“So, has Stewart lost his way? Or is it, as Ryan Kearney at TBD would have it, that the journalistic elite is feeling jilted? “Print and web journalists,” Kearney writes, “generally speaking, are a prickly, defensive, and arrogant bunch. We imagine ourselves superior to TV newscasters, who traffic in sound bites and manufactured controversy and high-decibel alarmism. In our minds, we writers slave away at our desks, composing thoughtful articles that are too nuanced for TV, and yet we remain largely anonymous while all those empty-headed beautiful people soak up the relative fame afforded by television. As the criticism of Stewart’s rally proves, we are delusional: Writers often aren’t very thoughtful at all. We’re just bitter. We loved Stewart because he voiced that bitterness we felt — about politics, about television, and even about our own careers. Now that his narrative has diverged from our own, we fear he’ll become just another media figure — or worse, a politician — about whom we’re forced to write articles. Some of us, consequently, reject Stewart in the way we might reject a boyfriend or girlfriend who has left us for something bigger: He or she is already gone, but somehow we convince ourselves that the decision to leave the relationship was ours to make.”

(Kearney’s piece, which has an excellent roundup of criticisms, is worth a full read.)”

Jon Stewart on the Hustings - NYTimes

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  1. brooklynmutt posted this