The Power of Funny: Is Jon Stewart a Public Servant?

Sometimes it's more obvious than others -- Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are media watchdogs. And I guess that statement is self-evident. They make fun of every misstep of the major news networks on a nightly basis. But I think it's important not to confuse a flame-stoking satirist with someone who's willing to light the match. When Colbert and Stewart make fun of the oversights of mass media, they're wielding an enormous power, rarely better evidenced than last night's interview with Jim Cramer from CNBC's Mad Money. Cramer was finally sent on this public pillorying by his executives, and faced -- no surprise here -- an arsenal of incriminating clips. Stewart spoke from the perspective of "We, the people," demanding more ethical behavior of those who invest Our retirement funds and control Our knowledge of and confidence in a very convoluted economic system. 

Cramer's point is taken -- it's an extremely nebulous system on which to report, and, while they wish they were the first to catch Bernie Madoff, they can't win 'em all. But, after repeated sound-bite bludgeoning, Stewart exposed Cramer's repeated and blatant disingenuousness, and -- here's the real kicker -- in the process, was able to extort a very public promise: Cramer vowed, going forward, to do a better job and always try harder.

Check. Balance.

Here it is, Ladies and Gentlemen, your moment of Zen:

So maybe would could remove the financial expert and the "In Cramer We Trust" and start getting back to fundamentals on the reporting as well, and I can go back to making fart noises and funny faces.

You take the low road, and I'll be the highway...

At neither head nor toe do I definitively end. It’s almost as though I blur to the suggestibility of continuation. Open ended and empty-minded, I dangle with the unfinished bits of meat like a fishing pole, not fully wound, seaweed-strewn sinker and worm-stained hook wrapped around the last rung.

I am not enclosed by windy political borders, but I do meander along rivers’ bank lines. I am as calm as I am clamorous. I have been known to, and often do, merge with those, who at some distance may seem to serve a very different purpose. Once adjoined, however, we carve a path that honorably averages our interests. I’m easy to go along with…

At times, I can be slow and sauntering, splitting for a little perspective, sprinkled with colorful viewpoints and points of view. A minute later, I may succumb to the flow of traffic. I’ve even been know to speed.

The heights and sights of hawks are mine, perched on cypress cliff tops, softly foaming seas of life seen below. But I can bubble with the magnified resolution only a rodent sees.

Many have died paving my way; I do not forget what I am made of. So I change, constantly, almost with random fervor, glazing the memory of them in my rubble.

I am a lot of things all at once, but that’s just me…

Yours,
The Pacific Coast Highway

On Sharing

The company of voices, the panel of personable banter, the quorum of congenial discourse: what else can turn a mind’s faucet into an outpour of Pavlovian drool?

Catharsis of an Itchy Hemorrhoid

DIAGNOSIS
Since the day my wallet found itself into my back pocket, I have not sat very straight. The intrusion of the wallet has introduced upon my world a slanted line-of-sight, not of crossed- eyes but perhaps of a cross rear…

SYMPTOMS
A warm, radiating discomfort in the posterior rippled by an indefatigable attention paid in poop-etuity.

But, what seems to be lost on me, or rather what I lost myself to is that I’m perpetually paying—paying mind until the empty wallet bulges crooked and swollen.

PROGNOSIS
Without properly attending to it, my attention may give me hemorrhoids from pushing too hard.

TREATMENT
Maybe it’ll take a dump to return to even-keel…

On Writing

Sure, “actions [may] speak louder than words”, and “a picture [may well be] worth a thousand words”. But then why, still, do words persist, moving with neither strain nor shutter? Why have they become not dogged but boisterous, not captured but captivating?

One word, champion of all word-ly causes: IMAGINATION.

Ripe with the fruits of underbrush and undertone, of connotation which molds to each individual palate, words can exceed the grasp of shallow splashes and frozen-frames. Simultaneously, a string of words can take hundreds of different journeys in hundreds of different minds.

They congeal from nondescript parts and embody ideas of unknown origin, endowing upon man and its mind an eternal landscape and an infinite tabula rasa. Literate, man assumes the power of Zeus, able to birth from his forehead many “novel” existences.

So the keepers and defenders of words, may we never allow words to become shadowed in the might of more visually attuned communication. Let us pen a world where words can come to life. Otherwise, we may find ourselves in the climate of which Ray Bradbury warned us—one where temperatures climb to Fahrenheit 451, and words are incinerated. For with their departure the colors of our imagination too char into monochromatic monotony.