2022.04.21琼-斯特瓦特怎么了？

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CULTURE
WHAT HAPPENED TO JON STEWART?
He is comedy royalty. But the world has changed since he was at the height of his powers.

By Devin Gordon
A black-and-white collaged portrait of Jon Stewart using fractured pieces of his face.
Illustration by Matthieu Bourel; Image by Norman Jean Roy / Comedy Central
APRIL 21, 2022, 8 AM ET
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In march 2021, shortly after Jon Stewart joined Twitter, he tapped the microphone and used his new pulpit to make amends for an infamous act of aggression from his distant past.

“I called Tucker Carlson a dick on National television,” Stewart tweeted. “It’s high time I apologize…to dicks. Never should have lumped you in with that terrible terrible person.”


Stewart originally fired this shot 17 years ago, on October 15, 2004, but if you’re old enough, you surely remember what happened, in part because it was one of the first truly viral political videos of this century. Stewart was a guest on Tucker Carlson’s cacophonous CNN political-argument show, Crossfire, a half-hour nightly migraine of debate-club doublespeak, during which Stewart pleaded with Carlson to “stop hurting America.” “Wait, I thought you were gonna be funny,” Tucker sniffed. “No,” Stewart shot back, “I’m not gonna be your monkey.” Soon enough he was calling Tucker a dick on national television. “You’re as big a dick on your show,” he said, “as you are on any show.”

Tucker Carlson was actually the co-host of Crossfire, along with his left-leaning Clinton-era frenemy Paul Begala, but nobody remembers Begala, and why should they? The whole thing went down in history as Jon Stewart versus Tucker Carlson, with Stewart the champion by first-round knockout. Within months, CNN canceled Crossfire, hurtling Stewart into a position of political influence and superstardom that few comics in America have ever reached. Two weeks after Stewart humiliated Tucker on his own show, President George W. Bush won a narrow reelection over Senator John Kerry, and it would be no overstatement to say that, in the pre-Obama years that followed, the leader of Democratic resistance was Jon Stewart, and he was holding rallies weeknights at 11 p.m Eastern on Comedy Central.

The Bush years, starring Karl Rove, the Machiavelli of direct mail, and Dick Cheney, the wizard behind the curtain, seem almost quaint now, as does the kind of president who would affectionately nickname his top adviser “Turd Blossom.” During his post-presidency, Bush has largely occupied himself with oil painting, not plotting coups. Back then Cheney was as menacing a villain as Democrats could imagine; now his daughter is one of the last Republican bulwarks against Trumpism. Whenever Bush spoke, Democrats pictured Will Ferrell. A genial alpha-blunderer. This was the dawn of social media, and the twilight of a certain era in television. This was Stewart’s golden age. Nothing that followed has come close.

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After Barack Obama got elected president, and then reelected, Jon Stewart versus Tucker Carlson on Crossfire had been etched, for the politically obsessed, into the cultural imagination as a moment of triumph against the poison of cable-TV punditry and the culpability of those who partake of it—a live-audience broadcast of history’s arc bending toward justice. So much so that when Stewart stepped aside from The Daily Show for good on August 6, 2015, less than two months after Donald Trump kicked off his candidacy by describing Mexicans as “rapists” and “drug dealers,” his departure seemed a logical bookend. America was in safe-ish hands. The adults were back in charge, and had been for some time. Trump’s candidacy was so cartoonish, it seemed like something cooked up by The Daily Show. Jon Stewart had won.

An honest accounting of how America swerved so unexpectedly requires skipping back in time to that 2004 episode of Crossfire. Was it really a moment of triumph for Jon Stewart? Or was it actually a turning point for the other side? Perhaps what people thought they were watching—Tucker, self-immolating—was in fact the origin story of Tucker Carlson 2.0, the one who’s currently hurting America with a nimbler and far more ruthless brand of demagoguery than he was peddling two decades ago. Humiliation is a powerful motivator. In the same way that Obama’s roasting of Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner supposedly drove Trump to run for president out of spite, Stewart’s prime-time dismantling of Carlson seemed to have unleashed something in the bow-tied menace. He looked like he felt betrayed by the way Stewart revealed the kayfabe with everyone watching. Didn’t he understand that this was all just theater? How dare he pretend he wasn’t playing the same game?

Read: Tucker Carlson’s manufactured America

Before Crossfire, remember, Carlson pulled off a reasonable portrayal of a serious journalist. In 1999 he wrote a piercing profile of then–Texas Governor George W. Bush for the premiere issue of Tina Brown’s Talk magazine, in which Carlson flinched in horror after Bush casually mocked a Texas woman on death row who was begging him for clemency. Post-Crossfire, though, Tucker went all in on his nativist act. He turned hating Jon Stewart and everything he represents into a right-wing brand so powerful that even Rupert Murdoch balks at reining him in. For the past six years, during one of the most torturous periods in recent American memory, Stewart was taking his victory laps and frittering away a cushy HBO deal while Carlson devoted himself to polishing his act, live on prime-time television, five days a week, for an audience far bigger than Stewart’s Daily Show ever drew.

The grand return that Stewart finally launched last fall, The Problem With Jon Stewart, streaming on Apple TV+, is hosted by a guy who took a six-year break from television, and boy, does it show. According to the industry-measurement firm Samba TV, the fifth episode of The Problem With Jon Stewart has been streamed just 40,000 times, which is down 78 percent from the pilot, which aired on September 30, 2021. By comparison, HBO’s episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver that same week drew more than 800,000 viewers.

Stewart’s specific genius on The Daily Show was layering facts and complexity into jokes, and stitching punch lines together into George Carlin–esque political riffs. When Stewart was at the peak of his powers, no one could pack more ideas into 22 minutes of comedy. But something has turned. Now he’s the one who seems overwhelmed by complexity and prone to oversimplification. He’s the one who gets called out for fumbling facts, for missing the point, for being out of touch. It’s not just that Tucker Carlson has struck back with a Stewart-proof breed of sophistry. It’s not just that topical comedy doesn’t work as well as it used to. The problem with The Problem With Jon Stewart is Jon Stewart himself.

