Jon Stewart seems to be following some new late-night comedian rule that if you say the f-word enough, it will make you endearing.
Where’s the funny? “Comedy” seems to be all about a different f-word. At least if Jon Stewart is any indication.
This won’t surprise longtime readers (you’ll be in the comments — enjoy), but I am crazy naïve sometimes. I can ridiculously hope against hope. I clicked on a long link to The Daily Show, thinking something might make me laugh.
I love to laugh. I have a nervous laugh. But when it’s not a nervous one, it may just be pure joy — better than just about any other kind of therapy. And I probably laugh too easily — appreciated by men (it’s true) who love to hold court. Bring on your Dad jokes. I’ll encourage you.
As you probably figured out already, Jon Stewart did not make me laugh.
Is there some new late-night comedian rule that if you say the f-word enough, it will make you endearing?
F-word, F-word, F-word. A graphic sex joke. Of a million things you can give the president of the United States grief about, let’s talk about his genitalia. Yes, yes, that’s what people want to hear after a long day. Oh, and now some blowing in the wind. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, you weren’t one of us who lost their innocence reading about the Clinton administration. Oh, how quaint that all seems now.
More sex references, for no real reason other than, what, the host is a twelve-year-old boy catering to twelve-year-old boys? I’d say Stewart might be the oldest twelve-year-old boy, but I leave that achievement to Donald Trump.
And for the finale of his rant, Stewart brings in a choir, which might otherwise have been lovely. I think this is why the show is still taking up needed space in my mind. What would otherwise be a surprising turn of beauty, wound up being used for just anger and misery and the f-word bonanza. The Daily Show is on cable, so they sing it out. Again and again. Jon Stewart makes like a conductor, having them bring it down, and high again. Range on the f-word is about as creative as we get.
It’s like Jon Stewart wants to punish America for CBS’s cancelling Colbert by torturing us with an earworm. And so he has. Congratulations.
As for Colbert, you would think he was perp-walked off the air, the way Stewart and others reacted to the end of his show. People want actual humor, something uplifting, at least clever. We don’t need this.
Colbert’s approach is especially disappointing because in other contexts he talks a good Catholic talk — one I have no reason to believe isn’t genuine. He’s experienced some real suffering and seems to have come out of it by reliance on faith in God and trust and hope in Him. So when I expect a little funny from Colbert, I also expect it to be different. The New York Times bizarrely described Colbert’s criticisms of Trump as “graciously derisive.” Graciously?
A few years ago, Jennifer Fulwiler, an atheist turned Catholic mom of six in Texas, quit her Catholic Channel radio show on Sirius XM and started a self-funded comedy career. She tells clean jokes — they are funny, about family life and life, period. She’s not preachy. She’s also not adding to the misery, as Stewart did on Monday night. And, no, she does not use the f-word. She just goes for funny, with a prayer. Our ability to laugh is surely worth one.