A scant four years ago, the gossipy fuckheads that even The New York Times now allows to be denigrated as (capitalized) Very Serious People in print had it in their heads that Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton were the heavy favorites for their respective presidential nominations. Clinton especially was perceived and presented as a mortal lock, so much so that, long before a single caucus or primary, purportedly serious political observers were speculating (like they do) that she was already looking beyond the primary and focusing on the general election.
Unsurprisingly, that isn’t something that’s oft remembered on the caterwauling cable shows or the childishly reactionary politics sections of the Times or Kaplan Test Prep Daily. At the insular lunch table of the cool kids, there’s no benefit to remembering how wrong they were about the last prom queen. Of course, they tend to be wrong about a lot of things, and it’s not entirely their fault. The world, even the one inside I-495 that they revere so completely, is passing them by.
In 2004, they didn’t understand the enormous, albeit ultimately insufficient, internet love of Howard Dean. In 2008 they kept talking about Hillary Clinton long after she was mathematically doomed. For 2012, they’ve been jumping from one improbable Red nominee to another, depending on which particular unelectable doofus “won” the latest ephemeral media cycle. In each case, the political-media apparatus that has comfortably run Washington conversation for two generations has humiliated itself as surely as a middle aged boxer coming out of retirement. The stomach is flabby and the old moves don’t work anymore; even the lingo betrays antiquated and unbridgeable arrogance.
It is with that in mind that one must consider the recent activities of the co-monarchs of political humor, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Last week, Stewart took a harsher than usual whack at FOX News and got himself invited to a “you-do-me-I’ll-do-you” with Bill O’Reilly. Meanwhile, Colbert whipped and humiliated the Federal Election Commission without allowing them to even name, much less say, a safety word. Both of them, as well as their respective writing and production staffs, are far more perceptive than the hopelessly fussy doyens who inhabit the cable and Sunday morning salons. But in their actions we can see Stewart playing the old game and Colbert playing the new.
Stewart went on O’Reilly’s program to have one of those typically meaningless exchanges of talking points upon which the old machine places so much stock. Colbert, on the other hand, filed a real petition with real government officials and made real reporters ask him real questions about his nakedly transparent stunt. For all his many talents, and for all his years of justly and hilariously mocking the old media machine, Stewart is still a part of it. By virtue of the character “Stephen Colbert”, the real Colbert can take things further.
Whether or not the FEC is stupid enough (and let’s hope they are) to grant Colbert his “media exemption”, he’s going to continue his superficially perfect imitation of the dark media-political chimeras that roam our landscape. The shadowy groups funded by laundered money that pay for Tea Party gatherings and ethicless television commercials are the real frontier of American politics. Gab shows that have to shovel the horseshit off set at each commercial break are yesterday’s news, watched by an ever more geriatric audience.
When Colbert shouts to a crowd of liberal young people “God bless Citizens United!”, he’s only half kidding. He and his people are the only outfit, nationwide, that’s showing what it really means to turn money into speech. That’s where American politics are headed, and it has almost nothing to do with professionally cantankerous cable hosts who are only watched by people old enough to remember the Eisenhower Administration.
