Do the Jo(h)ns Believe What They're Saying?
Is it epistemic closure or showmanship?
Opinions of Jon Stewart seem to be undergoing a market correction, which is a term that it now seems possible Stewart might not understand. Last week, Stewart enraged the economics community with obtuse comments during an interview with Richard Thaler; nerds haven’t been this angry since George Lucas used CGI to make Greedo shoot first. Stewart doubled down on his new “guy who does his own economics research” persona in a nod-along interview with Oren Cass, a fringe populist who named himself “Chief Economist” of his organization even though Cass only has introductory-level training in economics. I didn’t know you could do that! I’ve long pretended to be an economist in much the same way that George Costanza pretends to be an architect, but it never occurred to me to give myself a bullshit title. So, let me correct that oversight right now: Henceforth, I am the Triple Platinum Supreme Economics Wizard of I Might Be Wrong.
It’s not just Stewart: People seem to be viewing the entire Very Serious News Comedian persona through more skeptical eyes. Blocked and Reported is currently breaking down the flaws in John Oliver’s Net Neutrality pieces (with background information provided by yours truly), and “John Oliver effect” is replacing “Gell-Man Amnesia” as the go-to phrase meaning “realizing that someone is full of shit when they talk about a topic you know”. In the irony of ironies, The Daily Show and its spin-offs have come to resemble Fox News, whose one-sidedness and massaging of facts to full release were the fodder that helped The Daily Show go supernova in the first place.
Because of the time I spent in that world,1 I often get asked what I think went wrong. Earlier this week, I wrote about Jon Stewart’s personal character arc, but what about The Daily Show and its spinoffs? Broadly speaking, there are two theories of how The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and the various half-sisters and inbred cousins in the Daily Show family of shows became what they are today:
Theory 1: Stewart, Oliver, et al. are just giving their audience what they want. It’s entertainment, and just as the Occam’s razor explanation for Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens is “look at their numbers”, Stewart and Oliver are basically just prisoners of audience capture.
Theory 2: Stewart and Oliver are true believers. They spin simplistic, one-sided narratives because they sincerely believe that those narratives are true.