Stewart’s very first brand-name guest on his very first talk show—The Jon Stewart Show on MTV, which premiered nearly 30 years ago on October 25, 1993—was the self-anointed “King of All Media” himself, Howard Stern. Stern, one of Stewart’s comedy mentors, was on hand to promote his new memoir, Private Parts, soon to be a major motion picture also starring Howard Stern. And before he even settled into the couch, before Stewart could get a word in, Stern told him that The Jon Stewart Show was going to get canceled, soon, and that it would take Stewart’s career down with it.

“I’m nervous about this show, I really am,” Stern said, commandeering the interview. “I wanna get the message out about my book before the show is canceled.” Then he addressed the audience—Stewart’s audience. “Does anybody know who Jon is and why I’m talking to him?” This sort of thing is how comics show affection, but Stern also meant every word. “I was offered a talk show on MTV, I’ll be honest with you,” he said, humblebragging before there was a term for it. “And I turned it down, and I’ll tell you why—they ruin people’s careers.”

“Well, Howard,” Stewart said, finally getting in a line. “I didn’t have a career.”

Rewatching the first few episodes, what stands out, besides Stewart’s palpable terror and comically ill-fitting wardrobe, is a budding comedy icon searching for his subject. He had the nebbishy charm of Woody Allen, minus the undercurrent of sexual predation. He was friendly, media savvy (for 1993), and safe around your teenagers. Perfect for MTV. The giants of late-night television—Carson, Letterman, Leno—didn’t come from this world. They weren’t outsiders. For Stewart’s amassing cult audience, his outsiderness was the basis of the appeal. What was this dork even doing here? The optics were subterranean, a secret late-night show operating out of the basement of a late-night show, with a ripped Blues Traveler poster by the stairs and a thumb-hockey board for a coffee table.

Two torn pieces of a young and older Jon Stewart creating a singular portrait of him.
Illustration by Matthieu Bourel; Images by Peter Kramer / Getty; Action Press
Stewart had found his place in the celebrity caste system: the smart aleck, uncool but cool-adjacent, thanks in part to a slate of legitimately hip musical guests, including Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Bad Religion. Stewart’s vibe may have been Woody Allen, but his comic hero was Carlin—the idol-smasher, the conscience of comedy, the impatient gives-no-fucks philosopher-king who took on the government, greedy corporations, and Andrew Dice Clay for telling sexist, homophobic jokes, for punching down.

George Carlin was where Jon Stewart was headed, but he couldn’t be that guy on MTV. He had to get canceled first.

Stern was right, of course, about all of it.

The Jon Stewart Show did get canceled, in less than two years, and it did ruin his career, at least for a little while. He got passed over for hosting jobs. He made the stoner comedy Half Baked with his stand-up pal Dave Chappelle. He got stabbed in the eye by Josh Hartnett in The Faculty. He got miscast in the ensemble love story Playing by Heart as someone who could ever, in his wildest dreams, kiss Gillian Anderson. He had a recurring role on The Larry Sanders Show, Garry Shandling’s brilliant, early-HBO late-night satire, as “Jon Stewart,” Larry’s understudy. For a brief minute, according to an account by the comedian and director Judd Apatow that appears in Chris Smith’s The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History, Shandling flirted with turning The Larry Sanders Show over to Stewart, but nothing came of it.

Then, in 1998, the executive who’d hired Stewart at MTV, Doug Herzog, called him about a job opening at a nascent cable network called Comedy Central. Craig Kilborn, the fratty cocksure original host of The Daily Show, had gotten his big call-up from CBS to host the late-night slot following David Letterman’s, which was one of two jobs Stewart didn’t get. (The other was replacing Letterman on NBC. That went to Conan O’Brien.) Stewart was interested in the Daily Show gig, Smith reports in his book, but only if he could strip Kilborn’s version, which was funny but often mean-spirited, down to the studs.

You know the rest.

And now, on April 24 at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, D.C., Stewart will receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which, aside from a series order on HBO, is arguably comedy’s highest honor. In career terms, it is the opposite of getting canceled. It’s canonization. He will be the Twain Prize’s 23rd recipient, joining a list of luminaries that includes Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Tina Fey, his beloved Carlin, and his buddy Chappelle, and that no longer includes Bill Cosby, whose honor was rescinded in 2018. “I am truly honored to receive this award,” Stewart said in response to the announcement. “I have long admired and been influenced by the work of Mark Twain, or, as he was known by his given name, Samuel Leibowitz.” (Leibowitz is Stewart’s birth name. It’s a Jewish joke and a nepotism joke. I requested an interview with Stewart for this story but he declined.)

The Twain Prize is a classic double-edged sword. The list of winners is short, and the names—to put it in comedy terms—really kill. As Joe Biden might say, it’s a big fucking deal. (You know who doesn’t have a Twain Prize? Howard Stern. Unless he turned that down too.) It also means that your best work is behind you, and soon you’ll need spectacles to see it. No one has ever followed up a Twain Prize with their masterpiece, and Jon Stewart will not be the first. On this count, Twain Prize winners are no Mark Twain. Stewart spent the first three decades of his career expecting failure, assuming that tomorrow would be the day it’d all come crashing down, and instead somehow he managed to go out on top, on his own terms. No wonder he’s seemed lost ever since.

Stewart departed The Daily Show in 2015 after a 16-year run that stretched across three presidencies; the hanging-chad election of 2000; 9/11; the Iraq War; Hurricane Katrina; the election and reelection of Obama; the Great Recession; the awesome stupidness of the Tea Party; the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and the rise of Donald Trump, or at least his descent down that escalator when he announced his candidacy for president. He was already inching away from the show that made him a superstar by 2013, though, when he took a break to write and direct a movie called Rosewater, a thoughtful indie drama based on the true story of an Iranian-Canadian Newsweek reporter who was arrested and held captive for months in 2009 by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Considering it was made by the host of a late-night show, Rosewater turned out admirably well, but it didn’t herald the arrival of a fresh auteur. Also, no one went to see it. John Oliver filled in for Stewart during his sabbatical from The Daily Show, and it was hard not to notice how much more spry Oliver seemed behind his boss’s desk.

