Story: The interview with the Daily Show host that was originally broadcast Oct. 4 has been re-edited for Friday's Fresh Air; it features material cut from the original broadcast because of time constraints.
Jon Stewart on his "Rally to Restore Sanity". Even President Obama is talking about it!
As Arianna promised on the Daily Show, the Huffington Post will be providing round-trip transportation from New York to Washington for all those who need a ride to Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity on Saturday, October 30th in D.C.. The buses will leave New York early Saturday morning and return late Saturday night. Specific details on the exact departure time and location of the HuffPost Sanity Buses will be sent by October 20th. Below is the official sign-up form. Before filling out the form, please read the essential info about the HuffPost Sanity Bus, and our legal liability waiver. Signing the form and checking the legal waiver box will reserve you a seat on the HuffPost Sanity Bus. Please read the following carefully [...]See that official form here. See you on the Sanity Bus!
), and she basically said that now is not the time to just live a decent life, as Stewart was asking or even alluding to. She basically said that America is at a turning point, and that everybody has to rally (literally, on the streets); she's arranging buses everyone around the country that needs and wants a lift, and she's really advocating a call to arms, basically. We'll see what happens October 30th.
In other words, it was everything Stewart’s rally isn’t. This upcoming event in Washington just takes the formerly disruptive Daily Show model and marks its final transition to another element within the system of political media. Rather than critiquing the system from the outside, it’s now a participant fully enmeshed, and if employing two former Clinton aides isn’t a mark of political professionalization, I don’t know what is. It’s impressive that a comedy talk show was able to make this transition, but I’m not sure if it’s actually good for the show’s audience. After all, we have lots of political media, but we only had one Daily Show, and its value stemmed in large part from its outsider position. Once it becomes an insider and falls prey to all the problems it used to gleefully skewer, it’s unclear what value it can have aside from being the funnier David Brooks. If they seemed interested in doing anything different, I might be behind them. But as long as they’re only out to perpetuate the biggest lie we tell ourselves about politics - that we’re right, and everyone agrees with us - count me out.Must read blog post. Yeah, Stewart's kind of like the Michael Moore of 2004. See also: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42447.html
