February 17, 2015
Jon Stewart
Source: Shutterstock
Hey, it’s fake but accurate, as liberal media types like to say, because it’s troublingly easy to imagine Jon Stewart replacing Williams on the NBC evening news. Just look at the “Hindenburg at Lakehurst” reaction by other media mavens to Stewart’s departure from The Daily Show.
Because all this time, Stewart has been their id. Nothing else explains his popularity, which was, in itself, hugely exaggerated. As another party pooping blogger wisecracked:
Jon Stewart, a man who got 1.5 ratings, a smidge less than Mike Huckabee’s 1.7, was apparently beloved by the entire nation …
Nevertheless, Viacom’s stock value dropped by about $350 million after Stewart announced his imminent departure. I was shocked by that figure, but got zapped again, Milgram-wise, when I read the article under the headline:
That staggering amount represents less than 2 percent of the corporation’s total worth.
So, yes, it has been a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week” for the mainstream media. Former crack addict and wife beater David Carr of the New York Times died, as did Bob Simon of 60 Minutes and, as some of us like to call it”speaking of journalistic malpractice””Pallywood.”
A few old-enough-to-know-better conservative commentators, buoyed by “Chopperquiddick,” have been celebrating (yet again) the “end of the liberal media.” Some even smell a conspiracy.
But given Viacom’s billions, and the comparable wealth of every other print and broadcasting conglomerate, it’s sadly safe to say that reports of big media’s death”like much of their very own output, from Twain’s premature obit onward”are greatly exaggerated.