Once Trump arrived, Stewart all but vanished. He signed a four-year production deal with HBO that ended in 2020 and produced literally nothing—four years, nothing. There was an animated-shorts series that never happened. A new stand-up special was announced, then never spoken of again. He tried making another movie, a political comedy he wrote and directed called Irresistible, starring the Daily Show alum Steve Carell and Bridesmaids’ Rose Byrne, about two rival campaign strategists locking horns over a small-town mayor’s race, but the finished product feels like the work of someone who realized it was hopeless in the editing room, and maybe even while he was shooting it.

Stewart was entering the lifetime-achievement phase of his career, in other words, and maybe we shouldn’t roll our eyes so easily at only being the voice of one generation. It’s easy to forget now, but there was an inflection point when Comedy Central could’ve easily been the palace of Craig Kilborn and Tosh.0. Stewart dragged The Daily Show—against its will, according to Smith’s oral history—in the opposite direction, and he wound up giving Comedy Central its core identity, not to mention a rack of Emmys, including a remarkable 10 straight for Outstanding Variety Series from 2003 to 2012. Without Stewart’s Daily Show, there’s no Colbert Report, no Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, no Daily Show With Trevor Noah. But maybe no Tucker Carlson Tonight, either.

Stewart could’ve pulled a Jay Leno and hung onto The Daily Show forever. Instead he had the uncommon grace to see the end coming, and to get out before he’d overstayed his welcome. In his heyday, having a “senior Black correspondent” made for biting satire. By the end of his run, it was time for a Black host. His trademark self-deprecation had drifted too far from the reality of his station in life. The richer you get, the more famous you get, the harder it is to be the avatar of populism. His protestations that he had no real power, that he wasn’t part of the establishment, or the mainstream media, stopped ringing true. And for good reason. It’s hard to punch up from the stage of the Kennedy Center.

Maybe that’s what explains his second-act squishiness. After four lost years at HBO, Stewart signed a new deal in 2020 with Apple TV+ and swiftly announced plans to get back to his roots: telling jokes about current events. His new series, The Problem With Jon Stewart, would strike back against what Stewart has described as the arson economy of social media with some room-temperature nuanced conversation. It sounded a lot like The Daily Show, only longer and less funny, and instead of four episodes a week, Stewart was going to deliver just eight episodes per season. Each episode would follow a three-act format: opening monologue, expert roundtable, sit-down interview with someone powerful—the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Veteran Affairs secretary, the CEO of Shell. If The Daily Show was a parody of a nightly news show, though, The Problem often feels like a defanged Real Time With Bill Maher.

Stewart seemed to be retreating into safe territory, but so what? We can’t all be Bo Burnham, Svengali-ing stand-up specials for other comics, or an Oscar winner like Jordan Peele, or a movie star like Steve Carell, or a sitcom legend like Tina Fey. George Carlin had one short-lived TV show (The George Carlin Show, which lasted 18 months on Fox in the mid-1990s), never directed a movie, never did much more than play himself in movies, and no one thinks his career is incomplete. He was one of the voices of his generation too, and that was plenty.

But he also never phoned it in, not onstage anyway. The Problem With Jon Stewart is a strikingly unambitious, defiantly untimely show that confuses thrift with substance, as though spending money on anything but office furniture is a sign of intellectual unseriousness. During his Daily Show emeritus phase, Stewart took some retroactive flak for the sausage fest in his writers’ room and for trying to remedy the failure with token hires, and to his credit, he copped to the criticism. During a June 2020 interview on the radio show The Breakfast Club, he recalled “going back into the writers’ room” after a critical article in Jezebel “and being like, ‘Do you believe this shit? Kevin? Steve? Mike? Bob? Donald?’ Oh … Uh-oh. Uh-oh.” Now, on his Apple show, he seems to be hyperconscious of reducing his white-male-celebrity footprint. The Problem With Jon Stewart is a multi-platform brand, which is to say there’s also a podcast, a Twitter feed, and a YouTube channel, but it all feels a little dutiful, and though Apple declared the show an immediate hit with viewers, well, do you know any of them? Have you seen even a single viral clip from it?

“I’m having a hard time figuring out what you’re going for,” the New York Times opinion writer Kara Swisher told Stewart in her casually insulting way on a recent episode of her podcast Sway. She called his Apple show “spare.” (“When I say ‘spare,’” she said, really pouring it on, Howard Stern–style, “it is spaaare.”) She brushed off the show’s opening 15 minutes as the “beginning part, where you do your Jon Stewart thing with an audience.” Baffled, she posed the question to him instead: “What do you think you’re going for?”

“I always find that question strange,” he replied. Credit to Stewart—he knew what he was getting into with Swisher and often seemed to enjoy the roasts. “Do we need this? … There’s like five CSIs!” He’s not trying to revolutionize television for the second time. Like many middle-aged men blessed with the good fortune to live out his days in cruise control, he’s just trying to make himself useful. “I always find the self-justifying aspect of it a little odd.”

Then he attempted again to actually answer her question: “If I think noise is the antithesis of progress, [then] what if we tried to make something that was an equalizer? … That tried to bring some clarity to a noisy conversation?” This did not move Swisher, who surely considers it her job to bring clarity to a noisy conversation. She pressed him on why he didn’t turn around a fast episode on Ukraine, settling instead for a months-old rehash of the GameStop saga at a time when the world is facing the greatest threat of nuclear annihilation since maybe 1983. He responded by likening the media to “8-year-olds playing soccer,” an answer that is about as intellectually rigorous as seeing something you don’t like and calling it “fake news” or “clickbait.”

“Not climbing on the moment is an advantage, not a disadvantage, for the types of things we want to talk about,” Stewart had insisted at one point in the conversation. If this just sounds like an excuse for complacency, Swisher seemed to think so too. “I don’t mean to say ‘Has time passed you by?’ but …” she began, then trailed off, which drew a huge cackle from Stewart.

