Jon Stewart really was good a political satire. Of this we can all be quite certain of. That he ended up being burned out by going over and over the same bull shit year after year has already been commented on, but we are still missing an important point here.
His pointed commentary, brilliant though it may have been, did nothing but play into the whole "government as entertainment" farce that it has firmly established itself as in the last twenty years or so now. All of us dear reader have been the rubes only too gleefully willing to occupy ourselves in playing along with the carny atmosphere, and the more freakish it gets the better. How else can one describe a process where simple buffoonery has given way to angry mutants who spout unbelievably absurd notions.
Even more absurd, however, is this insane re-examination of how we're going to go about fixing what is simply a symptom of a much larger, broken system. A system that for a few isn't viewed as broken at all. One that has, rather, been seen by these few, as the placement of government into the realm of entertainment, not only as a practical matter of good management, but as a real profit center in its own right.
The only way things are going to change is by the rest of us realizing that we have to occupy ourselves far differently than we are now. An occupation for, and of, the rest of us, so that this market, production, and consumption monster grinds to a halt. Something that will be hard, painful, and requiring of sacrifice; of which being passively entertained will be the first.
Stewart Rips ‘Bullshitocracy’ in Finale
The Night the Republican Debate Turned Into the WWE
How do we fix the Presidential debates
Additional:
Roddy Piper-- We'll miss you dude, as will we miss the way only you could have done "They Live!"
America is a neoliberal horror movie: Why “They Live” is the perfect film for our depraved times
Additional 2:
The Mind and Speech of the truly Marketized
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