Showing posts with label Jon Stewart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jon Stewart. Show all posts

Friday, November 16, 2007

Dear Cloon, I'm Sorry.

I know I'm heightist. I know. I dated a guy who was an inch shorter than me but in the end I just couldn't do it. I dumped him.

It might have had more to do with the fact that he disappeared on me for a month while trying to get back together with his ex-girlfriend who had just come back from Namibia than it did with him being an elf.

You might recall that earlier I semi-ranted on George Clooney being short. I stand by my word - he is a shorty. But that does not make him any less attractive or intelligent. Notice, for example, this fact I so blithely left out: the father of all my crushes, Jon Stewart, is a fucking munchkin. And I loooooooves it.

[Side note: I'm slightly disturbed by the fact that the three men I've mentioned having a crush on in my blog are all grey-haired and twenty years my senior, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm]

In a Rolling Stone interview- perfect bathroom reading, I might add- The Clooney had this to say:

"The Information Age? It's great, it's readily available, and it's also dangerous. The bloggers think they're the Murrows of the future, and that anchormen and news organizations are archaic. Here's the problem: If you're a blogger, who's your ombudsman? Who do I go to when you're wrong? Who can I hold responsible?"


Okay, first: some people who read this quote, and the interview as a whole, are going to think The Clooney is drunk with self-importance. He's just an actor; what the hell does he know about improving the world?

Second: given that our politicians are the most corrupt this country has ever seen, I'm pretty sure anyone could do a better job, even actors.


Clooney
Look what a He-Man he is.


Third: he's right. Blogging is not subject to the same accuracy standards that broadcast news is. This is not to say broadcast news is better; in fact, I don't think you can even call it news today. But blogging can be irresponsible and dangerous. There are a bunch of nutjobs out there who believe in genocide or just live in their Mommy's basement with their erectile dysfunction and their middle age and spend their days trolling around the internet leaving incoherent ideologies and insulting everyone. Just ask Tyler - we both have experience with the crazies.

[Side note again, more of a rhetorical question, really: why does insurance cover medication for erectile dysfunction but not birth control? Why is it more important for a man to achieve an erection than to provide women with control over their own bodies? If it's a matter of money, wouldn't it be cheaper not to have the cost of a child? Why is this country so ass-backward when it comes to sex? Oh yes, it's because men like this, who repeatedly anally rape their wives while preaching to evangelicals about the sanctity of marriage, are part of the FDA.]

If people are to take blogging more seriously, there needs to be an avenue to ensure accuracy and fairness, as The Clooney laments. But the expense of that would be astronomical, and near impossible on a strategic level. Perhaps the future is collective action - that is, policing each other on social norms. It already works for Wikipedia, why not for blogs?

Friday, November 2, 2007

In ComedyCentralLand, Talking Heads Make Sense

Stephen Colbert Stumping
I doubt he really wanted to, anyway.


Stephen Colbert cannot run for “president of South Carolina.” It’s a very real loss because we need someone to make a mockery of our fatally flawed electoral system, and:

primaries
campaign donations/shitty nuclear-orange tortilla chips
Republicans/Democrats, indiscriminately
South Carolina
“favorite sons”
pandering
immobile hair

We cannot afford to break our political system more than it is already broken. It is already dangling by a last anorexic thread of dignity; to allow a talk show host to run for president would only demonstrate the degree to which our political system is a big freaking joke. I have to wonder what those abroad would have thought. Let’s face it, people: we cannot allow ourselves to look worse than we already are.

Also, last night, Jon Stewart quite implicitly supported the writers’ strike and maligned corporate denial of the importance of “new media.” Old school media corporations have been sluggish to jump on the “new media” bandwagon- “new media” being, of course, the internet, which has been around my entire life, in one form or another- and are trying to outright deny screen writers monetary rights for their work sold or streamed on the internet.

Don’t worry, kids. While we might feel the loss of such great shows as the Colbert Report for a while, your viewing of such ridiculous shows as Desperate Housewives will not be affected. You can exhale now.

The broader significance of this strike, and Jon Stewart’s support of it, is that corporations continuing to ignore the salience of emerging new markets for entertainment consumption creates more opportunity for those of us who see the significance of the internet to get around them.

That being said, all episodes of the Daily Show since Jon Stewart's arrival are available online. Is this Jon Stewart’s doing? Or is Viacom letting me embed videos to my heart’s content to bypass YouTube? Either way, I'm not getting dressed today. Enjoy young Jon and outdated topical humor: