28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Jon Stewart: A Modern Socrates?, October 18, 2007
This review is from: The Daily Show and Philosophy: Moments of Zen in the Art of Fake News (Paperback)
That's one of the comparisons the authors make, and they may have a point.
What this book has to offer is a bunch of essays, by various authors, of the worldview, the methods and morals of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and the merry band of Senior Correspondents.
I greatly enjoyed all of them, and I thought there were some great insights in there. I only regret that the essays were a bit repetitive, sometimes, and that the philosophical theories involved didn't go much much beyond the Greeks (and the Founding Fathers). But a good read overall!
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. ~Peter Ustinov, December 17, 2007
This review is from: The Daily Show and Philosophy: Moments of Zen in the Art of Fake News (Paperback)
With elections coming and Jon Stewart sadly taking a break, this book substitutes (and when the writer's strike ends, should complement) as a guide to thinking critically about the media and the flat caricatures they give us of candidates.
I agree with the previous reviewer that the essays tend to overlap, but the still cover a lot of ground. The most repeated and important topics being: What is irony and what's good about it? What should the role of media be in a democracy and why do we learn this from a show on Comedy Central?
There is a reason that this book is The Daily Show and Philosophy and that there will never be a book about Bill O'Reilly and Philosophy or Wolf Blitzer and Philosophy. Somehow comedians have come to be some of our best journalists too. Watch the show because it's hilarious. Read this book to understand why this particular kind of humor is so desperately needed.
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35 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
You never know what you're going to get, January 3, 2008
This review is from: The Daily Show and Philosophy: Moments of Zen in the Art of Fake News (Paperback)
This odd little book is part of an odd little series at Blackwell on Philosophy and Popculture (yes, that's how they spell it). Some chapters aim to explore serious philosophical issues such as irony or truth with reference to "The Daily Show." Other chapters seem to be excuses for the author to play around with their favorite show and call it scholarship. It's far from clear what the book as a whole is trying to do, other than helping the publisher make some sales.
As this suggests, the chapters are highly variable in quality. As a rule of thumb, those chapters that quote more extensively from the "Daily Show" succeed better than those that don't. A few have almost no discussion of the show at all, instead using a theme from the show as a starting point for a riff unconnected with the show itself. The better chapters explore some serious issue with material taken from the show.
While some chapters don't really discuss "The Daily Show," others don't really discuss philosophy. For example, some successful chapters: analysis of the structure of Jon Stewart's humor and political rhetoric. That's not philosophy, but that really doesn't matter - - the chapter works. Most of the chapters do work in one way or another.
The book as a whole reveals a weak editorial hand as there is significant repetition across chapters. Most glaringly, two consecutive chapters summarize Harry Frankfurt's concept of "bullshit," while only one (the second, as it turns out) is necessary. Far too many chapters repeat the Annenberg Foundation study that frets about people getting their news from "The Daily Show" -- though one chapter, to its credit, makes a serious argument than this is a Good Thing.
Finally, one feature of this book warrants comment. The contributors reflect a young crowd of academics, and only five of the 21 have tenure. (If you chose philosophers at random from their association directory, you'd probably get the reverse, with five untenured out of 21.) They don't, for the most part, teach at prestigious places. These chapters in an edited book from a commercial press are unlikely to help their professional advancement. Why are they writing these chapters, then? Do they want their students to think they're cool? Are they doing serious philosophy? Are they just messing around? The book gave me no insight into the authors' purposes, and that purpose should be an important part of any book. A few are trying to be funny, and those chapters actually worked pretty well and I knew what the author was up to.
Whatever the goal, it's true that I learned a bit about philosophy and I gained some insight into why "The Daily Show" works as humor, news, and media critique. I also skimmed quickly through some chapters, which didn't really do any of those things. The book most resembled Forrest Gump's box of chocolates.
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