Everything Old Is New Again in 2024
Guess who's coming to The Daily Show?
In the wake of the New Hampshire primary results, the odds of a Joe Biden-Donald Trump matchup in the 2024 general election seem like a mortal lock. All of the polling suggests that many Americans are displeased with this choice set. This is partly because Trump and Biden are both very, very old and have been on the political stage for quite some time.
A presidential election year is always a ripe moment for political satire, and for this presidential year in particular there will be a demand for comedic takes to make everyone laugh when they are not crying. In other words, this is a moment for The Daily Show, which has been on Comedy Central1 for more than a quarter-century, to really step up its game. The show that Craig Kilborn, Jon Stewart, and Trevor Noah all made their bones is a ripe platform for someone new to offer a fresh take on the state of American politics.
Readers, if you’ve been reading the news for the last day then you know where this segue is going. If not, get prepared for a very retro announcement courtesy of CNN’s Oliver Darcy:
Jon Stewart is heading back to “The Daily Show.”
The comedian, who during his 16-year run as host of the Comedy Central program established it as an entertainment and cultural force, will return to host the show each week on Mondays starting February 12, Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios announced Wednesday.
Stewart, who returns as the 2024 presidential election season heats up, will also executive produce the show and work with a rotating line-up of comedians who will helm the program the rest of the week, Tuesdays through Thursdays.
“Stewart is the voice of our generation, and we are honored to have him return to Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show’ to help us all make sense of the insanity and division roiling the country as we enter the election season,” Chris McCarthy, chief executive of Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios, said in a statement….
Convincing Stewart to return to “The Daily Show” is a major coup for Comedy Central. While Trevor Noah received critical acclaim for hosting program after Stewart exited, it never quite had the same cultural impact it did under Stewart’s stewardship.2
The poaching of Stewart is also a win for Paramount Global, which has been trying to breathe life into its Paramount+ streaming service.
Axios’ Sara Fischer provides some further context, explaining that “Stewart will be the executive producer of every episode this year and next, but he will only host on Mondays through the election…. Mondays are the most-watched day during the week and will serve as a platform for Stewart to catch audiences up on news that broke between Thursday and Sunday.”
The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has decidedly mixed feelings about this development. On the one hand, there is no denying this feels like a trying out something that worked a decade ago but maybe not now. In the years since Stewart departed I have read3 a fair number of takes suggesting that Stewart’s schtick helped lay the groundwork for our current political moment. For example, in 2016 Vox’s Emmitt Rensin described Stewart’s time on The Daily Show as, “a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that its opponents were, before anything else, stupid. The smug liberal found relief in ridiculing them.” Furthermore, it’s not like Stewart’s post-TDS projects were all that great. He wrote a meh movie and hosted The Problem With Jon Stewart on Apple+ which had it’s, um, problems and ended abruptly.
To put it bluntly: in a moment when a swath of younger voters believe that there is no difference between Biden and Trump, is Jon Stewart really going to be the guy that persuades them otherwise?
Actually… maybe?
It’s worth remembering that Stewart left The Daily Show only six weeks after Trump took his ride down the gold-plated escalator. He started his Apple+ show after Trump lost in 2020. We have never really seen what Stewart would do on a regular basis with Trump as a candidate. His 2011 riff on Sarah Palin and Donald Trump eating pizza in Times Square remains one of my favorite comedy bits of this century.
So even if I am not persuaded that Stewart’s return will work out great, I’m glad to watch him try to revive the magic. As a Gen Xer who has been horrified by the GOP’s metamorphosis in the 21st century, there are Daily Show sketches from Stewart’s time as host that still stick with me. His analysis of how Fox News coped with the 2012 election was pretty good as well. I’m also partial to his Passover vs. Easter comparison.
Done right, this could also allow for a transition to a new host at the end of 2024. The owners of The Daily Show seemed at something of a loss about who would host the show after Trevor Noah departed the show at the end of 2022 — so much so that former correspondent Roy Wood Jr. kept mouthing the words “hire a host” during Noah’s Emmy acceptance speech earlier this month. Even during this fallow period there have been some solid bits, but maybe Stewart as executive producer could revive this franchise.
Maybe this is the comedy equivalent of Michael Jordan returning to the Chicago Bulls after his baseball run and winning three more NBA championships. Or… maybe it’s Michael Jordan coming out of retirement to play for the Wizards.
For the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World, however, what matters is the comedy more than the political impact. In retrospect, Stewart’s influence over the body politic was wildly overstated. I am way more interested in whether he can make me laugh during an unfunny year. Laughter is good. Laughter is necessary. Hopefully, Jon Stewart will be able to go to the comedy well one more time.
For Gen Z: Comedy Central is a channel on something called “cable television.” Or, to translate into your lingo: Comedy Central is a show streaming on Paramount+.
Darcy might be correct but I don’t think this had anything to do with Noah — who had some brilliant bits and clever innovations — so much as the general decline of cable as compared to streaming just as Noah was coming on board.
I think I also wrote one back in 2009.
I had never seen the Passover vs. Easter sketch. Hilarious! I am confident that Jon Stewart will do his best and make us laugh.
As a fellow GenXer horrified by both parties' metamorphoses into illiberal monsters, I am less optimistic. I find myself more in agreement with Millennial Eliza Mondegreen and wrestling with the same questions she posed at Unherd:
"As someone who grew up watching The Daily Show, Stewart’s trajectory over the past few years has been painful to observe — and not just in the way that any bombed comedy set pains the audience. Stewart’s return to comedy raises some uncomfortable personal questions. Did I change? Did he change? In other words: what was I laughing at all those years? Was Stewart always so righteous and insufferable? Had I failed to see it because I’d been righteous and insufferable in just the same way?"
https://unherd.com/thepost/why-isnt-jon-stewart-funny-anymore/