When Mehdi Hasan sat down with Jon Stewart last month, the roles were reversed. This time, the Emmy-winning host of The Daily Show was the one asking the questions — about corporate media, Gaza, Do…
Zelensky was the star of a sitcom about a public school teacher who becomes president, and cleans up government corruption.
Ukraine was incredibly corrupt, filled with Russian stooges who were looting the country blind, and the people wanted Zelensky’s character as president. That character was fictional, so Zelensky was the next best thing, and it turns out that he took his job as seriously as his TV character.
There is still a long road ahead, but I believe that they can weed out the last problems. they need to get out of the soviet mentality, and that happens best with cooperation with EU.
I am not saying a celebrity couldn’t do a good job, I just want people to use their minds instead of throwing someone on a pedestal who has expressed no interest OR political capital in the system.
I don’t know Zelenski’s history but Ukraine was a massively complicated and broken situation and Zelenski was basically forced into a prominent and center-stage position by events outside his control, we’ll never know if he could have navigated the political theater without the country going into a wartime lockdown.
Im not sure how this request is relevant to the topic. No one is talking about nominating Ashton Kutcher. This is not someone who’s famous because they’re pretty or act well, he’s famous for his mind, and just happens to also be funny. So I have to believe all these comments calling him a “celebrity” are knee-jerk reactions or in bad faith.
It’s not at all bad-faith or knee-jerk, it’s the premise behind the idea that just because you see a character someone plays on television for a long time that you trust them and think them capable and a more desirable outcome. This is the same brain-rot that got us Trump and fawning over someone more towards your “side” doesn’t make the situation less rotten.
I think ANYONE would be better than Trump but if anything, that’s where the bad-faith is happening here, the notion that just because shit is so bad right now that we can start selecting any clown and further this slide into bullshit nonsense political theater. Why not youtube streamers or late night talk show hosts like Colbert? Why are those LESS appealing than John Stewart even though they ostensibly have the same exact qualifications? Why NOT Ashton Kutcher then? The arguments for someone like him are the same arguments for Stewart. They are television characters.
There’s probably no stopping it, our population has gotten too dumb to understand that recognizability does not equal best outcomes and policy power. Which Stewart has hardly any of; political capital is something Trump has tons of, and so do many less charismatic and less well-known politicians, and if you don’t know how political capital works… then yeah, your best bet is electing someone based on how much you recognize their face. Democracy is cooked. The branches of government are over.
But no one knows what any politician is really like off camera. We do know what Stewart’s record is though, and he actually has fought for at least one political matter in court and before Congress, and successfully. He is at the very least a thinker. You can’t possibly be a good comedian and not be, a legitimate debater, and he can rally a crowd. It is not the same thing as supporting your average Hollywood celebrity, because he isn’t one.
Again, Ashton Kutcher has also done many of these things. I don’t get why we are drawing a line between actor-activists when they’re all just actors and play characters on television.
So far the issue of political capital has been going over everyone’s head here. I would love to stand corrected and see someone like Stewart suddenly reveal he’s been sowing the seeds of power for years in a deliberate manner AND has the actual desire to rally specific power groups in the nation. But it’s VERY late in the game for that kind of surprise. Even Harris had more chips on the table.
This insistence that having the tepid support of moderate liberals who barely watch the news is somehow more valuable than dedicated, ideological activists is why we have Trump leading a literal warband of Orcs without opposition across the country.
Well, we’ve already had Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, arguably Al Franken (he was on SNL), not to mention the Cheeto Bandito. Clint Eastwood and even Jerry goddamned Springer both made it as far as mayor. There are probably tons of others I’m forgetting.
So that ship has likely sailed, I’m sorry to say. Too late; we’re already stupid.
Springer went the opposite direction. He was a lawyer and a politician, and after his career fizzled, he went into media. He was an actual news anchor before he got a national reputation for hosting a trashy TV show.
I would argue that most of those celebrities-turned-effective-politician (Franken was not effective long-term, he bowed out for stupid reasons) each had a lot more than face recognition, they were also snakes and scum or narcissists and I just don’t see Stewart in the crowd. He hasn’t expressed desire for politics, he has been an advocate and has been a great orator and journalist in his own way, but he is a different kind of person who wants different things, this means a distinct lack of political capital.
Jon Stewart is not a “celebrity”. It’s not like electing Jim Carrey to be president. He’s shown himself to be politically savvy and informed on policy and just generally thoughtful and intelligent many times. He seems like he’d make a good politician, and also he has a massive following already.
The “left” has absolutely failed to produce any candidate willing to fight for socialized healthcare, workers rights, anti-genocide, proper immigration, lifting up the poor, increased salaries and taxing the rich.
Stewart has been bipartisanly slinging shit at every politician doing stupid shit for years. He’s politically educated absolutely amazing at speaking.
Our political system is on rails, we are only capable of fielding corporate shills, and only in two flavors: the ones that want to kill the poor and immigrants, and the ones that just want them to almost but not quite starve.
It is quite impossible to third-party someone organically; it may not even be possible to third party someone with money and connections.
Either way, you won’t have to worry about it, they’ll dismantle enough of the vote (already underway) that it doesn’t matter what people do, we’re going to stay on these rails until a true uprising happens. And we’ll probably live to see armed atlas bots patrolling the streets mowing down ‘dissidents’. It’s only a matter of time.
Permitted, systemic destruction of our education system via exploiting the idea of “fierce independence” I guess from reality itself, over the last half century or so.
