October 20, 2004
Stewart’s re-mastered narrative
When you come down to it, Jon Stewart’s segment on Crossfire was actually sort of lame. He told the hosts that they’re playing into the hands of the politicians and corporations, but he didn’t tell them how. He called them hacks but didn’t explain in what sense. He said they were degrading democracy but not what an alternative might be. When people replay this segment in ten or fifty years, they’ll wonder why it mattered.
Nevertheless, I believe this was a seminal moment in the re-framing of the media. To be precise, the moment came when Stewart refused to be Tucker Carlson’s funny “monkey.” Now who’s the entertainer and who’s the seeker?
“The outing of Cross Fire is an underground hit,” as Jock Gill says. The fact that Stewart’s appearance was lame and yet so powerful is evidence of just how important his appearance was. We are so desperate to hear someone say the simple truth: The mainstream media is as unknowing about itself as a 14-year-old admiring himself in a mirror, convinced his new haircut makes him cool.
And then Jock connects this, correctly IMO, to the fate of the “master narrative.” Jock points to one important feature of the new framing that’s developing: We are beginning to view ourselves as the media. “We the Media,” as Dan Gillmor says it in the title of his book.
But Stewart’s got it even right-er. In fact, Jock puts it well in the title of his blog piece, taken from Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man“: “Something’s happening here but you don’t know what it is … [sneer] do you, Mr. Jones?” (Damn you, Jock! That’s the cliche I was going to use for the title of this piece!) The new frame that’s developing, I believe, isn’t just that we are the media. It’s that the media are the last to know.
That’s why Stewart is the perfect messenger: The media are in the business of telling us what’s going on, but it turns out they don’t have any idea what’s going on with themselves. Now that’s funny!
And so the old framing will end not with a bang but with a giggle.
(And so blog entries will end not with a thought but with a cliche.)
Does anyone have a contact at The Daily Show? If so, can you suggest that they get Jay Rosen as a guest so he can talk about master narratives? (And, yes, I know I’ve used the phrase loosely in this piece.)