“Yes, time passes all of us by,” he conceded. “I’m not going to pretend that I’m not 60 next year.”

He was defending his Apple show as if it were a cozy pair of Allbirds, the streaming equivalent of a Vegas residency. But the more Swisher pressed, the more wounds she revealed. The Trump era seemed to have rocked his faith in his former profession. He used to believe in the power of comedy to hold politicians and billionaires to account, and in his own power to at least make a dent. But he’s not so sure anymore. “It’s pleasant, it’s a distraction,” he said, “but ultimately feckless.”

Read: The new anti-comedy of Jon Stewart

For someone about to win the Twain Prize, he sounded awfully defeated. He left The Daily Show seven years ago, and since then, he told Swisher, “almost everything that I believed and advocated for didn’t come to pass, and probably got worse.”

Once upon a time, if you accused Jon Stewart of actually trying to solve problems, of attempting to contribute something more useful than dick jokes, he’d plead dumb comedian—I’m just here to make people laugh! It was insincere then, and now it’s being parroted by Joe Rogan to excuse spreading COVID lies around the world. Yet again Stewart’s tactics have been weaponized by forces of disinformation. Stewart’s reaction, though, has been to drop the veil of comedy altogether. Aside from his Jon Stewart thing at the beginning of The Problem and a few wry asides during interviews, he’s not even trying to be funny. When you take the comedy out of topical comedy, though, you become … the media. (“I think you’re a good comedian. I think your lectures are boring … I do think you’re more fun on your show,” Carlson said to Stewart in that Crossfire appearance, all those years ago. For once, Tucker was telling the truth.)


And as The Problem With Jon Stewart makes clear, funny one-liners and five-minute chats with pliant celebrities aren’t particularly good practice for roundtable conversations with policy experts and extended interrogations of polished CEOs. An early episode that described the U.S. armed services’ continued use of toxic burn pits near military bases culminated in a tense, misbegotten interview with President Biden’s VA secretary, Denis McDonough. Stewart spent 10 minutes repeating himself, grandstanding in circles, arguing with a broken system, and blaming it on the guy who was mere months into the job and was patiently trying to explain the obstacles in his path. If Stewart’s goal was to make his audience feel sympathy for a federal bureaucrat, he nailed it.

More than once already, Stewart has dedicated an entire episode to a subject, only to have an actual expert on that subject call him out for getting it wrong. The first time, a Wall Street Journal editor took exception to the mess Stewart made trying to summarize the GameStop saga—and, seriously, go watch the episode if you want to understand it less than before you watched—and to his portrayal of Redditors as folk heroes schooling the elites. Days later, Stewart got aired out by a Gimlet Media climate-change reporter for having argued, incorrectly, that recycling doesn’t work (plastic recycling doesn’t work; paper and metal recycling work great) and for going too easy on oil companies.


Because this is 2022, Stewart responded by inviting both reporters onto his podcast to hash it out some more. He seemed to bridle against the Journal editor’s suggestion that he was being naive about GameStop, so he doubled down, ranted about the need for more transparency around extremely private financial transactions, then did the Tucker Carlson thing where he accused the journalist of being the naive one. At least with the climate reporter, Stewart conceded his mistakes and wound up having the kind of detailed, enlightening conversation that it sure would’ve been nice to see on his new television show.

If Tucker Carlson is what you get when you detach truth from reality, The Problem With Jon Stewart is what happens when you don’t sew them back together well enough. You can pollute conversations with the best of intentions. You can mislead millions of people while you’re trying to bring some clarity to the conversation. Just ask Joe Rogan. Even Stewart doesn’t use that dumb-comedian line anymore. He knows he needs to do his Jon Stewart thing in order to get our attention, but he doesn’t have much faith in his own shtick anymore against the likes of Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson. He may have won the Twain Prize, but go ask Jon Stewart who he thinks won the fight.

Devin Gordon is a writer based in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is the author of So Many Ways To Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets—The Best Worst Team in Sports.




文化
琼-斯特瓦特怎么了？
他是喜剧界的皇室成员。但自从他处于巅峰时期以来，世界已经发生了变化。

作者：德文-戈登
乔恩-斯图尔特的黑白拼贴画，使用的是他脸部的断裂部分。
插图：Matthieu Bourel；图片：Norman Jean Roy / 喜剧中心
2022年4月21日，美国东部时间上午8点
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这篇文章被收录在《今天要读的一个故事》中，这是一份时事通讯，我们的编辑会在周一至周五推荐《大西洋》杂志的一篇必读文章。请在此注册订阅。

2021年3月，在乔恩-斯图尔特(Jon Stewart)加入Twitter后不久，他敲响了话筒，利用他的新讲坛为他遥远的过去的一次声名狼藉的攻击行为作出了补偿。

"我在国家电视台称塔克-卡尔森为混蛋，"斯图尔特在推特上说。"现在是我道歉的时候了......向混蛋们道歉。我不应该把你和那个可怕的人混为一谈。"


斯图尔特最初在17年前，即2004年10月15日开了这一枪，但如果你足够老，你肯定记得发生了什么，部分原因是它是本世纪第一批真正的病毒式政治视频之一。斯图尔特是塔克-卡尔森的CNN政治辩论节目《交火》的嘉宾，这是一个每晚半小时的偏头痛的辩论俱乐部双关语，期间斯图尔特恳求卡尔森 "停止伤害美国"。"等等，我以为你会很有趣，"塔克闻言说道。"不，"斯图尔特反击道，"我不会成为你的猴子。" 很快，他就在国家电视台上说塔克是个混蛋。他说："你在你的节目中是个大混蛋，"他说，"你在任何节目中都是如此。"