Can you stupid fucks stop worshiping celebrities for like FIVE MINUTES.
I don’t get how mindless our population is.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a standup comedian and I think he’s doing a pretty good job as president.
Zelensky was the star of a sitcom about a public school teacher who becomes president, and cleans up government corruption.
Ukraine was incredibly corrupt, filled with Russian stooges who were looting the country blind, and the people wanted Zelensky’s character as president. That character was fictional, so Zelensky was the next best thing, and it turns out that he took his job as seriously as his TV character.
There is still a long road ahead, but I believe that they can weed out the last problems. they need to get out of the soviet mentality, and that happens best with cooperation with EU.
I am not saying a celebrity couldn’t do a good job, I just want people to use their minds instead of throwing someone on a pedestal who has expressed no interest OR political capital in the system.
I don’t know Zelenski’s history but Ukraine was a massively complicated and broken situation and Zelenski was basically forced into a prominent and center-stage position by events outside his control, we’ll never know if he could have navigated the political theater without the country going into a wartime lockdown.
Im not sure how this request is relevant to the topic. No one is talking about nominating Ashton Kutcher. This is not someone who’s famous because they’re pretty or act well, he’s famous for his mind, and just happens to also be funny. So I have to believe all these comments calling him a “celebrity” are knee-jerk reactions or in bad faith.
It’s not at all bad-faith or knee-jerk, it’s the premise behind the idea that just because you see a character someone plays on television for a long time that you trust them and think them capable and a more desirable outcome. This is the same brain-rot that got us Trump and fawning over someone more towards your “side” doesn’t make the situation less rotten.
I think ANYONE would be better than Trump but if anything, that’s where the bad-faith is happening here, the notion that just because shit is so bad right now that we can start selecting any clown and further this slide into bullshit nonsense political theater. Why not youtube streamers or late night talk show hosts like Colbert? Why are those LESS appealing than John Stewart even though they ostensibly have the same exact qualifications? Why NOT Ashton Kutcher then? The arguments for someone like him are the same arguments for Stewart. They are television characters.
There’s probably no stopping it, our population has gotten too dumb to understand that recognizability does not equal best outcomes and policy power. Which Stewart has hardly any of; political capital is something Trump has tons of, and so do many less charismatic and less well-known politicians, and if you don’t know how political capital works… then yeah, your best bet is electing someone based on how much you recognize their face. Democracy is cooked. The branches of government are over.
But no one knows what any politician is really like off camera. We do know what Stewart’s record is though, and he actually has fought for at least one political matter in court and before Congress, and successfully. He is at the very least a thinker. You can’t possibly be a good comedian and not be, a legitimate debater, and he can rally a crowd. It is not the same thing as supporting your average Hollywood celebrity, because he isn’t one.
Again, Ashton Kutcher has also done many of these things. I don’t get why we are drawing a line between actor-activists when they’re all just actors and play characters on television.
So far the issue of political capital has been going over everyone’s head here. I would love to stand corrected and see someone like Stewart suddenly reveal he’s been sowing the seeds of power for years in a deliberate manner AND has the actual desire to rally specific power groups in the nation. But it’s VERY late in the game for that kind of surprise. Even Harris had more chips on the table.
This insistence that having the tepid support of moderate liberals who barely watch the news is somehow more valuable than dedicated, ideological activists is why we have Trump leading a literal warband of Orcs without opposition across the country.
Well, we’ve already had Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, arguably Al Franken (he was on SNL), not to mention the Cheeto Bandito. Clint Eastwood and even Jerry goddamned Springer both made it as far as mayor. There are probably tons of others I’m forgetting.
So that ship has likely sailed, I’m sorry to say. Too late; we’re already stupid.
Springer went the opposite direction. He was a lawyer and a politician, and after his career fizzled, he went into media. He was an actual news anchor before he got a national reputation for hosting a trashy TV show.
I would argue that most of those celebrities-turned-effective-politician (Franken was not effective long-term, he bowed out for stupid reasons) each had a lot more than face recognition, they were also snakes and scum or narcissists and I just don’t see Stewart in the crowd. He hasn’t expressed desire for politics, he has been an advocate and has been a great orator and journalist in his own way, but he is a different kind of person who wants different things, this means a distinct lack of political capital.
As a non-American, this baffles me.
Jon Stewart is not a “celebrity”. It’s not like electing Jim Carrey to be president. He’s shown himself to be politically savvy and informed on policy and just generally thoughtful and intelligent many times. He seems like he’d make a good politician, and also he has a massive following already.
The “left” has absolutely failed to produce any candidate willing to fight for socialized healthcare, workers rights, anti-genocide, proper immigration, lifting up the poor, increased salaries and taxing the rich.
Stewart has been bipartisanly slinging shit at every politician doing stupid shit for years. He’s politically educated absolutely amazing at speaking.
Our political system is on rails, we are only capable of fielding corporate shills, and only in two flavors: the ones that want to kill the poor and immigrants, and the ones that just want them to almost but not quite starve.
It is quite impossible to third-party someone organically; it may not even be possible to third party someone with money and connections.
Either way, you won’t have to worry about it, they’ll dismantle enough of the vote (already underway) that it doesn’t matter what people do, we’re going to stay on these rails until a true uprising happens. And we’ll probably live to see armed atlas bots patrolling the streets mowing down ‘dissidents’. It’s only a matter of time.
Permitted, systemic destruction of our education system via exploiting the idea of “fierce independence” I guess from reality itself, over the last half century or so.
Fierce independence and rugged individualism…just like everybody else!