Further to my recent posting about The Daily Show arriving in the UK, I just got off AIM with a widely-travelled American friend who took me slightly to task:

(Notes in [brackets], mildly edited for clarity/grammar/speeling)

Him: I think you’re missing something about “The Daily Show“

Me: Hmm?

Him: It’s hard to explain… It has educated a large segment of the US electorate. There are alot of relatively conservative people out there whose views are being successfully challenged. See [www.peacemagazine.org] [For an analysis – AM]

Me: It sounds more and more like there is a dearth of critical news in the USA

Him: Absolutely – but that’s what people *want*. Jon Stewart has an educated audience who is willing to think critically, even if they don’t really agree with him.

Me: Teaching people to think differently?

Him: Yes, I think so. So there is a *LOT* more going on here than jokes and interviews.

Me: That’s hard to conceive in the UK; we’d assume it condescending to think so, or say so. [We’d expect to be attacked for saying so – AM]

Him: You will have to watch it for awhile. I really believe it’s had quite an impact on alot of people.

Me: There are aspects of this which I left out of the blog for fear of the article being merely dismissed as anti-American. The UK comedy scene – and the news coverage – shifted [irreverently] with That Was The Week That Was back in the early 60s; it boomed under the influence of David Frost [who moved into straight news – AM] and Peter Cook and the rest of the troupe. In the late 70s it picked up again with “Not the 9 O’Clock News” which launched Rowan Atkinson amongst others. Also with stuff like Spitting Image on ITV in the early 80s – and we’ve been slaughtering politicians ever since.

Him: You guys are better at it than we are

Me: …but to suggest that you guys are 40 years behind us would be argumentative suicide; it’d be like saying you still subsist on Andy-Griffith-era television

Him: We have a big/angry/dumb majority that don’t like to hear different opinions

Me: The ironic thing is that for most of the 90s, in the UK it was the US comedies like Frasier which were being trumpeted as much better than ours. They – Frasier, Friends, etc – certainly can be funny on occasion, but are aimed slightly differently than satire; however British satire did take something of a [funding and social acceptance] hit, as a result.

Him: Did you read the responses to that article by Rick Steves?

Me: I have not read that yet – I’ve been keeping the URL in reserve for some thinkage before posting about it.

Him: Interesting collection of responses

Me: “Could it be that at heart you are a money-grubbing capitalist who bites the hand that feeds it?” – oh dear…

…and so forth.

There are bits I am still not going to paste here, because they’d fry some readers’ brains regarding the misappropriation of the word “Liberal” as a derogatory term in the USA, comparing it with other similarly blackening epithets.

I recommend reading the article and followup – I had not heard of the chap before, but from the website:

[www.ricksteves.com]

Rick Steves advocates smart independent travel. As host, writer and producer of the popular public television series Rick Steves’ Europe, and best-selling author of 30 European travel books, he encourages Americans to delve deep into Europe and become “temporary locals.” His readers and viewers not only discover major cities, but also cozy villages away from tourist-trampled routes. He helps American travelers connect much more intimately and authentically with Europe – and Europeans – for a fraction of what mainstream tourists pay.

…and I don’t agree with all of the somewhat rosy picture of Europe that he paints in his articles – when visiting Norway this year for instance, I found natives who would happily have paid lower taxes, or seen their money plowed into better local infrastructure for that large and spartan country, than have the largesse given away to foreigners as debt relief and/or aid – but there is certainly something in what the man writes.

Incidentally: in compiling across the above posting, I found [www.museum.tv] as an alternative source of information about the programmes I cite; although the BBC descriptions of the programmes are descriptive, the former puts them into sharper context via citation:

[www.museum.tv]

The premiere of Spitting Image opened with a puppet caricature of Israel’s prime minister Menachem Begin wearing a magician’s outfit. With a flourish, he produced a dove of peace from his top hat, then announced, “For my first trick…” — and wrung its neck.

…some of which still resonate.