Unreported

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Allison and Jamie discuss this much-talked about piece on quinoa that appeared on the Guardian website, Deadspin is awesome, Notre Dame finally makes a statement…about a pretend lady, Jon Stewart is awful during Zero Dark Thirty interview, and GQ manages to be both racist and sexist.

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Press critic and NYU professor of journalism Jay Rosen stops by to discuss Wikileaks, Jon Stewart, the TSA, Net Neutrality, Fox News, and the media’s performance.

You should all check out Jay’s blog at pressthink.org and follow him on Twitter (twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu)

Allison and Jamie briefly discuss Wikileaks up front, particularly the growing calls for Julian Assange’s assassination.

Then it’s time for more of your Listener Mail. Today, it’s a question about when it’s time to stop smoking pot.

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Image from Comedy Central

Like most self-respecting liberals, I enjoy The Daily Show. In my opinion, the show was at its best during the eight torturous (literally) years of the Bush administration when Jon Stewart and his writers had a very clear enemy to rip apart on a weekly basis. And while the show still has some wonderful moments (thanks in large part to the hilarious “correspondents,”) The Daily Show has definitely had a hard time finding its comedic voice ever since the election of Barack Obama.

The show has always mocked Democrats as well as Republicans, which is only fair considering the abysmal state of the Democratic Party, but in their haste to balance the funny, the writers are demoralizing their own base.

In 2006, Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris, two East Carolina University assistant professors, compared student reaction to coverage of the 2004 presidential race by CBS News and by The Daily Show. They concluded that Stewart show watchers are more cynical about candidates, campaigns, the electoral system and the news media than are network news viewers. The Washington Post declared that this was very bad news. Columnist Richard Morin mused if Stewart was the “enemy of democracy.”

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

I think cynicism is actually a good thing. The world is fucked up. Capitalism is broken. There needs to be radical change. If young people are depressed, that means they’re paying attention to the injustices in societies. However, The Daily Show simultaneously injects a certain degree of cynicism about politics and then does the same thing with the world of activism and protest. In its quest to be comically balanced i.e. mock the right and the left, it leaves its audience thinking, “Well, then what’s the point in doing anything?” Young liberals don’t want to be Neo-cons, but they also don’t want to be the protester Jon Stewart calls a “jackass.”

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Thanks to the Daily Show, the only show on any network to make an attempt at defending the Palestinian position.No offense to Jon, or the excellent staff/writers over at the Daily Show, but it’s a sad inditement that they are the only show that didn’t parrot the “Israel has the right to protect herself” argument.

The Daily Show is also the only show I have seen on American television that correctly points out that Gaza is under a cruel blockade, and Israel is still essentially occupying the territory because it has sealed off the Gaza territory from receiving needed supplies and food.

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Jason Jones and the Daily Show go to Wasilla, AK to see what “small-town America” means.