lisa levy debuts her tv column with that old jon stewart show

much has changed about the daily show with jon stewart since the world almost blew up. gone is the opening voiceover proclaiming it's "the most important show on television -- ever." yet it's still the best way to inaugurate the most important column on television ever: namely, chickfactor's. though I'm a stewart fan from way back, I detest the oversize fratboy who preceded him in this gig, craig kilborn, and thus had not been in the habit of watching daily. I preferred the soothing quality of late-night reruns, especially law & order -- there's nothing like seeing a brutal criminal brought to justice before bedtime to delude you into thinking that everything's right with the world. second, television news is boring, and the daily show is a parody of the news, which elevates it only slightly to potentially interesting. daily is, however, out to kick some information ass, to make us think about what television news really is: self-congratulatory, salacious, infotainment nonsense.

but I became intrigued by daily after reading a piece by james wolcott in the may 2001 vanity fair, which talked about the show's spiritual and personnel connection to the onion: the head writer, ben karlin, is the former editor of "the satirical weekly" (wolcott's phrase: descriptive, if a bit ham-handed). much to my delight, the daily approach to news is very onionesque: lots of doofy graphics, mocking headlines, a deadpan interpretation on absurd mundane events. the important distinction is that onion invents its news ("local girl hates mom, hair, life"), while the daily show sticks to the awful truth: to wit, after september 11, daily had a ticker across the bottom of the screen that read "america freaks out." there are rumors that daily is the main source of news for college students, and by the astounding number of beer commercials, I -- and more importantly advertisers -- believe them. stewart himself is now a hot commodity, recently bandied about in the gossip columns as a possible candidate for a network show replacing nightline and the subject of a new yorker profile, all despite his appearance in death to smoochy.

liking the daily show pre-september 11 has become the mark of an early adapter, like being the first one to wear vans or like the white stripes. as one of those from way back, I prefer the pre-11 publicity, like when stewart won the dubious distinction of being proclaimed "hot" in liz smith's column, itself a news source of questionable veracity. I quote from an interview which I have manipulated, daily-style, to make a polemical point:

liz: do you think of yourself as a commentator, a moralist or are you an actor?

jon: I think of myself as one bad performance away from night-managing a bennigan's.

liz: I have to confess I've never seen your show.

jon: you know the network, liz. the show right after ours has robots fighting. you'd really enjoy it.

liz: did you like the piece in vanity fair by james wolcott? he's a very smart man.

jon: very much. I didn't understand a lot of it. I had no idea we were that good.

liz: has the tv critic john leonard ever written about you?

jon: no, in fact, he actually left a message at my house saying he will never write about me.

liz: he and wolcott are intellectuals, covering tv. imagine that!

yes, imagine that! this exchange both validates my plump magazine writer pinups and provides a nifty segue into this polemic: writing about television -- and, by extension, watching televsion -- is a worthwhile intellectual pursuit. for instance, would I recognize the genius of daily's entertainment segment, "we love showbiz!" and its 5-minute interviews in which dazed-looking celebrities attempt to evade the finely honed stewart bullshit detector if I hadn't logged so many hours in front of the mindless promotional machine that is entertainment tonight and its ripoffs? the daily show -- like many of the other shows I love, from buffy to the sopranos -- demands a certain sophistication. the well-informed daily watcher will recognize elements of all kinds of programs, from dateline (yawn) to oprah (yeah!). you need to watch television to get television, and snobbishness is a ridiculous reason to deprive yourself of the pleasures of the box. save it for your record collection.

if all this discourse is too meta, well, my apologies. but daily also aims rather high, which wolcott recognizes but doesn't push far enough. he aligns daily with other instruments of parody (snl's weekend update segment, e.g., very hit-and-miss) and irony (spy magazine, letterman, and david lynch). I would argue that daily, in its best, truth-based bits, manages to leave both of these overworked modes behind. it's much more clever to recognize the comedy in what's true than to distort in order to amuse or outrage. in the middle of one night's headlines about the rumors survivor had been staged, in a characteristic aside stewart shook his head and said, "I can't believe that we're a sham." jon, take heart: you are much less of a sham than most of what passes for tv news, and a whole lot funnier.