塔克-卡尔森实际上是《交火》的联合主持人，还有他在克林顿时代的左倾敌人保罗-贝加拉，但没有人记得贝加拉，他们为什么要记得呢？整个事件在历史上被称为乔恩-斯图尔特与塔克-卡尔森的对决，斯图尔特在第一轮就被击倒，成为冠军。几个月内，CNN取消了 "交火 "节目，将斯图尔特推到了美国很少有喜剧演员能达到的政治影响力和超级明星的地位。在斯图尔特在自己的节目中羞辱塔克两周后，乔治-W-布什总统以微弱优势战胜了约翰-克里参议员，如果说在随后的奥巴马之前的几年里，民主党人的反抗领袖是乔恩-斯图尔特，而且他在东部时间晚上11点的喜剧中心举行集会，这一点也不为过。

布什时代，由直邮界的马基雅维利(Machiavelli)和幕后巫师迪克-切尼(Dick Cheney)主演，现在看来几乎是古板的，就像那种会亲切地给他的最高顾问起绰号 "Turd Blossom "的总统那样。在他担任总统后，布什在很大程度上忙于画油画，而不是谋划政变。当年切尼是民主党人可以想象到的来势汹汹的小人；现在他的女儿是共和党人反对特朗普主义的最后堡垒之一。每当布什讲话时，民主党人都会想到威尔-费雷尔。一个和蔼可亲的阿尔法-布鲁德。这是社交媒体的黎明，也是电视中某个时代的黄昏。这是斯图尔特的黄金时代。之后的一切都没有接近。

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丹尼尔-A-格罗斯
在巴拉克-奥巴马当选总统并连任后，乔恩-斯图尔特在《交火》节目中与塔克-卡尔森的对决已经被刻在了文化的想象中，成为对抗有线电视学说的毒药以及那些参与其中的人的罪责的胜利时刻--现场观众对历史的弧线向正义弯曲的广播。以至于当斯图尔特在2015年8月6日永远离开《每日秀》时，在唐纳德-特朗普将墨西哥人描述为 "强奸犯 "和 "毒品贩子 "而启动其候选人资格后不到两个月，他的离开似乎是一个合理的结局。美国在安全的范围内。成年人重新掌权，而且已经有一段时间了。特朗普的候选资格是如此的卡通化，似乎是《每日秀》(The Daily Show)编造的东西。乔恩-斯图尔特赢了。

要诚实地说明美国是如何出人意料地转向的，需要跳回2004年的《交锋》节目。这真的是乔恩-斯图尔特的一个胜利时刻吗？还是它实际上是另一方的一个转折点？也许人们以为他们看到的是塔克自焚，实际上是塔克-卡尔森2.0的起源故事，这个人目前正以一种比他二十年前兜售的更灵活、更无情的煽动性品牌伤害美国。羞辱是一个强大的激励因素。与奥巴马在2011年白宫记者协会晚宴上对特朗普的抨击一样，斯图尔特在黄金时段对卡尔森的瓦解似乎也让这个扎着蝴蝶结的威胁者释放出了某种力量。斯图尔特在大家的注视下揭露了卡夫卡的行为，他看起来觉得自己被背叛了。难道他不明白这一切都只是一场戏吗？他怎么敢假装他没有在玩同样的游戏？

请看。塔克-卡尔森制造的美国

请记住，在 "交火 "之前，卡尔森对一个严肃的记者进行了合理的描绘。1999年，他为蒂娜-布朗的《谈话》杂志首刊撰写了一篇关于时任德克萨斯州州长乔治-W-布什的深刻剖析，在这篇文章中，布什随意嘲讽了一位恳求他宽恕的德克萨斯州女死刑犯，卡尔森惊恐地退缩了。不过，在 "穿越火线 "之后，塔克就开始了他的本土主义行为。他把对乔恩-斯图尔特和他所代表的一切的憎恨变成了一个强大的右翼品牌，甚至连鲁珀特-默多克都不敢对他进行约束。在过去的六年里，在美国人最近的记忆中最煎熬的时期之一，斯图尔特正在进行他的胜利之旅，并浪费了一份舒适的HBO协议，而卡尔森则致力于打磨他的表演，在黄金时段的电视上直播，每周五天，观众人数远远超过斯图尔特的每日秀所吸引的人数。

斯图尔特去年秋天终于推出了盛大的回归节目《与乔恩-斯图尔特的问题》（The Problem With Jon Stewart），该节目在苹果电视+上播放，由一个从电视上休息了六年的人主持，天哪，这说明了什么。根据行业测量公司Samba TV的数据，《与乔恩-斯图尔特的问题》第五集的流媒体播放量只有4万次，与2021年9月30日播出的试播节目相比，下降了78%。相比之下，HBO同一周的《今晚与约翰-奥利弗的最后一周》一集吸引了80多万观众。

斯图尔特在《每日秀》中的具体天才是将事实和复杂性分层到笑话中，并将打趣的台词拼接成乔治-卡林式的政治讽刺。当斯图尔特处于他的巅峰时期时，没有人能够在22分钟的喜剧中包含更多的想法。但有些事情已经改变了。现在，他是那个似乎被复杂问题压倒的人，容易过度简化。他是那个被指责为弄虚作假、错过重点、不合群的人。这不只是因为塔克-卡尔森用斯图尔特式的诡辩进行了反击。这不仅仅是因为话题性喜剧的效果不如以前好了。乔恩-斯图尔特问题》的问题在于乔恩-斯图尔特本人。

斯图尔特在他的第一个脱口秀节目《乔恩-斯图尔特秀》（The Jon Stewart Show on MTV）中的第一个品牌嘉宾，是自称 "所有媒体之王 "的霍华德-斯特恩。斯特恩是斯图尔特的喜剧导师之一，他在现场宣传他的新回忆录《私人部分》，该书不久将成为一部主要电影，也由霍华德-斯特恩主演。在他还没有坐到沙发上，在斯图尔特还没有开口说话的时候，斯特恩就告诉他，《乔恩-斯图尔特秀》很快就会被取消，而且会把斯图尔特的事业也拖垮。

"我对这个节目很紧张，我真的很紧张，"斯特恩说，霸占了采访的机会。"我想在节目被取消之前把我的书的信息传出去。" 然后，他对观众--斯图尔特的观众说。"有谁知道乔恩是谁，为什么我在和他说话？这种事情是喜剧演员表达感情的方式，但斯特恩也是一字一句的。他说："有人给我提供了一个MTV的脱口秀节目，我跟你说实话，"他说，在有这个词之前，他就已经谦虚了。"我拒绝了，我告诉你为什么--他们毁了人们的职业生涯。"

