My life, when it comes to humor, has reached its high point; it cannot be surpassed. I made Jon Stewart laugh.
Jon Stewart, hero of the Democratic National Conven-tion, demi-god to liberal college students everywhere, laughed at a joke I made.
It all happened due to my brother's fortunate friendship with a producer of the NBC Nightly News. Thanks to this connection (you rule, Sam), I found myself working as a "runner" for NBC at the DNC this summer.
It seems that from talking to other Tufts people, every Boston college student and their brother worked at the DNC. Some of us worked for NBC, others for the DNC, or CNN, ABC or any other combination of letters which sounds like a New Deal program. Those of us who worked for NBC were lucky. Others, who fell ass-backwards into working for the Fox News Channel, were not.
Week One of the job, the week preceding the convention, consisted of making trips back and forth from the Wellington Circle shopping center. It seemed a little silly to be driving between Costco, Home Depot Bed Bath and Beyond (I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time!), but with the company credit card in hand and the time clock running, I wasn't one to complain.
Then, I got my one-night plum assignment.
During Bill Clinton's speech on the first night of the convention in Boston, I had the glorious assignment of sitting side by side with the "Daily Show" host. Just me, Mr. Stewart, his handler and another NBC employee. While the former president electrified the audience with the booming presence and skilled speechmaking that made him so popular in the nineties, Stewart entertained his audience of three merely by his presence. Then, I made my mark.
At one pause in Clinton's speech, someone in the FleetCenter yelled out something incomprehensible, to which I asked audibly, "Did he just say baba-booie?" in reference to the Howard Stern prankster calling-card. And Jon Stewart laughed at my joke. I was beside myself with joy. But in retrospect, I guess you had to be there.
But you weren't. No one was. It was just me and Jon Stewart (and two other guys).
The rock star phenomenon was something else. As Stewart and I walked through the FleetCenter and security, we stopped for photos a dozen times and heard countless "you are awesome" comments, or others of the same ilk. He was perhaps, the best-loved attendee of the convention. But ... why?
"The Daily Show" is currently enjoying unprecedented exposure. When John Kerry was flailing from the brutal attacks of the Swift Boat Veterans, he turned to Jon Stewart in a highly publicized interview. During the Republican National Convention, "The Daily Show's" ratings went through the roof. Last Thursday, the night of the first debate between Bush and Kerry, the show, which aired live, received its highest ratings ever, 2.4 million viewers. This clobbered its previous high of 1.9 million viewers from a January episode with Senator John McCain. Fake news has never had it so good.
The recent CBS scandal reminded me why so many people, especially our peers, love to get their news and entertainment from Jon Stewart and his motley crew of writers. They know it's fake; they know the slant. With the controversies at "The New York Times" and CBS, public confidence in the mainstream media has fallen to new lows. Fox News' uber-conservative slant, especially on its talking head shows, has demolished any credibility the network may have had with liberal and moderate viewers. No one knows whether or not news organizations are telling the truth.
So they turn to "The Daily Show." Yes, it mocks conservatives more than liberals and always skews the true story. But there is always a degree of truth underneath all the joking.
I kid with my Red Sox-loving friends that I'd much rather be an Oriole fan than a Red Sox fan. With the Orioles, I know they are going to suck; I know they aren't going to make the playoffs; I know that only when they play the Sox, they will win. I don't live under the misguided optimism that my team will do well, only to suffer heartbreak in mid-October.
Watching the "Daily Show" is the same deal. We know it will be biased, as opposed to the network news, when who knows what the real story is. One of my favorite quotes from the show was when "correspondent" Rob Corddry reported, "It's all too clear that facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda." It's clear to me, and pretty much everyone at the DNC, that Jon Stewart and the "Daily Show" have an anti-Bush agenda as well. But at least we know where they're coming from.
