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The End of an Era
The Daily Show, created by Liz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg in 1996 (and starring Craig Kilborn), was originally a response to the insane pace of 24-hour cable news cycle.
By the time Jon Stewart arrived in '99, online sources offered instant news gratification, even if it was increasingly unverified.
And a point of context, millenials- before the spread of social networking in the mid to late ochts, people actually went to news sites instead of being fed a collection of like-minded stories hand-picked by friends and family.
News' sensationalism and sudden need to be profitable pushed programs that were meant to inform into entertainment.
Stewart and his team brought a new level of transparency to news media, particularly after 9/11, when so many journalists started dropping the ball.
Speaking of which- when his city was still broken and smoldering, and America was still shaking, he showed us how to walk it off and keep our wits about us.
Stewart made sure we questioned elections where, let's say, the guy with less votes somehow "won."
He made us question invading countries that hadn't attacked us in wars that were promised to be free to the American tax-payers via mail-in oil rebates that never arrived.
He made us question a suddenly impotent government when a major U.S. city was underwater.
And he made us question a news media that seemed more intersted in captivating screen graphics than looking into the wars they were selling.
What might America have become if a vulnerable citizenry had been subjected to Fox News' narrative to an alternate universe without an appropriate ("Are you fucking kidding me?") response?
He made sure people knew This is all smoke and mirrors!
While Stewart continued attacking the news media in general, in 2005 he deployed Stephen Colbert with his own show to attack cable news networks fueled by bigger-than-life opinionated characters.
With The Colbert Report, Colbert skewered a cult-of-personality with a character that was as big as they come.
He said the same things coming out of straight-faced conservative pundits' mouths with the wink and knod they deserved.
Colbert took the transparency Stewart had brought to news and tried to apply it to the political process by awkwardly inserting himself into it.
He filed lawsuits, formed a PAC, then Super-PAC and even ran for president.
And who can forget The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, where Stewart and Colbert marched on the Washington Mall for no particular reason just to show that a lot of people do a lot of things in Washington for no particular reason.They snagged 26 Emmy wins (and 101 nominations) between the two shows, and yet it still feels like we took them for granted.
Sure, we'll see Stephen Colbert later this year on The Late Show, allowed to be himself for the first time, or at least a character closer to his own.
Larry Wilmore is already brining us a modern-day Politically Incorrect shaped by his own unique perspective with The Nightly Show.
And undoubtedly Trevor Noah will get the hang of hosting Daily.
But neither will ever match Snark & Sarcasm's ability to skewer power... or our need for them to do so.
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