"好吧，霍华德，"斯图尔特说，终于排上了队。"我没有事业。"

重看前几集，除了斯图尔特令人心悸的恐怖和滑稽的不合身的衣着外，最突出的是一个正在寻找他的主题的新的喜剧偶像。他有伍迪-艾伦（Woody Allen）那样的魅力，但没有性掠夺的暗流。他很友好，精通媒体（1993年），而且在你的青少年身边很安全。非常适合MTV。深夜电视的巨头--卡森、莱特曼、莱诺--并不是来自这个世界。他们并不是局外人。对于斯图尔特不断增加的崇拜者来说，他的外向性是吸引力的基础。这个呆子在这里做什么？视觉效果是地下的，一个秘密的深夜节目在一个深夜节目的地下室里运作，楼梯旁有一张撕碎的蓝调旅行者海报，咖啡桌上有一个拇指曲棍球板。

年轻和年长的乔恩-斯图尔特的两张撕碎的照片创造了他的一个奇特的画像。
插图：Matthieu Bourel; 图片：Peter Kramer / Getty; Action Press
斯图尔特已经在名人的种姓体系中找到了自己的位置：聪明的傻瓜，不酷，但却与酷相近，这部分要归功于一系列合法的时髦音乐嘉宾，包括Ol' Dirty Bastard和Bad Religion。斯图尔特的氛围可能是伍迪-艾伦，但他的喜剧英雄是卡林--偶像粉碎机，喜剧的良心，不耐烦的给不给的哲学家--他对政府、贪婪的公司和安德鲁-迪斯-克莱讲性别歧视、同性恋的笑话，以及打倒。

乔治-卡林是乔恩-斯图尔特的方向，但他不能成为MTV上的那个人。他必须先被取消。

当然，斯特恩是对的，关于所有这些。

在不到两年的时间里，《乔恩-斯图尔特秀》确实被取消了，这确实毁了他的事业，至少在一段时间内。他在主持工作中被拒之门外。他和他的单口相声朋友戴夫-查佩尔（Dave Chappelle）一起制作了石头人喜剧《半熟》。他在《学院》中被乔什-哈特内特刺伤了眼睛。他在合奏的爱情故事《心花怒放》中被误选为一个在他最疯狂的梦中都不可能亲吻吉莲-安德森的人。他在《拉里-桑德斯秀》（Garry Shandling's brilliant, early-HBO lat-night satire）中扮演拉里的替身 "乔恩-斯图尔特"（Jon Stewart），是一个反复出现的角色。根据喜剧演员和导演贾德-阿帕图（Judd Apatow）在克里斯-史密斯（Chris Smith）的《每日秀》（The Daily Show）一书中的描述，在短暂的一分钟内，尚德林与拉里-桑德斯（Garry Shanders）打成一片。根据克里斯-史密斯的《每日秀（书）：口述历史》中的描述，尚德林曾想把《拉里-桑德斯秀》交给斯图尔特，但没有结果。

然后，在1998年，曾在MTV雇用过斯图尔特的主管道格-赫尔佐格（Doug Herzog）打电话给他，告诉他一家名为 "喜剧中心 "的新兴有线电视网有一个工作机会。克雷格-基尔伯恩（Craig Kilborn）是《每日秀》（The Daily Show）的原主持人，他得到了哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）的召唤，在大卫-莱特曼（David Letterman）之后主持深夜时段，这是斯图尔特没有得到的两个工作之一。(史密斯在他的书中说，斯图尔特对《每日秀》感兴趣，但条件是他要把基尔伯恩的版本从头到尾删掉，这个版本很有趣，但常常很刻薄。

你知道剩下的事情。

现在，4月24日在华盛顿特区肯尼迪中心，斯图尔特将获得马克-吐温美国幽默奖，除了HBO的系列订单外，这可以说是喜剧的最高荣誉。在职业生涯方面，它与被取消的情况相反。它是封神榜。他将成为吐温奖的第23位获奖者，加入到包括理查德-普赖尔、史蒂夫-马丁、莉莉-汤姆林、蒂娜-费、他心爱的卡林和他的好友查佩尔在内的名人名单中，而不再包括比尔-科斯比，他的荣誉在2018年被取消了。"我真的很荣幸获得这个奖项，"斯图尔特在回应这一宣布时说。"我长期以来一直钦佩马克-吐温的作品并受到其影响，或者说，他的名字叫塞缪尔-莱布维茨。" (莱博维茨是斯图尔特的出生名字。这是一个犹太人的笑话，也是一个裙带关系的笑话。我要求为这个故事采访斯图尔特，但他拒绝了。）

吐温奖是一把典型的双刃剑。获奖者名单很短，而这些名字--用喜剧术语来说--真的很要命。正如乔-拜登所说，这是个他妈的大问题。(你知道谁没有获得吐温奖吗？霍华德-斯特恩。除非他也拒绝了）。这也意味着你最好的作品在你身后，而且很快你就需要戴上眼镜才能看到它。从来没有人在获得吐温奖后又推出自己的杰作，乔恩-斯图尔特也不会是第一个。就这一点而言，吐温奖得主并不是马克-吐温。斯图尔特在其职业生涯的前三十年里一直期待着失败，认为明天就是一切崩溃的日子，但他却以某种方式成功地以自己的方式走上了巅峰。难怪他从那时起就显得很迷茫。

