More Americans get their news from TDS than probably should?

Okay. I admit it. I watch The Daily Show.

Apparently that makes me simultaneously cynical and apthethic, and a big part of the problem.

You know something though? I don't get it. They're saying (they being Richard Morin in the Washington Post) that

This is not funny: Jon Stewart and his hit Comedy Central cable show may be poisoning democracy.

Two political scientists found that young people who watch Stewart's faux news program, "The Daily Show," develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.

and then tell us that

The results showed that the participants rated both candidates more negatively after watching Stewart's program. Participants also expressed less trust in the electoral system and more cynical views of the news media, according to the researchers' article, in the latest issue of American Politics Research.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just too old - they tested college students after all. But everyone I know personally who watches The Daily Show watches other news as well - though many of them, like me, do shun the American mainstream media in favor of the BBC. We all read papers, too - several of them - plus news web sites. I like to think that we don't "get all our news from The Daily Show", as TDS's old slogan put it. (We vote, too.)

But I will tell you one thing we get from The Daily Show, and its sibling The Colbert Report: real questions on real topics.

(Quite coincidentally [see, I'm not that cynical ;-) ], Stephen Colbert addressed that very topic on Friday's show, skewering the morning news shows for their hard-hitting topics such as "is suntanning addictive?" and celebrity marriages and such. He's the one who asked Lynn Westmoreland to name the 10 Commandments... instead of something about cheese or Brangelina's baby. Why doesn't anyone else ask anything substantive?)

[Note - I pretty much exempt the BBC from that complaint. Their journalists have mastered a trick American media types might want to learn: "Yes, but that doesn't answer my question." This, coupled with a repeat of the question, might not get you any real answers but it does at least show that you're aware of the situation. And if the question was good to begin with, well, you're well on the way to something meaningful.]

We don't just watch TDS & TCR because they're funny - though they are. We watch them because that's where the truth gets told. When Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld says something that flatly contradicts what they've said before, only these shows have the guts to show both film clips. Everyone else just goes along ... For instance,

On June 21, 2004, Jon Stewart showed a video clip of Dick Cheney lying through his teeth about a statement he made in December 2001. When accused of saying that "it was pretty well confirmed that Mohammed Ata met with Saddam's people in April of 2001," Cheney stated emphatically, "I didn't say that." Stewart followed this video taped segment with an older film clip that shows Cheney clearly stating on December 9, 2001, "It is pretty well confirmed that he (Ata) did meet with them (Iraq) last April."

And people are surprised that this sort of thing "breeds cynicism" in viewers?

See, maybe college students are just smart enough to figure out that they're not being told the truth. When they can see actual film footage of Cheney lying - with actual film footage of proof that he's lying - then maybe it's not really cynicism that makes them distrust politicians more than people who haven't seen that.

Maybe it's just plain common sense.

After all, there's no proof that this cyncism, if cynicism it is (let's not forget how Ambrose Bierce defined a cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be), will make them "just say no" to voting. Perhaps it will drive them into grassroots politics, instead, into the arms of someone like Russ Feingold and Progressive Patriots, or Dean's Fifty States, or just something local, like Ned Lamont taking on Lieberman.

Now, I realize that for many people that's much worse than their "just saying no". Upsetting the status quo can be like that.

But I think it's a bit rich, blaming the one man (indulge my hyperbole) who consistently calls it fairly and tells it the way it is for "poisoning democracy". After all, as Jefferson once said, "whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right."

If you want the people to be well-informed (I'll assume you do, for the sake of the argument), well, then, let's face it. What's the alternative to Jon Stewart?

It would be nice if the mainstream media actually did two things that he does: call a lie a lie, regardless of who tells it; and admit that sometimes there is indeed only one side, that 'balancing' 99.99% of scientists with one or two lone fringe voices isn't balance but rather a lie of its own. But they don't.

In fact, until recently, they didn't even seem to notice the lies, just repeated them blithely and without questioning.

"We know where [the WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." "I never said that." "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq." "The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want [is to] get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that." "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." "Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity."

"We have always been at war with Oceania."

So - who's at fault, here? Who's poisoning democracy?

Morin did get one thing absolutely right, though.

It's not funny.