At this point I can’t think of many other people who have been speaking to our generation for 30 years.
I didn’t expect him to come back and save the daily show and I was right.
Judge however you like:
Overrated or underrated
Funny or not funny
Right or wrong or both
https://www.instagram.com/p/DKFJx0YtGC2 ... x5NmVqNzR1

NC, kinda

Probably a lifetime NC pass but I wish he'd quit harping on bureaucracy and fellating fools like Ezra Klein.

penningtron wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 6:03 am Probably a lifetime NC pass but I wish he'd quit harping on bureaucracy and fellating fools like Ezra Klein.

This.

Overall he's been a positive force in the culture. Yes, he's very much the uber-liberal, but he does get the importance of labor and is not an economic Neo-liberal. But he does talk with a lot of those exact people, like Klein and Obama.

I didn't watch the Daily Show much back in his day, so I can't speak for that. He is notably old-school in his view of his own role as entertainer/influencer - notably because it is rare, but in a way I appreciate. Although I felt he was doing cop-outs with his "I'm just a comedian, don't take me as making serious political statements" thing, I understand why he did that, because he was very concerned with the entertainmentification if news media and hoped to maintain in the viewer's mind the distance between those two, as when he stressed that people shouldn't use the Daily Show as a news source, or when he dug into those guys at Crossfire.

Overall, good guy, not crap.

He took a lot of heat from mainstream dems for calling Biden too old to run in the lead up to the 2024 election. We know how that turned out.

I have found his (and funny enough Klein's) take on how the more progressive wing of our government's efforts are undermined by regulation and red tape to be spot on. I listen to some of his podcast episodes and as much as I can't stand to hear him repeat verbage on how left wing candidates need to show how the government's work can be more "agile", or how we have an "analog system in a digital world", he's right.

The dude has discovered many times the width of his lane with failed motion picture directing and the retrospectively embarrassing "rally to restore sanity" but at least he is humble enough to call out his own failures. His lobbying congress to pass legislation for both 9/11 first responders and veterans who have become terribly ill from air born toxins has been noble work.

You might call him a centrist, but our whole political center would be better aligned if it placed his values in the middle instead of some asshole like Bill Maher's.

losthighway wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 7:53 am I have found his (and funny enough Klein's) take on how the more progressive wing of our government's efforts are undermined by regulation and red tape to be spot on. I listen to some of his podcast episodes and as much as I can't stand to hear him repeat verbage on how left wing candidates need to show how the government's work can be more "agile", or how we have an "analog system in a digital world", he's right.

Disagree. What is really grinding green infrastructure projects to a halt, "red tape" or heavy industry lobbying? This is a pretty good point-by-point takedown of Abundance. Also, I've worked for several private companies with garbage tech so it's not a unique thing to the public sector.

So it sucks when Stewart is woo'ing along to these ideas backed by big tech creeps. But credit for woo'ing along with Bernie and AOC sometimes as well I guess.

penningtron wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 8:18 am

losthighway wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 7:53 am I have found his (and funny enough Klein's) take on how the more progressive wing of our government's efforts are undermined by regulation and red tape to be spot on. I listen to some of his podcast episodes and as much as I can't stand to hear him repeat verbage on how left wing candidates need to show how the government's work can be more "agile", or how we have an "analog system in a digital world", he's right.

Disagree. What is really grinding green infrastructure projects to a halt, "red tape" or heavy industry lobbying? This is a pretty good point-by-point takedown of Abundance. Also, I've worked for several private companies with garbage tech so it's not a unique thing to the public sector.

Ooh nice. I was actually getting ready to read Abundance so it will be useful to set these next to each other. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those "let the private sector do it all cause the government is dumb" sorts. I was more taken by the idea that good public projects get hampered by unrelated legislative add-ons on the front end and unnecessarily time-consuming regulations during implementation.

The abundance movement is a heavily financed effort to fend off the current continued ascendency of the "Bernie wing" of the Democratic party.

See for example:

https://www.niskanencenter.org/policy/a ... -dynamism/

These are rebranded neoliberals who are opposed to redistribution.

The abundance movement is rebranded neoliberalism, I agree. It argues for tweaking the system. It'll fail for Democrats embracing it. If they haven't figured out that the system isn't working and people want to burn it down by now, they'll be wandering around in the wild unelectable for awhile.

Even some establishment types like David Axlerod and Bill Kristrol of all people are starting to say that Bernie was right.