Saturday, October 30, 2010

Thank God I'm Not Like Them

So the sane people are going to be on the Capitol Mall today, led by Daily Show host Jon Stewart. Tunku Varadarajan lays it out quite succintly:

For all their iconoclasm, Stewart and his sidekick-in-sanity, Stephen Colbert, calculate to honor mainstream liberal pieties. Daily, Stewart shores up caustically the conventional wisdom of a moderate-left orthodoxy, scolding what are perceived to be the extremes, almost invariably of the right, in a fiesta of self-congratulation.


That phrase, "a fiesta of self-congratulation," is spot-on. I'm not a regular Stewart watcher, but I've seen his act enough times to know how he operates. He's a professional smart-ass and he's generally pretty good at it. And America needs its jesters.

You can't build a political movement out of mockery, though. I remain convinced that much of what drives opposition to Obama and the Democrats is how they just ooze condescension. It doesn't much anger me, because I've spent much of my life dealing with people who look down their noses at the "great unwashed," as Katie Couric put it recently. Couric's defenders have insisted that she didn't mean the term as a put-down. And I believe these defenders, because they honestly don't see it that way. They don't understand why treating the Tea Party as a matter of cultural anthropology might rankle.

The Gospel of Luke features what Jesus said about the matter:


9To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about[a] himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'

13"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

14"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."


There are a lot of Pharisees in Stewart's audience, who thank God they are not like NASCAR fans or bitter clingers or Glenn Beck fans. And there's never been any doubt that Stewart encourages his audience to think in those terms. The whole purpose of today's events in Washington is to mock the backward ways of those who gathered in Washington a few months back.

It cuts both ways -- conservatives sneer at liberals, too. And both sides imagine that the Other Guys are the Pharisees. I'll cop to it, since I do that pretty much every day on this blog. It's been a lifelong challenge for me, because I like to sneer and it's very easy to be cynical about human nature. But you aren't likely to build much of anything that lasts while you swim in currents of bile.

It's the paradox of politics -- we need politicians who are humble enough to understand their own limitations, but it takes a little bit of hubris to even contemplate running for office. The test for those Tea Party-endorsed candidates that break through on Tuesday is this -- will you remember why you were sent to office?

A lot of Democratic Party officeholders are likely to lose their jobs on Tuesday. As they ponder why they are out of a job, I would hope that they pay more attention to the Gospel of Luke than the Daily Show.

7 comments:

my name is Amanda said...

Please tell me you get the irony that you the author plays in this whole condescending / self righteousness scenario.

The difference between Libs' and Cons' condescension is that Libs criticize you for having a basic lack of respect for human dignity and autonomy (and what a horrible thing to request of other people!), while Cons...quote Bible verses at you. Which, if that helps you, then great, but we're not living in a world anymore where quoting scripture to a group of diverse, multi-religious/secular people means something as a whole. (Would you take heed if a Muslim American was quoting the Koran to you in a blog post dedicated to how deeming anyone in Muslim garb as a terrorist is bigoted?) And that angers and terrifies Conservatives, who are mostly older voters. All the condescension in the world on either side isnt going to stop the world from becoming more accepting of "those" people. So you know, enjoy holding down the fort, or whatever, while it while it lasts; until it burns to the ground.

Gino said...

i'm thinking of the irony that amanda is showing right now.

Thank GOD, i'm not like her.

(damn, i'm all out of bible verses,too. i used my last one yesterday.)

Mr. D said...

Amanda,

Did you actually read the post? Did you see this part?

It cuts both ways -- conservatives sneer at liberals, too. And both sides imagine that the Other Guys are the Pharisees. I'll cop to it, since I do that pretty much every day on this blog. It's been a lifelong challenge for me, because I like to sneer and it's very easy to be cynical about human nature. But you aren't likely to build much of anything that lasts while you swim in currents of bile.

Or did you just check out intellectually when you saw the scripture quote?

And go right ahead -- quote the Koran if you'd like. There is likely something in it that makes basically the same point I'm making.

You also said,

we're not living in a world anymore where quoting scripture to a group of diverse, multi-religious/secular people means something as a whole.

So have you seen any pictures of the Colbert/Stewart rally yet? That's about the whitest crowd you'll ever see.

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//101030/482/urn_publicid_ap_org3aacc20cd79741a1babe749cc3b0cb7c/#photoViewer=/101030/482/urn_publicid_ap_org_a614eb3edecd4626b63264f6f9c9379c

Brad Carlson said...

For future reference, Amanda, here are three simple steps to follow before commenting on a blog post:

1) Read

2) COMPREHEND

3) Comment

Chuckwagon Boy said...

Marcus,

I am a big fan of Stewart and a little bit of Colbert and I really appreciate the way they skewer the politicians. Though Stewart has confessed to leaning left and a majority of his attacks are on right leaning politicians and FOX News, he does not hesitate to go after CNN, MSNBC, Olbermann and even, Obama.

Stewart and Colbert have stated many times they are not planning a political movement, but simply bringing the "truth" through being the court jester. It appears they are just riding the wave of popularity and makin' a whole bunch o' money at the same time.

There was only about 15 minutes during the rally when Stewart got serious and part of his words were these:

"There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned," Stewart said. "You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and tea partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate -- just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more."

Most Americans, he said, don't live their lives solely as Republicans or Democrats, but as "people who are just a little bit late for something they have to do, often something they do not want to do. But they do it."

Some may paint the nation as fragile and torn by hate, he said, "but the truth is ... we work together to get things done every damn day."

"There will always be darkness, and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn't the promised land," Stewart said. "Sometimes it's just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together."

The other item I would mention is the people they are speaking to are the younger set as described in the article I am posting below:

"Call us Generation I. I for irony, iPhones, and the Internet. I for instant gratification. I for idiosyncratic, inventive, impertinent. We're all these things."

As Stewart stated in the post-rally press conference, he had put down a deposit on the mall 2 months before it was announced, so it appears the whole time that the rally was an ironic response to Glenn Beck's rally with a brief serious time.

Their other comments were:

"We're not running for anything," Stewart said at the National Press Club.

"We don't have a constituency," he said. "We do television shows for people that like them and we hope that they continue to like them so that Comedy Central can continue to sell beer to young people."

"We wanted to do a really good show for people that wanted it," he said of the rally.

Asked what his next steps would be, Colbert said, "We have a show on Monday and we have to go write that and we have a live show Tuesday."

So, is that a bad thing?

Chuckwagon Boy said...

So, it said my url was too large and I am going to try it again:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/compost/2010/10/why_the_jon_stewart_rally_is_m.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

If it does not work, the title to the article is "Why the Jon Stewart Rally is my generation's Woodstock" by Alexandra Petri

Mr. D said...

CB,

Blogger just ate my response, so I'll restate it quickly.

1) Good for Stewart for saying most people are just trying to get by in life. That's the whole point of the Tea Party movement. It would be better if he and his fan base would spend less time mocking it.

2) I find the "clown nose on/clown nose off" thing that Stewart does tiresome. It's basically the flip side of the Minnesota-style "passive agressive" behavior. The problem in both cases is the aggression, which has to be masked. I'd strongly prefer more honesty.

3) In the end, what Stewart says matters less than what he does. And what he does. I don't expect him to be fair, or "fair and balanced." But it's a real problem that so many people, especially young people, use him as a primary news source.

4) Beyond the Gospel of Luke, I'd also recommend that Stewart's young fans read "Great Expectations."