Instant Alert: Why Jon Stewart was so much better at hosting 'The Daily Show' than Trevor Noah

Posted On // Leave a Comment

Your Message Subject or Title

  MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE
 
 
 
 
 

Why Jon Stewart was so much better at hosting 'The Daily Show' than Trevor Noah

by Willa Paskin on Jan 31, 2016, 4:03 PM

Advertisement

In mid-January, with Bernie Sanders surging in the polls in Iowa, The Daily Show With Trevor Noah decided it was time to formally introduce Sanders to its audience.

Sanders officially declared his candidacy this past May and has been squarely in the public eye for months now, his positions, politics, unkempt hair, and Brooklyn accent dissected all over cable news and razzed by every late-night show in the land (including The Daily Show).

Still, Noah supposed its viewers "might be wondering [about] this rising new, yet old, force in the Democratic Party."

Then Noah launched into "The Legend of Bernie Sanders," a relatively straightforward, jokey synopsis of Sanders' accomplishments, from his birth in Brooklyn to his election as senator, climaxing in his album of folk songs. "If you ask me personally," Noah said, "Bernie Sanders' popularity has nothing to do with policy. I think it's because he's opposite Trump. See, the world craves balance. He's the yin to Trump's racist yang."

Noah concluded by pointing out that both Trump and Sanders regularly commit New York–style assaults on the pronunciation of the word huge. The segment was a précis of Noah's Daily Show so far: something that looks like The Daily Show, that mugs and winks like The Daily Show, but that has only a diluted point of view.

If you suspect that there is something more substantial to say about Sanders than that he talks funny, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart agrees. Stewart's Daily Show did a segment on Sanders when he first announced his candidacy in May.

It began with a clip reel of pundits disparaging Sanders as a whack job, as Stewart, talking fast, his voice pitched high, breathlessly ranted, "If Salvador Dalí and Dr. Seuss had a child and that child was raised by schizophrenic howler monkeys, it would be Bernie Sanders. Give me a taste of this crazy wacko cuckoo bird," throwing to a clip of a Sanders sharing his policy positions, which include pay equity for women, campaign finance reform, and expanded social security. "What a … rational, slightly left-of-center mainstream politician," Stewart said.

"Bernie [isn't] a crazy-pants cuckoo bird, it's that we've all become so accustomed to stage-managed focus-group–driven candidates that authenticity comes across as lunacy."

This segment was taped in May, when Sanders' campaign seemed like a hippie fantasy and Trump's candidacy the fever dream of a feral child raised on nothing but reruns of The ApprenticeRambo, and Dave. Yet it's astute about the connection between Sanders and Trump, while also being prescient about why both have turned out to be viable candidates: One voter's lunatic is another's truth teller.

Trevor Noah, comparing Sanders and Trump, called out their devotion to silent h's simply to make a joke. But Stewart, without even trying, illuminated why those h's are more than merely funny: To many Americans, those are the silent h's of authenticity. 

Trevor Noah has been in the hosting chair for four months now, and his show has settled into a groove. If you tune into any episode, you will find something familiar enough, good for a chuckle but never a belly laugh, let alone a revelation. Noah could hardly be more charming; he is at ease in front of the camera, generous with his dimples.

The writing staff, sans former head writer Elliott Kalan and Jo Miller, who left for Samantha Bee's forthcoming new series, remained after Stewart's departure, staving off any overt catastrophes.* Noah's Daily Show has been attracting fewer than 1 million viewers in the all-important 18–49 demo, down more than 30 percent compared with Stewart's last quarter. (Though not compared with his last year, in which Stewart's demo ratings were roughly comparable. Stewart's total viewership was significantly higher than Noah's.)

But if you watch The Daily Show night after night, you get the sense that the writers have adjusted their tactics for a very different kind of host—a Potemkin Jon Stewart, someone smooth and ingratiating who is reaching for unconverted viewers, instead of an inveterate political satirist preaching to the deeply informed.

