The Disconnect

I find John Stewart and Stephen Colbert to be pretty funny guys. And I think that much of what they have to say is actually important.

On the other hand, I also think that maybe, just maybe, it's a little too cool.

Supposedly, there were 200,000 people at the Colbert/Stewart rally in DC. Which is cool. But where were they a few weeks earlier? You know, at the "One Nation Working Together" rally?

Janet Malcolm makes a good point in the New York Review's blog:

The signage from the Stewart/Colbert rally:

WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF AND SPIDERS
MODERATION OR DEATH
JEW AGAINST INVOKING HITLER FOR POLITICAL POINTS
ATHEISTS FOR MASTURBATION
GAY MAYLASIAN MUSLIMS FOR SARAH PALIN
YOU KNOW WHO ELSE WAS A WHITE SOX FAN? HITLER
SUPPORT SEPARATION OF HEAD FROM ASS

The signage from the Working Together rally:

GOOD JOBS NOW
STOP CORPORATE GREED
GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER EQUALITY
I WANT SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE
GET OUT AND VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS

The point being that while the bourgeois liberal youth continue to use snark, sarcasm and irony in a bid to be political without having to actually be political, real people with real needs are getting ignored.

There's something more important happening in America besides a crappy media culture. Stewart and Colbert have hidden behind the excuse that they are "just a comedy show," but they are clearly no longer that. They've started a "movement" - as pathetic and wayward and selfish as it is - and now they've got a responsibility to do more than cry about rhetoric and the system. How about organizing and mobilizing against the class war that the right-wing bourgeoisie, via the Tea Party, is currently perpetrating against the working classes of America in the name of freedom (for some)? The problem, of course, is that the audience for Stewart/Colbert isn't really interested in recreating a society that might not fuck people over in the name of freedom to amass wealth (for some); isn't really interested in doing some soul-searching about how their own actions within the system further the exploitation of human beings in the name of cheap consumer goods.