America Has Changed. So Has Jon Stewart.

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2024

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2010, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a satirical rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., called the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. This was amid the Tea Party movement. Political emotions were running high. And Stewart ended the rally with a speech slamming the media for stoking the country’s divisions. “But we live now in hard times, not end times,” he said. “And we can have animus and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.” That rally has a Rosetta Stone quality to it now. Because what Stewart was describing has only gotten worse. Our divisions feel deeper and more dangerous. So as we enter election week, I wanted to have a conversation with Stewart about some of the arcs he has traced in American politics since he first hosted “The Daily Show” in 1999. We discuss how the media has become increasingly segmented and polarized in the past 25 years, how that has affected politics, how he understands Tucker Carlson’s political transformation and whether his own politics have changed. Note: The Washington Post is one of several news organizations mentioned in this conversation. We taped this interview before the recent controversy at the Washington Post over ending its practice of presidential endorsements -- a decision made by the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos. This episode contains strong language. Book Recommendations: I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This (But I’m Going to Anyway) by Chelsea Devantez The works of Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions, Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, etc.) Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. So you go back to the Tea Party moment in 2010.
0:33.4	Tucker Carlson had only just been hired by Fox News.
0:36.9	He was just two years out from being employed
0:39.1	by MSNBC. Elon Musk was standing for Barack Obama. He got John Stewart then into his second
0:46.2	decade as a host of The Daily Show. And he and Stephen Colbert hosts a satirical rally to
0:52.8	restore sanity and or fear at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
0:57.7	And Stewart gives this speech.
1:00.0	But we live now in hard times, not end times.
1:17.6	And we can have animus and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.
1:32.5	When I look back now from the vantage point, the era we're in and the eras we've been in,
1:39.2	this moment, to me, it has this kind of rosetta stone quality.
1:43.5	There's so much in it that is going to blossom
1:45.5	in such strange and terrifying ways. And there's something about the sanity fear framing. It seemed like a
1:52.0	joke then. In some way, it doesn't seem like a joke now. In the years since Rale,
1:57.9	Stewart has continued to track the media's tendency to amplify
2:02.3	some of the worst, most divisive tendencies in American politics.
2:06.1	He's now back hosting The Daily Show sometimes.
2:08.7	He's got the weekly show podcast with John Stewart, which is great.
2:12.7	So with very, very little time now before Election Day, I wanted to have him on the show to talk about his understanding of this arc of these decades,
2:22.1	what he has seen, the way he has seen the media, some of the figures in it change,
2:27.2	the way he has changed.
2:28.9	As always, my email as Recline Show at NYTimes.com.
	...

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