Stewart has with a small team of gag writers written "America: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction." It is a satire, a pasquinade, a hoot at the American polity, a bemanuring of the High and Mighty. Stewart is extremely learned, knowing every nook and cranny of pop culture and most of the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum of Brown University. He is the talk show equivalent of the television football commentator who knows "the stats" on every ballplayer in the NFL and can throw in a heart-warming anecdote on each, even the convicted felons.
That is why it is so risky for the J. Gordon Coogler Award Committee to give its Worst Book of the Year award to Stewart. He is almost a Holy Person to the idolizers of pop culture. Like Michael Kinsley, He Makes You Laugh, which raises the question of why Kinsley did not get a television show on Comedy Central.
Here are some of Stewart's incomparable laughquakes from America.
Though Ronald Reagan (1980-1989) was not considered Kennedyesque, many historians believe he was among our most Reaganesque commanders-in-chief. -- page 38.
The name of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) became synonymous with an era, not unlike his colleague Rep. Pleistocene (D-MN). -- page 61.
The one area Kerry was decidedly unKennedyesque was with the ladies. He lost his virginity his senior year only after an intense lobbying and letter-writing campaign aimed at persuading the school slut to 'grant him franking privileges' -- page 5.
Oh, and there is another made-for-television joke on page 192 about the lone protestor at Tiananmen Square suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. What did I tell you about Stewart's feces detector?
Now, admittedly, Stewart is also a bit of an idealist. Students of media will for many years marvel at his appearance on the moribund CNN show "Crossfire," where in the guise of a 21st century muckraker he accused an astonished Paul Begala and his sidekick Tucker Carlson of "hurting America." "Stop, stop, stop, stop, hurting America," this later-day Ida Tarbell implored.
And what was it that the two talking heads were guilty of? They were "helping the politicians and the corporations." What Stewart has against the corporations or, for that matter, the politicians was never made clear, but he did seem to be very irate about the superficiality of "Crossfire," where the so-called liberal Begala has been pitted against Carlson, the Mini-Con.
Now he has this infantile book as his intellectual legacy. Alas, it has made him the Coogler Laureate for 2004. If you really think he is any more sophisticated than these other creatures of televisionland, Begala and Carlson, read the book. It will not take long. It is mostly pictures.