The Daily Show & Colbert Report
 

Before going any further, watching this:

Daily Show - Rally to Restore Sanity

If you agree, make it a point to show up in 2.5 months. To summarize:

If you are sick and tired of partisanship, of fear-mongering, of extremist views controlling the message, of the media trying to steer the message instead of just reporting it... then show up. Be a part of the 70-80% of people who are moderates. Who can respectfully disagree and not call their opponents Hitler, or claim that they are somehow going to destroy everything we hold dear.

More information here: http://www.rallytorestoresanity.com/

Not sure if I can make it, but I'm going to try.

Edit: Based on title change of thread, it would be kinda nice to talk about the show in general, and what people's thoughts are.

Being a "fake" news show, it's kinda sad that they actually seem to do more work and better analysis than other "official" news stories. I say this, because with each new story, they can go back in time and bring out past recordings of what people have said for proper contrast, thus exposing media and politician types for the lying hypocrites they tend to be. And they do it with humor!

While the Daily Show does have a bit of left-leaning bias as well, they do a great job exposing stupidity and hypocritical attitudes from all sides. They won't hesitate to call out Democrats or Republicans, although Republicans seem to get hit more. My own theory about that is that the Left Wing is still a bit to the right when compared to the rest of the world, and thus our Right Wing is so far right, that come up on extremist/stupidity levels. If both sides shifted left, then they'd probably end up more equal in terms of stupidity.

But overall, they're good shows to watch; even if you get your news from other sources, it's helpful to tune in so you can get all sides presented. I don't watch the Colbert Report as much as the Daily show, but I do enjoy the Stewart/Colbert interactions, heh.

Does this really need its own thread? We do not create threads for other rallies, concerts, etc, so why this one? Wouldn't it be more pertinent to simply create a Daily Show/Colbert Report Tread (which, surprisingly enough does not currently exist)? Hell, do we even need that type of thread?

Actually... given the importance of the Daily Show / Colbert Report in actually communicating satirical analysis in the US -- it might rate its own thread :)
Needs a proper thread Original Post though...

Hmm, what would you suggest? I'm opening to ideas and changing the first post, but I felt the two links summed up what was going on well-enough.

If Colbert is there, I'm In!

I should actually say that Colbert and Stewart are the only two "newscasters" where I don't feel the need to rotate my eyeballs all the way back. Even as a non-American outside observer I can already tell the difference. I'd rather watch Al-Jazeera than most of the stuff I see on American news cable. I usually just stick to BBC.

I changed the title of the thread to The Daily Show & Colbert Report (if you would like a different title, then by all means ask). I'll leave the OP up to Kaijo for now, but in the meantime, the discussion should probably focus on guest segments and the various "reports".

edit: One of the most interesting aspects of the Rally is the fact that a Liberal is now trying to seize control of (or at least provide a voice for) the so-called "Silent Majority", that has been seen as Republican in the past (though, it has always been moderate). If Colbert/Stewart can accomplsih this task, then there will be a surge in the election (whether that would favour a Democrat or Republican is unknown).

I could easily argue and support the notion that the present day "liberal" DNC is conservative and the "conservative" GOP is ultra-rightwing compared with their historical basis.

Both parties are now essentially corporatist and anti-small business and anti-community. Both parties seem to be end-game in that the more incompetent hold the higher positions. So it isn't very hard for the Daily Show to skewer both parties and their politicians. The media is even easier since mid-80s when it was brightly decided that news should be a profit center rather than a community mandate required to keep one's broadcast license.

Hence, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are probably the closest thing to domestic news the US gets (unless they start going overseas for news information). PBS news has had problems on what it will cover since it is now substantially funded by corporations but there are a few news analysis programs funded by foundations dedicated to mitigating that influence.

What about the March to Keep Fear Alive now that is one to go to :heh:

I what to go but with out cash it is going to be hard

I don't care much about the rally, but the recent Colbert's play ( for lack of a better word, "recast", maybe?) of Dr. Strangelove is hilarious. I knew Steward went easy on Clinton, but somehow the former president sounds very convincing.

i would go if i had the time.

i love parade around with Church of Flying Spaghetti sign :D

For those that don't know, the Daily Show is in Washington D.C. this week, and last night they interviewed Obama. I felt it was a fairly decent interview, and despite how I was growing to dislike Obama, I felt he handled himself well, with decent admissions of where they had failed, and what they needed to do better, and pragmatic looks at what they had done. I still don't agree with everything, but I'm willing to see how he does the next two years.

