I’ve been frustrated a bit, of late, by the soft news stories featured on the cover of Newsweek lately. Features on Bill Gates, Lord of the Rings, Women of the Bible, and a poorly-researched piece on “Lawsuit Hell” have all graced recent Newsweek covers, yet each issue had more pressing news covered inside.<\/p>\n
But if you’re going to go with a soft cover, go with the best. With this in mind, and to completely contradict my alleged disinterest in entertainment features in news magazines, I was absolutely thrilled to see Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show<\/a> fame, on this week’s cover<\/a>.<\/p>\n The apparent point of the cover-story article was to identify Stewart and his Comedy Central show, as “what’s next” in 2004. That is, Stewart is likely to be a major figure in the world of politics and media in the coming year.<\/p>\n For those of us who’ve been loving the show for years, the article doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, but it does a solid job of identifying Stewart’s genius and the success of his biting political satire.<\/p>\n Sure, “Saturday Night Live” had Al Sharpton, and Jay Leno entertained John Kerry on a Harley, but “The Daily Show” has got everyone by the throat. The program won two Emmys this year — beating “Leno” and “Letterman” — and is becoming the coolest pit stop on television. And it does it the hard way. Unlike late-night talk shows that traffic in Hollywood interviews and stupid pet tricks, “The Daily Show” is a fearless social satire. Not many comedy shows would dare do five minutes on the intricacies of Medicare or a relentlessly cheeky piece on President George W. Bush’s Thanksgiving trip to Iraq (“A small group of handpicked journalists accompanied the president on his top-secret mission to tell the entire world about his top-secrecy”).<\/p>\n His cut-the-crap humor hits the target so consistently\u2014you’ve gotta love a show that calls its segments on Iraq “Mess O’Potamia”\u2014he’s starting to be taken seriously as a political force. The Democratic National Committee announced this month that it plans to invite Stewart & Co. to cover its convention, amazing since “The Daily Show” is actually a fake news program. “This guy has great insight into life,” says Wesley Clark. “A lot of people listen to him. He has tremendous influence.” All that, and the guy’s on cable. Basic cable.<\/i><\/p>\n The article also had a clever quote from Stewart on how (and why) the media’s style of pack journalism is so counter productive.<\/p>\n