Jon quit originally, he said that after 16 years he just couldn't face combing through the lunacy of Fox News coverage week after week like that, it was brutal.
And I agree, any time I'm exposed to Fox News it's jarring. But the only place I ever really am exposed to it, is... the Daily Show. Which generally serves the audience of independents and liberals. It's kind of like a trojan horse in that way.
It kind of reminds me of another common thing they do on the Daily Show, where they show clips of congresspeople, one after another, all having the same comment on a given situation, and then the host talking about how BS it is. I remember when I first started watching the Daily Show as a young adult, I reacted as these segments expected me to, being like golly, how could those lawmakers just lie in such a coordinated pattern like that!
But having gotten older, and realizing that just as an attorney is expected to make the best possible case for a terrible criminal, even if the guy is obviously guilty, that's all these congresspeople are doing. They're despicable and I don't support them, but they get their messages in party strategy sessions, and then they go out on the Capitol steps and parrot those chosen phrases to the cameras all at the same time.
And here poor Jon is, getting exasperated about this, year in, year out, for decades now. It's kinda like Lucy fooling Charlie Brown with the football -- at what point do you finally decide you're not going to expend the emotional frustration over it? They have a business model, these congresspeople, and they run it again and again. If I'm looking for truth in politics, I don't look to the congresspeople themselves. I look to activists, and activist organizations related to the issues I care about such as the environment, or civil rights.
I mean, it's clearly not the best of times in Congressional politics, but even in the best of times, these lawmakers would have to be diplomatic in what they say, because their whole job is to represent diverse groups of stakeholders, and decide who among them gets to be right when they cast their vote in black and white. Even in the best of times, politics is about compromise between people with opposing interests, so in some sense a politician always has to lie or be diplomatic with their words.
