Jon Stewart put bloggers on notice last week, and he fell back on one of his favorite techniques: clips that speak for themselves followed by wide-eyed surprise. The segment pulls from the massive pool of sensational blog headlines that mistake benign political jabs for IMDb summaries of Judge Dredd or Demolition Man or any other hyper-violent Sly Stallone movie about justice...like First Blood or Tango and Cash...
...or the Expendibles or Spy Kids 3D...
...or Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot...
Here's the clip:
Sly Stallone has basically taken the helm of the lean, mean, eviscerating media machine, and it will melt your face even if you’re careful, apparently...
[There's More...]
Still, having grown up on the mean streets of the Middle East Coast, any display of surprise would seem intellectually dishonest. Colorful language has been used to flavor the mundane for years, and favorites like "he got stabbed with an ice pick" to describe a pick-up game of knock out, or "he gave everyone open-heart surgery with a wooden spoon," to describe a prolonged expression of disappointment, don’t do much to encourage subtlety in children. If you don’t believe me, sit next to your nephew the next time he plays Call of Duty and count the number of times you hear the word "rape."
You could certainly charge Stewart with the same crime, but of course, he’s a comedy show that appears on the network that produced Mind of Mencia (his favorite excuse). "Cluster**** to the Poor House," is a pretty extreme visual, but it doesn’t make me want to throw up in my hand, because when it comes to comedy, exaggeration is the bread and butter. Stewart is right in questioning the common usage of his techniques in news reports, even though blogs usually claim to have the same creative license he has. I can understand anyone who criticizes Stewart’s double standard, but I can also feel his pain. In today’s market of ambush-the-audience television and digg.com headline rankings, it’s getting harder to find people willing to take the high ground. If blogs aren’t newspapers—but they are replacing newspapers—who can pick up the mantle and describe events without channeling Rambo?
It certainly won’t be Stewart or Arianna Huffington, but I can’t really blame them. It’s tough to have integrity when everyone is trying to rip, bury, and disembowel you in the ratings game.