I welcomed David Schimke’s essay “Want To Know What’s Really Going On? Ask a Comic” (Utne Sept-Oct ’06), particularly the necessary connection and comparison between today’s satirists and the suffering of Lenny Bruce. But Schimke’s analysis manages to completely miss the major distinction of artists like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the writing and research teams that are essential to their success. Certainly Stewart and Colbert, like Maher and Rock, directly satirize the outrageous abuses of power that make reading headlines an irony-rich exercise. But politics and politicians are not the central subject of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report: their main target has always been (and continues to be) the sorry state of journalism, particularly television news.
Because they are themselves part of the empire of corporate media that they satirize, these comedians must include a level of self-satire and deliberate irony that – while learned from Letterman and company – take political satire and comedy itself into a new dimension of reflection, responsibility, and intelligence. Schimke overlooks how Colbert and Stewart must themselves practice responsible journalism in order to satirize the abundant examples of irresponsible journalism. Perhaps this is one way (among many) that these “jokesters” can in fact change the world, through fake news that provides truth that so-called “real” news won’t.
Nor, Mr. Schimke, would this be the first time that comedians and satirists have changed the world – as the examples of Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Swift, R. B. Sheridan, and George Bernard Shaw should attest.
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