On September 12 , 2000 , Jon Stewart start The Daily Show ’s Headlines segment with the following joke : “ The GOP accused of using subliminal advertising . Bush says , ‘ Why would we advertise underwater ? ’ ” After a run of jokes about then - candidate George W. Bush , Stewart chuckles , “ He ’s make it so gentle . ”
Laughs were soft in the late summer of 2000 . I was 12 years older the first time I follow the jocularity , cognisant that the presidential airstream had already boiled down to a battle between “ ho-hum ” and “ stupid , ” that my parents would be vote between “ subliminable ” and “ lockbox . ” None of it seemed overly pressing , after class of economical prosperity and proportional post - Cold War serenity . Making fun of politicians was soft sport .
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart , which wraps up its 16 - year run tomorrow nighttime , is being eulogize as a changeless , unwavering comportment in the culture . In advance of Stewart ’s departure , though , Comedy Central has been stream every episode on its website , in order — an chance to wind up back time , and to see history fall out again on tight - forward . What the prison term - lapse perspective bring out is that Stewart and his show have been unlike things at different times , overhear unawares with the rest of us by the military group of change .
Like any metre traveler , the retrospective viewer of the Daily Show is most shock by everyone ’s dismaying lack of foresight . Underwater advertising ! Does Jon Stewart understand that this human is go to be president ? Why is n’t the Daily Show of 2000 researching the nominee ? Why is n’t he angry ?
This is not the show we have say ourselves we call up . The political gag do n’t go very far beyond what you ’d regain in any other public lecture show ’s monologue . The intact guest roster of 1999 , for the first 11 months , consists of entertainer . Stewart — known now for reading every script by his guest and for long , in - depth talk and debate that are posted online — is risky at interviewing these guest . Today , citizenry routinely go online to watch an lengthy Stewart interview . Then , I ’d turn the show off when the interviews start . Get a few redundant minutes of eternal rest before admit the bus to school .
Speeding through those first two years again , I was perversely thankful to lie with that the debacle of the 2000 election was coming soon . It was a unearthly kind of schadenfreude — pick out pleasure in pain that I ’d already experienced . But I knew that it mean the show would be rummy . Because , in a fit of prophetical brilliance , the Daily Show ’s election coverage was branded “ Indecision 2000 . ” Every time they said it before the real election dark , I felt a weird sense of smugness . “ You do n’t even know how correct you are , ” I said to the Stewart of the yesteryear .
After election night , The Daily Show played clips of CNN ’s swerving calls of the Florida vote . They call it for Gore — switch off to Stewart saying “ Only that was n’t rightful . ” They call it for Bush , and he grits his tooth and says , “ Only that was n’t true either . ”
Once Florida finally end up going for Bush , Stewart articulate , “ By a total of 537 votes . Wow . That ’s a landslip if you ’re run for student council treasurer . ”
The “ Wow ” dribble with contempt . The glibness of the joking was gone . Stewart was as defeated and stock by the five weeks it had taken for America to have a new president as the state was . Seeing it again , I realized that I ’d repressed how perfectly horrendous the legal wrangling in Florida had been . How week of my seventh grade civics division were give to explaining to a elbow room of 12- and 13 - yr - old how any of this could be happening . We were supposed to be studying American exceptionalism , the wisdom of the founding forefather , and the Constitution .
Suddenly , rather , we were in a full - blown built-in crisis . Instead of our abstract right hand to vote , we were talking about the electoral college , “ butterfly stroke ballots , ” and “ hanging chads . ”
All we were talking about was the goddamn electoral college system and whether we needed a Constitutional amendment to check that nothing like this ever happened again . About replacing theme with electronic voting machine . What “ absentee ballot ” were and why they mattered . And , of course , the very existent possibleness that our next president could win the election without winning the democratic vote .
In 2015 , it ’s discomfit all over again . There ’s the déjà vu of reliving the past , but there ’s an ira bear of hindsight , too : all that momentum , all the recognition that our democracy was n’t as strong or perfect as we wish to cerebrate , would n’t come to anything . It ’s a forgetful historic banker’s bill now — the trauma obliterate by everything else to total . As fourth dimension moved ahead , inexorably , on the stream of videos , I wished it were the worst thing that was going to happen .
These twenty-four hour period , Indecision 2000 is consider a turning point for The Daily Show . It ’s when it ultimately grow into its own . But the election finally dragged to its remnant , and The Daily Show lost impulse as quickly as the movement for reform did . And then the waiting really started .
