Here's some excerpts from a New York Times article:
IS Jon Stewart being coy?In a recent dust-up with Tucker Carlson on CNN's "Crossfire," Mr. Stewart defended a soft interview he conducted with John Kerry. He wasn't a commentator on CNN, like Mr. Carlson, he said, but a host on "The Daily Show," which is on Comedy Central.
"The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls," he said.
Whether he likes it or not, Mr. Stewart's mix of news and satire has become so successful that the comedian is suddenly being criticized for not questioning his guests with Tim Russert-like intensity.
Some critics insist that the size of Mr. Stewart's audience should force him to take a more serious approach. "The Daily Show" now attracts more 18- to 34-year-old viewers than the network news. And the 13-minute CNN segment with Mr. Stewart has been downloaded or streamed from the Internet more than 1.5 million times, surpassing the viewership of "Crossfire" itself.
"Stewart needs to be more self-aware," wrote Dan Kennedy, a media critic at The Boston Phoenix, an alternative magazine, on his blog. "By offering serious media criticism, and then throwing up his hands and saying, in effect, 'Hey, I'm just a comedian' every time Carlson took him on, Stewart came off as slippery and disingenuous. Sorry, Jon, but you can't interview Bill Clinton, Richard Clarke, Bill O'Reilly, Bob Dole, etc., etc., and still say you're just a comedian."
The "Crossfire" conflict supports the charge that the line between television news and entertainment is blurred beyond all recognition, said Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University and author of "Celebrity Politics."
"Each side is still uneasy with the other because they have a self image that is different from the reality," he said. "Tucker was complaining that Stewart wasn't being funny. He wasn't wanting commentary, he wanted entertainment. And Stewart wanted to take advantage of the show to make some serious statements."
Getting more serious doesn't mean buttoning-up. Mr. Stewart's success and access to the youth vote give him the power to press guests without fearing that they will never return to the show, said Lizz Winstead, a co-creator of the show and now a co-host of a news and comedy show on Air America, the liberal radio network.
"Jon should be the guy who asks the satirical questions," she said. "He wouldn't have to nail someone and make them uncomfortable, but since Jon is so brilliant at being satirical, why not say to Richard Perle on the show, 'Did you ever think of calling your book 'Confessions of a Chicken Hawk?' "
I totally disagree with this premise. Just because you CAN be more effective than those making political commentary, doesn't mean you need to. Look at Dennis Miller. In my opinion, he's lost whatever he had. More people hear the flippant remarks that Jon Stewart drops as jokes, and either believe them (even though it's 'comedy') or at least let them sink in than those who are struggling through Crossfire. And, more importantly, people are open to Jon Stewart as a comedian. They don't go in expecting him to hammer on someone to get his agenda across, a.k.a., Crossfire. Instead, he has a receptive audience who can enjoy what he is doing--being funny while still being smart.
In the wake of network after network thinking that the only thing we should find funny is either a, someone being brutally beaten by police officers, or b, a puppet making crank calls, Jon Stewart is FUNNY in the way Letterman used to be. Witty, humorous commentary can often last much longer, and be much more effective than the "Hard Hitting Interview."
And, Stewart won't GET the guests he gets now if he does start that. People don't come on his show to be ambushed, and once the slogan "5 reporters, 1 news show, 0 credibility" has to be thrown out the window because they're gotten credibility, he just becomes one more journalistic hack.
My 2¢.
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