I've Missed John Stewart

Sitting here at 1 am, I've just thoroughly enjoyed my first Daily Show episode in years. It's an unanticipated joy that I didn't consider just prior to the election.

I used to enjoy the Daily Show quite a bit. I would watch it nightly. But then it just got a little over the top for me. They didn't even pretend to be non-partisan, and the audience became less and less evenly split, and it became unfunny to me. Sure, part of that was because I felt like I was the one being laughed at, and that doesn't make anybody feel good, but it was mostly because there was no "fairness" to it. I can laugh at myself sometimes, anybody who knows me knows that I laugh at myself regularly, but man, ease up a little and let's laugh at the other guys too. Let's laugh at everybody and all of our stupid mistkaes (catch that?) and all of our stupid relationships.

So I turned it off. My life was too short to have the blood pressure rising each night just before I hit the pillow to go to sleep. But I have to admit, I missed it. Just not enough to turn it back on.

But Wednesday night's episode was my first episode back. I was curious how it would be handled, and it was good! The show opened with Stewart holding up a New York Post, pretending to read while the audience went nuts over President-Elect Obama's picture, screaming clapping whooping (and a chant of "Yes we can" I might add). And then came the part that was funny (to me, anyway). Stewart does his typical shtick and pokes some fun at the new president. Relatively safe stuff, nothing harsh, so it was ok for the audience to laugh. Then Stewart did what he used to do for the current administration, he poked a little harder. He referenced the false rumor that Obama is Muslim. Reaction from the audience? Not laughter, but "ooohhhh..." as in, "don't do it, John. Don't make fun of OUR guy. I mean, he's OUR guy, John. You are on our team, you've been making fun of the enemy all these years and now you are going to make fun of our guy? Don't do it!"

Then Stewart used part of Obama's acceptance speech to set up another joke. As Obama got ready to thank his wife, he said "And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years, the rock of our family, the love of my life..." And then Stewart cuts in and says "Bill Ayers." Another poke. And another tepid reaction from the crowd. Polite laughter, I think because they didn't like their guy getting made fun of.

The guest on this show was Chris Wallace from FoxNews. An interesting choice. Maybe they wanted to try to rub it in Fox's face or something, I don't know. I would have thought they would be a little more interested in getting somebody they could celebrate with, but it was a great choice. It was that akward, tense, "I don't like you" uneasiness that plays so well on tv (that's the reason "The Office" is so popular, right?). John took his shots, Chris played a gracious loser and it was funny. But I couldn't help but wonder as Stewart was poking fun at Chris Wallace, he asked "What is Fox going to do now? You surely can't continue the way you've been going." (or something like that). And I wondered the same thing about The Daily Show. What will they do? They've lost their clowns in Washington. Will TDS continue chasing the Republicans and make fun of the guys who remain? Or do they truly dare keep their guns aimed at whoever is in the White House? From this episode, it looks like that might be the case, and I look forward to watching The Daily Show. Not because I think they will now ignore the Republicans and only make fun of the controlling party, but because I think now they will be a little more balanced about it. Which will make it funnier.

That's my two cents...and I'm not any closer to going to sleep than I was 20 minutes ago when I started this post. If you see my on the road tomorrow, I'd pull over and wait until I've gone by you...it might not be safe.