As the flow play the case of December 13 , 2000 through September 10 , 2001 , I sat through an endless parade of vapid news items . December , 2000 : Stewart interviews the Spice Girls and Victoria Beckham says that Stewart is n’t that curious — and I concord with her . May 2001 : Stewart ’s Headlines segment include the joke , “ Steven Tyler ’s national hymn angers crowd at Indianapolis 500 . Spectators promptly placated by vroom - vrooms go ‘ whee ! ’ ” And on August 23 , 2001 — in the penultimate pre-9/11 episode — Mo Rocca does a five minute segment on amusement for cats .
It was disposable television back then . It ’s unendurable now , knowing there ’s no elbow room for them to see what ’s about to encounter . And I , miserably , want them to . As clock time legislate for the show on my computer screen , I could n’t expect away . I start up to occupy that I ’d blockade see and miss it , all the while hat myself for want the show to just get to 9/11 .
On July 3 , 2015 , around 11:30 in the morning , “ Your Month of Zen ” aired the sequence of September 20 , 2001 , the Daily Show ’s retort after 9/11 . Unlike all the other episode I ’d just sat through , this one was already seared into my memory .
In that show ’s soliloquy , Stewart says :
And our show has switch . I do n’t doubt that . And what it has become I do n’t know . “ Subliminable ” is not a punchline anymore . Someday it will become that again , Lord willing it will become that again , because it mean that we have tantalise out the storm .
In the rewatch , the prison term between “ Subliminable ? He ’s making it so easy ” and “ Subliminable is not a punchline any longer ” ? About two and a one-half days . Time concretion as a bingewatch .
Two and one-half mean solar day of episode to go from the biggest affair to find being Bill Clinton ’s sex scandal to 9/11 . To go from a Stewart making jokes about Al Gore kissing his wife to one who tell this :
The view from my flat was the World Trade Center and now it ’s extend . They attack it . This symbol of American ingeniousness and strength and task and vision and Department of Commerce and it is gone . But you know what the scene is now ? The Statue of Liberty . The view from the south of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty . You ca n’t beat that .
In 2001 , that was the message we needed to see . We were reeling from an fire we ’d been separate could never happen . “ There ’s never been an plan of attack on American grunge ” was a phrase teacher had articulate to me . “ I used to say to students that they had no frame of reference for the assassination of Martin Luther King and JFK . Not any longer , ” was what another teacher tell me after 9/11 . We were so heroic for heroes , we turned Rudy Giuliani into one .
In a manner , Stewart is good when he says subliminable is n’t a joke anymore . It was n’t indecisiveness 2000 or even 9/11 where we saw the Daily Show come into its own . The real transformation occurred in the geezerhood after that — not in the disasters , but in our failure to come out of catastrophe well and stronger . As the message of promise yields dispirit results , Stewart becomes invaluable as a court jester . As things go from bad to worse , the Daily Show went from dear to brilliant . Stewart address about dire truths in the only really toothsome way — clowning . But even he had no mind how many hits we were decease have to take .
The Daily Show call the beginning of the War on Terror “ America Freaks Out . ” Then “ Operation Enduring Coverage . ” Then we go into Iraq , and the Daily Show hits gold with “ Mess O’Potamia . ” A segment deed with its first appearance in 2003 . The last ? In 2014 . you may see that they ’re winging it — that the chyrons were n’t supposed to last this long . When the attacks by ISIS force him to return to the segment , Stewart dumps the “ Mess O’Potamia ” logo out of a corner and blows detritus off of it . An acknowledgement that they had n’t anticipate this .
Bush being stupefied is n’t a joke anymore . But Jon Stewart now has to bump a way to make the detention of opposition combatants mirthful . participate Gitmo the puppet .
As thing go from bad to bad , the most iconic Stewart second start bechance . He sings “ Go bed yourself ! ” with a gospel consort . He feuds with Jim Cramer about the loser of business newsman . He devotes a whole episode to the bill getting 9/11 first responders health tending . It ’s a segment called “ I Give Up . ”
I started view the stream untune that Jon Stewart was leave the Daily Show . I end it feeling like he was better off going . In a dark inversion of Marx ’s meditation on Hegel , the first time had been farce , the second fourth dimension tragedy . The quondam episodes were n’t funny any longer . They were hard to watch , and could only have been harder to make .
