Funny Business

When you have a moment, you might want to read Aja Romano on the subject of comedians who say their only real goal is to be funny…but who are in some ways competing with news commentators and political pundits and (boldface "and") faulting those folks for spreading misinformation.

As much as I love so much of what Jon Stewart did on The Daily Show, I never fully bought into his claim that since comedy was his main goal, certain standards of journalism did not fully apply to him. That wasn't a huge issue since his program did pretty solid fact-checking and rarely got things wrong. But now you have Joe Rogan offering much the same defense with a lower level of accuracy along with the evasive rationale of "Well, I'm just posing questions." And of course, dispensing faulty medical advice is a lot more serious than misquoting one senator.

Stewart's current show on Apple TV is very good and I really love the podcasts he's doing which are just a bunch of smart, witty people discussing issues with a candor that is rare on Ye Olde Internet. I initially skipped this conversation with NBA Coach Steve Kerr because I have close to zero interest in basketball. But a friend told me a lot of it was about race relations and both men said some smart things about how we, as white people, don't always understand the problems from a non-white perspective.

I'm going to watch all of what Stewart does for Apple but I hope he's not going to try hiding behind "I'm not an activist" when he has moved more clearly into that role. I do like that he's not selling himself as an expert on all the topics he discusses. Too many people think they are one because they have a microphone and a following.