The Dallas Morning News Tom Maurstad Column: Stewart and Colbert Chat Away

Jan 08, 11:33 AM

Jan. 8--Monday night marked the return of two more late-night talk (or, at least, talk-based) shows in the midst of the ongoing writers strike. Granted, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are 30-minute comedy shows on cable (and basic cable at that).

But much more than any of the network talk shows, they are shows that depend on writers and scripts, each representing some of the best and brightest political and social satire/commentary in contemporary pop culture. That may be akin to being the tallest Munchkins in Oz, but still, the shows are, or at least have been, blistering smart and funny.

So what would it be like with no writers, without that brain trust of Ivy League comedy writers knocking out the hilarious skits and typing up another hilarious soliloquy? Pretty darned funny as it turned out. First up was Mr. Stewart, who sat at his desk, scribbling with a make-believe pen over some make-believe papers. "Hey, that's me drawing on what would be a script," he proclaimed, setting the tone for what prove to be a loose, tongue-in-cheek show. After showing off the "Writers strike solidarity uni-brow" that he grew in the last two months (an obvious fake that he quickly peeled off), Mr. Stewart announced that, without his writers, this wasn't The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, so for the duration it will be A Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

Without writers, the show couldn't do what it usually does, which is wryly comment on and make merry with current events, and these days, of course, current events means the presidential race. So instead, Mr. Stewart devoted the show to the other big story consuming America -- the writers strike. He proceeded to present the Writers Guild of America's position; in particular, its demands for a share of Internet-generated profits. There was lots of sarcastic banter that pretty quickly grew tedious and insiderly, reinforcing the fact that everyone in the entertainment industry seriously overestimates the average person's fascination with and sympathy for the economic machinations of film and television production.

But then, just as it was tempting to flip over to see if an Iron Chef America rerun was on, he switched gears and started directing his sarcasm at the writers. He cut right to the heart of the situation, saying: "Let's have a little perspective here. Somewhere between minimum wage and a job pulling in thousands plus residuals, there's got to be some common ground."

He went on to interview a labor-relations professor from Cornell, Ron Seeber, and as he usually does, Mr. Stewart proved himself to be a thoughtful and insightful interviewer. They closed their discussion by agreeing that the Writers Guild was trying to reach an agreement from the bottom up, striking a number of interim deals with smaller players, such as the one just signed with United Artists. It was the clearest bit of analysis on the strike thus far.

Stephen Colbert, meanwhile, did what he always does: speak out in bold, loud terms about things he doesn't really know about or understand. Of course, he's playing a character, who just happens to be named Stephen Colbert, so he can get away with it. It was interesting to see how working without writers accentuated the fundamental differences between these two closely related but almost exactly opposite shows. Jon Stewart is playing himself -- a funny but serious guy. Whereas the television host named Stephen Colbert is a loveable jackass.

The result on Monday night was that The Colbert Report wasn't all that different from a typical episode. There were none of the usual scripted segments, no "The Word," though Mr. Colbert segued to "The Word" because he didn't really understand what the strike meant -- he thought that the words on the teleprompter were generated by the thoughts in his head, not written by the guys sitting upstairs with "an opium bong."

In contrast to The Daily Show's almost complete recasting (is it going to be all about the writers strike every night? Ugh.), The Colbert Report had all kinds of familiarly funny moments, such as Mr. Colbert gloating over Mike Huckabee's victory in Iowa, which he, of course, credited to Mr. Huckabee's three appearances on The Colbert Report and the inevitable "Colbert bump." Later, he showed a hilarious montage from previous shows showing him disparaging unions as "destroyers of America." Funny stuff. He then had two guests. The first was show regular Andrew Sullivan, author of the recent article "Why Obama Matters." The other was a unions expert from Harvard University named Richard Freeman. He had Mr. Freeman in such stitches -- when the professor said that 50 percent of Americans favored unions, Mr. Colbert exclaimed, "You can get 50 percent of Americans to support anything," before quizzing his audience by asking, "Who wants to be a pirate?" As the applause thundered, Mr. Freeman was giggling so hard he could barely get a word out.

He wasn't alone.

-----

To see more of The Dallas Morning News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dallasnews.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, The Dallas Morning News

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. The Dallas Morning News Tom Maurstad Column: Stewart and Colbert Chat Away
Back to Current Headlines