I watched Stewart talk about 9/11 and how we ’d persevere . And then I watch him deal with fourteen years of America not rise to that challenge . He made an awe-inspiring show , but he gaze into the dark of our world for a very long time . I do n’t even blame him for give out after easy targets like Donald Trump . They must finger like a sculptural relief now , rather than the form of rote jape from the first few seasons .
After 9/11 , in that famous soliloquy , he separate us :
I want to say you why I aggrieve , but why I do n’t desperation .
But this summer , after the attack on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston , South Carolina , Stewart once again tell he could n’t be funny . But the step had change :
I aboveboard have nothing other than just sorrow once again that we have to peer into the abysm of the perverted violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a just gaping racial combat injury that will not mend , yet we act does n’t exist . And I ’m confident , though , that by receipt it , by staring into that and seeing it for what it is , we still wo n’t do laborer shit . Yeah . That ’s us .
Back in 2001 , he evoked another racial wound — the death of Martin Luther King . And he used it as an illustration of our endurance and power to overcome :
One of my first memories is of Martin Luther King being germinate . I was five and if you question if this tone will pass … Uh , when I was five , he was charge . Here ’s what I remember about it . I was in a school in Trenton . They end the lights off and we got to sit under our desk and we thought that was really cool and they gave us cottage cheese , which was a cold lunch because there was riot , but we did n’t know that . We just thought that “ My God . We get to sit under our desks and eat up cottage cheeseflower . ” And what if – that ’s what I remember about it . That was a tremendous examination of this state ’s fabric and this land ’s had many tests before that and after that .
And the reason I do n’t despair is because this fire encounter . It ’s not a aspiration . But the consequence of it , the recovery is a dream realized . And that is Martin Luther King ’s dream . Whatever barrier we ’ve put up are gone even if it ’s fleeting . And we ’re judging people by not the color of their skin but the content of their character . And you do it , all this talk about “ These guys are criminal masterminds . They ’ve – they ’ve get together and their extraordinary guile … and their wit and their skill . ” It ’s a lie . Any fool can shoot a line something up . Any fool can destroy . But to see these guys , these firefighters , these officer and people from all over the nation , literally , with buckets rebuilding . That , that – that is – that ’s sinful . That ’s why we ’ve already won . It ’s light . It ’s republic . We ’ve already won . They ca n’t close that down . They inhabit in chaos and topsy-turvyness … it ca n’t sustain itself . It never could . It ’s too easy and it ’s too dissatisfactory .
By June of 2015 , after sixteen years of hosting the Daily Show , Stewart put up a bleaker imaginativeness of how the past fall into the nowadays :
And we ’re endure to keep pretend like , “ I do n’t get it . What chance ? This one guy wire lose his mind . ” But we are steeped in that culture in this country and we refuse to recognize it , and I can not consider how hard hoi polloi are working to discount it . In South Carolina , the roads that calamitous masses drive on are diagnose for Confederate generals who campaign to keep contraband masses from being able to motor freely on that route . That ’s insanity . That ’s racial wallpaper . That ’s — that ’s — you ca n’t allow for that , you know .
Nine people were shot in a black church by a clean guy who hated them , who wanted to pop some kind of polite state of war . The Confederate sword lily flies over South Carolina , and the roads are named for Confederate general , and the white guy ’s the one who feels like his country is being taken aside from him . We ’re bring it on ourselves . And that ’s the affair . Al - Qaeda , all those hombre , ISIS , they ’re not shit compare to the wrong that we can apparently do to ourselves on a even groundwork .
plainly , this happened after he announced he was leave behind . He even says , “ And perhaps if I was n’t nearing the remnant of the run , or this was n’t such a common occurrence , maybe I could have pulled out of the helix . ” But it could just as easily be that he ’s leaving because the commonality of the occurrence means that he knows he wo n’t pull out of that spiral next time .
Jon Stewart has rarely ever broken the data format of The Daily Show . He did on 9/11 . He did it again when Representative Gabby Giffords was shot in 2011 . He managed to give us hope on 9/11 . And in 2011 , he said “ Not to say resistance is fruitless ” about finding a path to forestall shootings . But by this June , we were too disordered for Stewart to make comedy out of it .
I do n’t know if that ’s an precise view on the humanity . There have been some great advancements in the last decade and a one-half . The Daily Show exulted in them , too . Mostly , though , Stewart made the miserable bearable . But it ’s finally too much for him to abide .
Top image by Jim Cooke
Full revelation : I intern at The Colbert Report for a semester in college . reach out to the author at[email protected ] .
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