In theory, I am the exact kind of person the new Daily Show is targeting (well, besides my gender and age, since The Daily Show is targeting 20-year-old men): a thirtysomething who cares about politics but doesn't follow them that closely, not saturated in the details of the campaign trail but open to a sharp-tongued and eagle-eyed guide through a particularly internecine primary season. And yet I have found The Daily Show milquetoast and broad, diverting in the soothing way I associate with the Jimmys of network late night. On Trevor Noah's Daily Show, outrages are an occasion for bemused laughter, not righteously funny indignation.

As we head into a presidential election totally different from any election we've seen before, one all but tailored for The Daily Show, there is a Daily Show–shaped hole in the culture, despite a lesser version of the show airing every weeknight. Between Cruz's authoritarian smarm, Hillary's striving for the human touch, and the racist extravaganza that is Trump, American politics have never been more in need of puncturing by The Daily Show's exasperated logic. But Noah backs away from thorny issues like they are bombs that can be defused with a charming quip. He's out to neutralize, not to awaken. How did the program devoted to scaling bullshit mountain in all its incarnations, the program that once had a gospel choir sing "Go fuck yourself" to a Fox News correspondent, come to feel so beside the point?

At its best, The Daily Show is cathartic. It has served a real sociopolitical end by dragging the most offensive, inane, and ridiculous aspects of our politics under the bright lights and laughing at them with intelligence and wit and lowbrow goofiness.The Daily Show is an activist joker, deflating gasbags and ridiculing the sanctimonious status quo, so that instead of suffering through it alone, we can laugh at it together.

John Oliver Jon Stewart

Stewart turned himself gray trying to rain sanity, silliness, and outrage on the hypocrisy, mendacity, and idiocy that is our political discourse. For his effort and his anger, he was rewarded with trust and love, a fake newsman who became more indispensible than a real one.

Where Stewart allowed himself to be a divining rod for the news, to feel it all and lose his cool accordingly, Noah is always smooth and telegenic, easy in his manner and on the eyes, never worked up, never letting things get too dark. The daft tweets that got Noah into so much trouble before he even took over The Daily Show seemed to presage a clumsy and unsubtle host, one who would say the wrong thing at the wrong time. But Tweetgate proved to be a red herring.

Noah's problem is not that he makes bad jokes but that he doesn't take more chances to make great ones. All bloodless finesse, he never goes for the jugular.

Consider Noah's coverage of Obama's recent State of the Union, in which he explained: "Typically a State of the Union is when a president lays out his agenda for the year to come," just one of the moments when The Daily Show's attempts to expand its demographic suggest it's imagining an audience who might know nothing about politics at all. Noah often makes toothless jokes about physical appearances, from El Chapo's bad shirt to a guy who looked like a "wizard" at a recent Democratic debate.

The sight of one bespectacled tween in the crowd during the SOTU sent Noah on a reverie about an imaginary sitcom called "Senator Kid." It was not a particularly funny flight of fancy, and it provided no analysis of the State of the Union. As Noah reached the end of the bit, perhaps sensing that it hadn't gone over that well, he put his charm to work, scrunching up his nose and giggling hard. "I'm sorry, I can really see the show," he shrugged.

In the runup to Noah's stewardship, The Daily Show announced that it would be moving away from its staple under Stewart: media criticism and, in particular, the relentless skewering of Stewart's bête noir and raison d'etre, Fox News. This made sense. Stewart, with an assist from Stephen Colbert, had spent more than a decade slicing and dicing the cable news industry. His eviscerations were still widely popular with The Daily Show audience and the morning-after viral-video crowd, but they were old news, thanks in large part to Stewart's own work.

Now, instead of covering the coverage of the news, Noah covers the news itself, but this straightforward approach places The Daily Show in a crowded field full of people who are more experienced and engaged than Noah, including Colbert, John Oliver, Larry Wilmore, and soon enough, Samantha Bee.

Samantha Bee


 
Share the latest business news with your network:

Facebook Share Twitter Share Email Share
Email sent to:   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe

Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy

Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Sailthru

0 comments:

Post a Comment