KEY POINTS:
Noticed teenagers coming up with sharper jokes? Or, they are showing an unexpectedly detailed knowledge of American politics? Jon Stewart is probably responsible.
He is the host of The Daily Show. His half hour is set up as a news bulletin, but is actually a snappy brew of
comedy, with doses of social and political commentary, with the comedy, first, front, and centre.
The house specialty is roasting experts and authority figures, bliss and balm to hypocrisy-hunting youngsters. It also meshes neatly with media studies, the core message being to question everything, and assume because you are told something it is not necessarily gospel.
While current affairs shows carry out blunt attacks, Stewart proves ridicule is the truly lethal weapon against experts who are wrong or dangerous, or both.
The best of his recent shows hit that target. It looked at coverage of the Indiana Democratic Primary, the latest stop on what Stewart bills as "the Democratic Party Bataan Death March, starring Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton".
Because this was the first Indiana primary in decades to be at all significant it lured the pundits, hordes of them.
Stewart's, and the show's, genius was in deciding not to try outwitting them. Instead, he got out of the way to let the laughs flow from the expert's antics.
An usually slow vote count left the commentariat marooned in expensive airtime, with little to talk about. Frustration over this quickly turned to anger. When one county was particularly late things sped over the edge into conspiracy theory. Several noted the county was close to Chicago, with its history of fixed elections. One remembered, on air, a controversial vote count in that city had John Kennedy elected over Richard Nixon. Three years later Kennedy was killed in Dallas.
For a breathtaking moment Stewart, and this reviewer, watched an esteemed journalist inching up on making a link between a slow vote count in Indiana in 2008 and the 1963 Kennedy Assassination. It was mesmerising television, and had the studio audience hooting. The journalist would veer away, only barely in time to save his reputation.
Now and again Stewart delivers a sharp and intense interview. He did it on Tuesday night, with one of the officials at the Defence Department who helped guide the US into what is now the Iraq war. Stewart, although dusting it with jokes, made it an edgy and uncomfortable ride.
New Zealand has been in Stewart's crosshairs. Introducing it as "the country out there somewhere where they shot Lord of the Rings", he made a funny and stinging attack on the Clark Government. Helen Clark, subtitled for the American audience, was being laughed at for the ban on images of politicians for satirical purposes. That had Stewart in the same position he and David Letterman occupy in the US, seemingly the only truly effective opposition to the stranger ideas floating up from the political stew.
It sharpens the loss of McPhail and Gadsby-type commentary on our own screens. They made the same point as Stewart. If you can't laugh at politics and politicians, and the great and the good, then who can you laugh at?
* The Daily Show: C4, 10pm Tuesday-Friday
