• InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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      10 months ago

      His political takes are museum pieces at this point.

      That’s it. I must have spent more than a minute trying to think up a joke but I couldn’t figure out how to phrase it.

      I had a super-quickie look at this Wikipedia page. I’m surprised he is for a ceasefire. I expected he would have been basically silent on the Gaza war.

      Jon Stewart

      In January 2024, it was announced that he would return to The Daily Show for Monday episodes, as well as in the role of an executive producer.

      […]

      Political views

      In 2000, when he was labeled a Democrat, Stewart generally agreed, but described his political affiliation as “more socialist or independent” than Democratic. Stewart has also voted for Republicans, the last time being in the 1988 presidential election when he voted for George H. W. Bush over Michael Dukakis. He described Bush as having “an integrity about him that I respected greatly”. He has been a vocal proponent of single-payer health care system.

      Stewart has spoken against Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. In 2023, Stewart, alongside other media figures, signed an open letter urging president Joe Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

      • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        I’m surprised too to hear he supports a ceasefire. At a casual glance, I had come to associate him with the kind of resistance libs that were like “Iraq was bad but, Afghanistan is the good war.” People who never have a comprehensive critique of American imperialism.

        In saying the above comment about museum pieces, I was referring mostly to when he did stuff like the March to Restore Sanity. I used to hear that sort of bipartisanship fetishization during the early Obama years from mainstream liberals as a response to the Tea Party. It was so nauseating, especially as the hindsight piles on. It all just seems about preserving the status quo to me, that is not at going to get any of the reforms that he wants that we might agree with him on.

        I think more people on the lib-left don’t buy into it but, it’s still the default attitude among the geriatric leadership class of the Democratic party.

        • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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          10 months ago

          March to Restore Sanity

          That was on my mind too. Libs live in a fantasyland that gets more and more elaborate as they convince themselves that the old days were so much better and it would be great if we could get back to that.

          The other day I heard a MNSBC talking head named Elie Mystal actually say something like “We need a strong republican party.” What made it especially galling for me is that Mystal one of their legal experts who is by far the strongest, harshest critic of GOP justices on the supreme court. If he was just a tiny bit more bitter - he’d lose his MSNBC gig forever. Yet he’s such a boneheaded institutionalist - he can’t help but defend a system and a court that’s nearly guaranteed to get more and more reactionary over time.

          Mystal - like a typical lib - must make daily efforts to pretend he GOP was good before Trump showed up. Such libs must force away the reality that “good” republicans like the ex-president war criminal Dubya worked hard behind the scenes to put people like Kavanaugh on the court. And - of course - the GOP has wanted to kill Roe for decades.

      • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        Judging by clips frim his cable show, he absolutely destroys rich bastards and lays out every point case for the destruction of capitalism but always skips right past socialism as an alternative

        • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          Cold War mindset. That whole generation had it in general. I kind of feel pity for his horizons being limited in that way. The capitalists waged the Cold War mercilessly, which included producing some of the most potent propaganda in the history of mankind. He just can’t break out of it, especially when his livelihood became intimately tied to their political institutions.

    • WIIHAPPYFEW [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      The past few weeks have really made it sink in for me that we’re living through a decade with a worse cultural aura than the one where Shark Tale came out agony-immense

      I’ve used the aughts as a punching bag for so long to feel better about living in this era but the general feeling of malaise has gone on for too long for it to be a fluke of the transitional period from the 10s

      • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        Shark tale existed because they didn’t know how to properly design a movie by committee yet. These days they’ve cracked that formula, so there’s no crazy nonsense or bizzaro films anymore, it’s all the same generic middle of the road slop.

        • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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          10 months ago

          cracked that formula

          That reminds of Frank Zappa in 1987 interview where he talked about “cigar-chomping old guys”. The quote is not verbatim and it has some paraphrases. There doesn’t seem to be a verbatim source. There’s only copypasta with editorializing that annoyed me so I edited it.

          "Remember the 60s? That era that a lot of people have these glorious memories of? They really weren’t that great, those years. One thing that did happen in the 60s was some music of an unusual and experimental nature did get recorded, did get released. [The executives of the day were] cigar-chomping old guys who looked at the product and said, ‘I don’t know. Who knows what it is? Record it, stick it out. If it sells, alright!’ "

          “We were better off with those guys. Than we are with the hip, young executives making decisions about what people should hear. The hippies are more conservative than the conservative ‘old guys’ ever were.”

          Frank Zappa explains the decline of the music business - YouTube

      • Sinistar [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        I remember going through some of those and being shocked at how many homo- and transphobic jokes were on it. It’s like watching a movie from when they still used racial slurs in polite conversation.