I read books on my tablet while I walk my dog in the morning. He’s old, a slow walker, likes to sniff thoroughly, and will often take a rest in other people’s yards. I wasn’t far in to the oral history of The Daily Show when, for a changed, I was the one who had to stop. I stopped to laugh. It probably wasn’t the laugh they were expecting, but that’s life in Trump’s America. Various writers, producers and correspondents were reminiscing about how the 2000 […]
“If your world does not include enough access to different people, and their world does not include enough access to you, you are speaking from ignorance.”
I am a huge fan of oral histories, whether discussions of television shows or movies. And I watched The Daily Show religiously until Jon Stewart took his sabbatical a few years ago. So this book was definitely right up my alley. Thank you whoever reviewed it recently and recommended it to me! “The outlandish 2000 election and Bush’s victory had come along at the perfect time, helping Stewart, the correspondents, and the writers sharpen The Daily Show’s tone of bemused mockery. The next world-changing events […]
Your Moment of Zen
I have watched The Daily Show from the beginning and only recently gave up on it. I loved it more some years than others and then gradually lost interest and stopped. That is also how my reading of this book went. I gave up with a few dozen pages left because the drain Jon Stewart was feeling really drains the fun from the last part of this book. But if you love the show and all the contributors than this is an interesting retelling of […]
Moments of Zen
This oral history of the Jon Stewart years of The Daily Show is a mostly-entertaining look behind the scenes of the influential show. It is also a backdoor history of the last 17 or so years. Seriously, if you’re too young to really remember the Bush v. Gore election or the invasion of Iraq, you could learn a bit from reading this book. As an oral history, one of the more impressive attributes of the book is the many luminaries they got to speak. Senator […]