斯图尔特在2015年离开了《每日秀》，在此之前，他经历了三个总统任期；2000年的吊诡选举；9/11；伊拉克战争；卡特里娜飓风；奥巴马的选举和连任；经济大衰退；茶党的可怕愚蠢；迈克尔-布朗在密苏里州弗格森被枪杀；以及唐纳德-特朗普的崛起，或者至少在他宣布参选总统时从那条自动扶梯上掉下来。不过，到2013年，他已经逐渐远离了使他成为超级明星的节目，当时他休息了一段时间，编导了一部名为《玫瑰水》的电影，这是一部深思熟虑的独立剧，基于一名伊朗裔加拿大《新闻周刊》记者在2009年被伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队逮捕并囚禁数月的真实故事。考虑到它是由一个深夜节目的主持人制作的，《玫瑰水》的结果令人钦佩，但它并没有预示着一个新导演的到来。而且，没有人去看它。约翰-奥利弗(John Oliver)在斯图尔特从《每日秀》(The Daily Show)休假期间顶替了他的工作，很难不注意到奥利弗在他老板的桌子后面显得更有活力。

特朗普一来，斯图尔特就完全消失了。他与HBO签署了一份为期四年的制作协议，该协议于2020年结束，但实际上什么都没做--四年来，什么都没有。有一个动画短片系列，但没有实现。一个新的单口相声特别节目被宣布，然后再也没有被提及。他试图拍摄另一部电影，一部由他自编自导的政治喜剧《不可抗拒》，由《每日秀》的校友史蒂夫-卡瑞尔和《伴娘》的罗丝-拜恩主演，讲述两个敌对的竞选策略师在一个小镇的市长竞选中交锋的故事，但成品感觉像是某人在编辑室中意识到它没有希望的作品，甚至可能是在拍摄时意识到的。

换句话说，斯图尔特正在进入他职业生涯的终身成就阶段，也许我们不应该轻易翻白眼，只做一代人的代言人。现在很容易忘记，但有一个拐点，喜剧中心本来很容易成为克雷格-基尔伯恩和Tosh.0的宫殿。斯图尔特将《每日秀》--根据史密斯的口述历史，违背了它的意愿--拖到了相反的方向，他最终给了喜剧中心以核心身份，更不用说一连串的艾美奖了，包括2003年至2012年连续10年获得杰出综艺节目奖。没有斯图尔特的《每日秀》，就没有《科尔伯特报告》，没有《约翰-奥利弗的最后一周》，没有《特雷弗-诺亚的每日秀》。但也许也没有《塔克-卡尔森之夜》。

斯图尔特本可以像杰-雷诺那样，永远挂在《每日秀》上。相反，他有一种不寻常的风度，看到了末日的到来，并在他过气之前就离开了。在他的全盛时期，有一个 "高级黑人记者 "可以进行尖锐的讽刺。在他的任期结束时，是时候换一个黑人主持人了。他标志性的自嘲已经远离了他生活中的现实。你越是富有，越是出名，就越难成为民粹主义的化身。他抗议说，他没有真正的权力，他不是机构的一部分，也不是主流媒体的一部分，他的抗议不再真实。这是有原因的。在肯尼迪中心的舞台上很难打起精神。

也许这就是他在第二场演出中表现出的软弱的原因。在HBO工作了四年后，斯图尔特在2020年与苹果电视+签订了一份新协议，并迅速宣布了回归本源的计划：讲述有关时事的笑话。他的新系列节目《与乔恩-斯图尔特的问题》(The Problem With Jon Stewart)将以一些常温的细微对话来回击斯图尔特所描述的社交媒体的纵火经济。这听起来很像《每日秀》，只是时间更长、更不搞笑，而且斯图尔特打算每季只播出8集，而不是每周4集。每一集都将遵循三幕格式：开场独白、专家圆桌会议、对某个有权势的人进行坐下来的采访--证券交易委员会主席、退伍军人事务部长、壳牌公司的CEO。如果说《每日秀》是对晚间新闻节目的模仿，那么《问题》则常常让人觉得是《与比尔-马赫的实时对话》的变质。

斯图尔特似乎在退缩到安全领域，但那又怎样？我们不可能都是博-伯纳姆，为其他喜剧演员表演单口相声，或像乔丹-皮尔那样的奥斯卡奖得主，或像史蒂夫-卡瑞尔那样的电影明星，或像蒂娜-菲那样的情景喜剧传奇。乔治-卡林有一个短命的电视节目（《乔治-卡林秀》，1990年代中期在福克斯电视台持续了18个月），从未导演过一部电影，除了在电影中扮演自己之外，没有人认为他的职业生涯是不完整的。他也是他那一代人的声音之一，这就足够了。

但他也从来没有打过电话，反正在舞台上没有。乔恩-斯图尔特的问题》是一个引人注目的没有雄心壮志、轻蔑地不合时宜的节目，它把节俭和实质内容混为一谈，好像除了办公家具之外，花钱买任何东西都是知识分子不严肃的标志。在《每日秀》的荣誉阶段，斯图尔特因为他的编剧室里的香肠大战和试图用象征性的雇佣来补救失败而受到了一些追溯性的责难，而值得称赞的是，他对这些批评表示接受。在2020年6月接受广播节目《早餐俱乐部》的采访时，他回忆说，在《Jezebel》的一篇批评文章之后，他 "回到了编剧室"，"然后说，'你相信这个狗屎吗？凯文？史蒂夫？麦克？鲍勃？唐纳德？哦......呃--哦。呃--哦。" 现在，在他的苹果节目中，他似乎对减少他的白马王子足迹有着超强的意识。乔恩-斯图尔特的问题》是一个多平台的品牌，也就是说，还有一个播客、一个Twitter feed和一个YouTube频道，但这一切都让人感觉有点尽职尽责，尽管苹果宣布该节目立即受到观众的欢迎，那么，你认识他们中的任何一个吗？你有看过哪怕是其中的一个病毒片段吗？

"我很难搞清楚你的目的是什么，"《纽约时报》评论作家卡拉-斯威舍在她的播客节目《Sway》最近一集中以她随意的侮辱性方式告诉斯图尔特。她称他的苹果节目为 "空闲"。(她说："当我说'空闲'的时候，"她说，真的是大放厥词，霍华德-斯特恩式的，"是空闲"。） 她把节目开头的15分钟说成是 "开始部分，在那里你和观众一起做你的乔恩-斯图尔特的事情"。感到困惑的是，她反而向他提出了一个问题。"你认为你的目的是什么？"