Interview can be found online here:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-epi...0-barack-obama

It's not like you can do anything else :).

Interview was okay, but I watch the Daily Show because it is a comedic look at the world and the news. So, I could care less if Obama is on or not, I only care about whether Stewart is funny or not, and sadly, he wasn't that funny.

That being said, I love the "Bus" coverage from this past week.

I wish the Daily Show would drop Olivia Munn, all of her scenes are terrible. Eye candy should stick to being eye candy.

Agree with ya, heh. I suppose I should have clarified that I won't necessarily be so harsh in talking about Obama, and have changed my mind from "immediately voting him out as soon as I can" to "I'll see if he straightens up in the next couple of years."

Still a lot he could have done differently, and a lot of Bush policies he could have ended, but I acknowledge he has made some steps, and he made it sound a lot like his idealism got smacked in the face of realism when he stepped into office.

And yeah, I was looking for funny, too, but it was a decent interview nonetheless.

She's had it a bit rough early, seemingly trying to find her niche and her character, so I'll give her a bit longer as she seems to be improving. Honestly, in my mind, I liked Colbert better when he was on the Daily show, and I liked Rob Cordry better, as well as Steve Carrell and Ed Helms. About the only person among the current group I really like is John Oliver, although Larry Wilmore does pretty good.

Every show needs eye candy, and Olivia Munn is damn good eye candy :love:.

Joking aside, I've liked many of her skits, and the few I've disliked were still far better than that giant fat kid that did a few skits...

Agreed. Even though Obama was clearly with his supporters, they (though Stewart) still managed to put a little fire under his feet.

Olivia Munn is good eye candy for G4, but she doesn't have the enough acting skill to be on a show like the Daily Show. Maybe it would work better if Stewart made her his weather girl. :heh:

Some amusing signs from the rally:

http://www.examiner.com/celebrity-in...-signs-picture

Estimates put the rally around 200k to 250k people. By contrast, Glenn Beck's rally had just 80k to 97k, although in true fashion, Fox is trying to claim that they had half a mil, to 1 million people. Glenn and Rush tried to downplay the Sanity Rally, saying stuff like, "With Obama and all these groups, [Stewart's rally] should have over a million people, or else they are powerless."

The Rally was okay. The various musical acts were okay, and so to were the various comedic acts. Honestly, it was the last 15 minute speech that saved the event. Without the final plea for sanity and the endurance of compromise, the entire event would have been fairly pointless.

Still, I'm most impressed by how non-political the event was. This was probably best encapsulated by the closing speech, but the Kid Rock (conservative) & Sheryl Crow (liberal) musical number put a decent face on the idea of the Rally.

As for numbers...personally, I'll just stick to Comedy Central's numbers, which put the event at somewhere around 6 billion people :).

I think the events of the last few days were really needed, because from my perspective viewing this on the west coast of Australia... you lot are bloody bonkers! :heh:

I'm rather amazed that Sarah Palin, someone who proved to be a rather hopeless and naive running mate that proved to be a hindrance to her party, has such an agenda to be pushing forward the idealogy of the Tea Party. Considering what Dubya just done to you lot in the last 8 years, I sincerely doubt a 2 to 4 year break has changed the Republicans to be anything short of a joke.

The world laughed at the US, wondering how on earth George W Bush even managed to cling on for a second term. When you all got together and went to Obama in 2008, it's fair to say a lot of credence was restored to you all from citizens around the world, as we saw that you realised what just happened in that 8 year span.

But then we see the credit crunch and numerous problems for the US economy spring up and the raised voices by the Republicans denouncing Obama and his policies. Hang on a chuffing moment, economies don't just crumble overnight, things do take time to change and I'm pretty sure many of the reasons behind the fiscal nonsense was due to the ineptness of the previous administration and the push on Iraq. Team USA indeed!

Well, back to the real subject in hand, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are absolutely spot on in their comedy personas. They mimic the typical overbearing, foist terror onto the general public type of news correspondents with perfect accomplishment. Stephen Colbert especially, loud and shouty gets more attention, no matter how vacuous the views shared by the Fox News pundits. :heh:

The rally for me restores faith that I know Joe America can see for itself that change takes time and changing administrations more than they change their underwear is just not a responsible way to do that. Stability is key to making things right. Plus brownie points for everyone bringing a bit of laughter to a very serious subject. ;)

Sorry for my long rant, but sometimes I despair at how complacent the voting public get, no matter the nation.