Jon Stewart changed everything: How “The Daily Show” revolutionized TV...
Tuesday, Aug 4, 2015 06:00 AM EST
Jon Stewart changed everything: How “The Daily Show” revolutionized TV & revitalized the Democratic Party
As Stewart prepares to hang up his proverbial boxing gloves, we would do well to recognize how important he's been
Bill Curry
In 2006, Tom Stoppard (our greatest living playwright if you haven’t heard) gave us “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a tale of personal conflict set amidst a political revolution. The play opens in late-’60s London as a piper (Pink Floyd’s Syd Barret) serenades a young girl from atop a garden wall. It ends in 1990 with the Stones playing Prague. Along the way, “Rock ‘n’ Roll” traces Czechoslovakia’s long road from Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring to Vaclav Havel’s Velvet Revolution. As Stoppard tells it, musicians — Dylan, the Stones, the Plastic People, the Velvet Underground –led the way; that rock-and-roll is apt to foster freedom because it is rebellious even when it isn’t political. He says it often works this way: artists leading politicians to democracy.
On Thursday, Jon Stewart, perhaps our greatest political satirist, bids us farewell, for now at least. No matter when he chose to go, it was bound to feel like the worst possible time. Stewart has spent 16 years pleading for a rebirth of democracy in America. Our national circumstances are, in a way not disimilar from those of the Czechs a generation ago: our culture more democratic than our democracy; our politicians silenced not by a communist dictatorship but by their own corruption. So we too look to our artists for political leadership.
In the mid-20th century, America was full of artists telling hard truths: Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye — a list that did justice to the era would fill pages. We had braver political leaders then too, and of many different sorts: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Gloria Steinem, Ralph Nader. Times, of course, have changed. In the early days of this century it often felt as if Jon Stewart and Bruce Springsteen were the only people telling the truth about anything. We may now be entering a season of renewal, but its buds are still tender and few, and need new artists to water them.
Stewart’s artistry is rare and while it has many antecedents, surprisingly few are recent or local. In America, the media age spawned few political satirists. Radio helped the gentle populist Will Rogers become a megastar, but Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl trafficked in political satire and got more or less run out of town for it. (Bruce more, Sahl less.) Our biggest comics have been mostly apolitical: Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams. But like rock and roll, comedy needn’t be political to be subversive. Seeing Chaplin or Lily Tomlin or Richard Pryor, we’re reminded that social consciousness and political consciousness are pretty much the same thing. “Duck Soup” was the Marx Brothers’ most political film, and maybe their best, but no matter the film, whenever Harpo squeezed a clown horn, somebody, somewhere, questioned authority.
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http://www.salon.com/2015/08/04/jon_stewart_changed_everything_how_the_daily_show_revolutionized_tv_revitalized_the_democratic_party/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
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that interesting history lesson! 