"我总是觉得这个问题很奇怪，"他回答。归功于斯图尔特，他知道他和斯威舍之间的关系，而且似乎经常享受烤肉的乐趣。"我们需要这个吗？...好像有五个CSI！" 他并不是想第二次彻底改变电视。就像许多有福气的中年男人一样，他只是想让自己变得有用。"我总觉得自我辩解的方面有点奇怪。"

然后他再次试图真正回答她的问题。"如果我认为噪音是进步的对立面，[那么]如果我们试图做一些平等的东西，......试图给嘈杂的对话带来一些清晰度呢？" 这并没有打动斯威舍尔，她肯定认为她的工作是为嘈杂的对话带来清晰的信息。她问他为什么不在乌克兰问题上迅速扭转局面，而是在世界面临自1983年以来最大的核毁灭威胁的时候，选择了几个月前的游戏店事件。他的回应是将媒体比作 "8岁的孩子在踢足球"，这种回答就像看到你不喜欢的东西并称其为 "假新闻 "或 "点击广告 "一样理智严谨。

"不攀比是一种优势，而不是一种劣势，对于我们想要谈论的那类事情，"斯图尔特在谈话中曾一度坚持认为。如果这听起来只是一个自满的借口，斯威舍似乎也是这么想的。"我不是说'时间从你身边过去了吗'，但是...... "她开始说，然后拖长了声音，这引来了斯图尔特的一阵大笑。

"是的，时间从我们所有人身边流逝，"他承认道。"我不会假装我明年不是60岁了。"

他在为他的苹果节目辩护，仿佛它是一双舒适的Allbirds，相当于拉斯维加斯的流媒体驻场。但斯威舍越是追问，她透露的伤口就越多。特朗普时代似乎已经动摇了他对自己以前职业的信心。他曾经相信喜剧的力量可以让政客和亿万富翁承担责任，也相信他自己的力量至少可以有所作为。但他现在不那么确定了。他说："这是令人愉快的，是一种分心，""但最终是无用的。"

阅读。乔恩-斯图尔特的新反喜剧

对于一个即将获得吐温奖的人来说，他听起来非常失败。他七年前离开了《每日秀》，从那时起，他告诉斯威舍尔，"我所相信和倡导的几乎所有事情都没有实现，而且可能变得更糟"。

从前，如果你指责乔恩-斯图尔特真正试图解决问题，试图贡献一些比鸡巴笑话更有用的东西，他就会申辩说，我是个愚蠢的喜剧演员，我只是来让人们笑的！"。这在当时是不真诚的，而现在它被乔-罗根转述为在全世界传播COVID谎言的借口。然而，斯图尔特的策略又一次被虚假信息的力量作为武器。不过，斯图尔特的反应是完全放弃了喜剧的面纱。除了在《问题》的开头说了一句 "乔恩-斯图尔特"，以及在采访中说了几句俏皮话之外，他甚至都没有试图表现得有趣。不过，当你把喜剧从话题性喜剧中抽离出来时，你就成了......媒体。("我认为你是一个好的喜剧演员。我认为你的讲座很无聊......我确实认为你在你的节目中更有趣，"卡尔森在那些年的交火中对斯图尔特说。这一次，塔克说的是真话）。


正如《乔恩-斯图尔特的问题》（The Problem With Jon Stewart）所表明的那样，对于与政策专家的圆桌对话和对光鲜的首席执行官的长时间审问来说，有趣的单口相声和与柔顺的名人的5分钟聊天并不是特别好的做法。早期的一集描述了美国军队继续在军事基地附近使用有毒的焚烧坑，在对拜登总统的退伍军人事务部部长丹尼斯-麦克多诺的紧张、错误的采访中达到了高潮。斯图尔特花了10分钟时间重复自己，在圈子里大放厥词，与一个破碎的系统争论，并将其归咎于那个刚上任几个月、正耐心地试图解释其道路上的障碍的人。如果斯图尔特的目标是让他的观众对一个联邦官僚感到同情，他成功了。

不止一次，斯图尔特已经用整整一集的时间来讨论一个问题，结果却被这个问题的实际专家指出他的错误。第一次，《华尔街日报》的一位编辑对斯图尔特试图总结GameStop传奇所造成的混乱提出异议--说真的，如果你想比看之前更了解它的话，就去看这一集，并对他把Redditors描绘成与精英们对抗的民间英雄表示不满。几天后，斯图尔特被Gimlet Media的一名气候变化记者骂了一顿，因为他错误地认为回收利用不起作用（塑料回收利用不起作用；纸张和金属回收利用很好），而且对石油公司过于宽容。


因为这是2022年，斯图尔特的回应是邀请这两位记者到他的播客中再谈一谈。他似乎对杂志编辑说他对GameStop的看法很天真不以为然，所以他加倍努力，大肆宣扬需要对极其私密的金融交易增加透明度，然后做了塔克-卡尔森的事情，指责记者是天真的那个。至少在气候问题记者身上，斯图尔特承认了自己的错误，并最终进行了那种详细的、有启发性的对话，如果能在他的新电视节目中看到这样的对话，肯定会很好。

如果说塔克-卡尔森是你从现实中分离出来的东西，那么《乔恩-斯图尔特的问题》则是你没有把它们缝合好的情况。你可以用最好的意图来污染对话。你可以误导数以百万计的人，而你却试图为对话带来一些清晰度。问问乔-罗根就知道了。即使是斯图尔特也不再使用那种愚蠢的喜剧演员的台词了。他知道他需要做他的乔恩-斯图尔特的事情，以引起我们的注意，但他对自己的戏法已经没有什么信心了，以对抗唐纳德-特朗普和塔克-卡尔森等人。他可能赢得了吐温奖，但去问问乔恩-斯图尔特他认为谁赢得了这场战斗。

德文-戈登是马萨诸塞州布鲁克林的一名作家。他是《失败的方式如此之多：纽约大都会队的惊人真实故事--体育界最差的球队》的作者。