Good news for fans of Comedy Central's late-night pseudo-pundits: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are back on the web. The two shows were removed from Google's Youtube when the cable network's owner declared war on the video repository; but now the Viacom-owned shows have reappeared on a management-approved site, Hulu. After the jump, last night's Colbert Report.
John McCain's primary qualifications for the presidency are that he's old, he was tortured, and he's been a corrupt Senator for hundreds of years. Also he'd like you to know that he has a sense of humor, which is why he's The Daily Show's most-invited guest ever. On the show last night, McCain once again demonstrated how "hip" and "with it" he is by naming a character on a popular sitcom. One that is currently on-air, even! Not, like, Maynard G. Krebs or something. Jon Stewart desperately tried to get him to appear more presidential by making a joke he knew McCain wouldn't play along with.
Pictured is a screen capture of the avatars assembled in Second Life for yesterday's last week's congressional hearing about virtual worlds. Why is congress giving Linden Lab the time of day? Terrorists, silly! According to Jane Harman, D-California, "Islamic militants are suspected of using Second Life, the Internet virtual world, to hunt for recruits and mimic real life terrorism." That's quite the bait to dangle in front of congress for free publicity, Linden Lab PR team! Full clip from the Daily Show after the jump.
We're thrilled to report the extending of an olive branch in the East Coast-East Coast comedy wars that have devastated the industry since a Tina Fey quote in Reader's Digest appeared to openly question Jon Stewart's ability to earn sincere laughs, vs. politically aligned "clapter." Fey told cinemablend.com that the quote was taken out of context:
Tina Fey, arguably the most powerful vagina-having joke force in the universe, has rarely minced words in the past when it comes to some of her lesser-abled collaborators, whether describing Paula Abdul as a "disaster" or Paris Hilton as "a disease-ridden fucktard" [Ed.note: Could we have an intern verify that?] But we never expected the 30 Rock star and showrunner to run off so freely at the mouth about her comedy giant equals, such as in the case of her surprisingly harsh assessment of Jon Stewart's more politically solicitous material:
Tina Fey "RIPS" Jon Stewart! Where "rips" means "makes a mild joke at the expense of his show." Fey told Reader's Digest (ha! wait, really?) that laughter is preferable to applause, in comedy. Breaking! "You can prompt applause with a sign. ... My friend Seth Meyers coined the term 'clapter,' which is when you do a political joke and people go, 'Woo-hoo.' It means they sort of approve but didn't really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] 'The Daily Show.' " You know, she's 100% right, if depressingly, completely un-self-aware. [NYP]
The late-breaking news about now former Gov. Eliot Spitzer's sex scandal caught the Daily Show and some of its late-night compatriots short of jokes, and Daily Show host Jon Stewart admitted as much on Monday night's show, when he had to cut from a few brief Spitzer jokes to a package on Wyoming's Democratic primary. One night later, the political comedy show was ready to feast on the news, as shown in the thumbnail at left. The result lacked the impressive same-day turnaround of David Letterman's Monday night performance, but had its moments, as show in the excerpt after the jump.
"'Course, there's still obviously some collateral damage leftover from the strike — emotionally, economically, perhaps worst of all, the cancellation of the legendary Vanity Fair Oscar party. They said they did it out of, quote, respect for the writers. And um, oh! You know another way they could show respect for the writers? Uh, maybe one day invite some of them to the Vanity Fair Oscar party. They would enjoy it. They won't mingle, don't worry." [Jon Stewart, host of last night's Academy Awards telecast, ribs the Conde Nast magazine's notoriously snobby party planners, via Mixed Media]
Is there anything that tickles the funny bone more than Alzheimer's disease? Of course not. It's undeniable comedy gold. But thanks to best actress nominee Julie Christie and her big British mouth, there probably won't be any Alzheimer's jokes on this Sunday's Academy Awards. Last month, Christie won a Screen Actors Guild Award for her portrayal of an Alzheimer's patient in the film Away From Her, and she's heavily favored to win the Oscar, too (despite the fact that we don't know a single person who's seen that movie). However, when Christie took the podium to make her victory speech back in January, she quipped:
David Letterman developed an awesome cottage industry repeatedly tweaking his "Mitt Romney looks like..." joke before the animatronic, amazingly lifelike demagogue dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination earlier this month. But Jon Stewart just won't let the gag die. Speaking to Larry King tonight, Stewart worked in two digs about Romney, one of which actually began with the words "he looks like..." Letterman's ownership of the meme is so complete Stewart will probably have to cut a royalty check tomorrow morning, but it will be so worth it:
Sure, you already brewed up a vat of 9-layer dip for your Independent Sprit Awards party this Saturday, but don't go nuts and eat the whole thing. You're gonna want to have some leftovers laying around, because apparently there's another award show going on this weekend. It's called the Oscars, and while there's no big prime time star like Rainn Wilson at the helm, they did manage to convince a comedian from basic cable to perform the hostly duties. The New York Times scored an interview with said host, and word on the street is that is Jon Stewart is going to attempt to be humorous!
· In a move that "might" be related to the strike, Jon Stewart pulls out of a Paley Center fundraiser honoring unkillable Viacom overlord Sumner Redstone; presumably, the possibility of having to cross WGA protesters to host an event celebrating a man who's previously pledged to "live long enough to watch every last one of those greedy, scribbling serfs die on the picket line" suddenly made the gig seem less savory. [THR]
· On Super Tuesday, network TV audiences overwhelming chose Fox's American Idol and House to ABC's coverage of the primaries, which, despite occasional clips of Mitt Romney's hilariously inept audition for the Republican nomination, never stood a chance against the misadventures of dozens of equally delusional Idol hopefuls. [Variety]
For those of you requiring context for the disturbingly violent cross-network brawl between Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart you're about to witness, a feud recently erupted between O'Brien and Colbert over their dueling claims of having made Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee candidacy viable (ignoring, of course, The Chuck Norris factor).
The host of The Daily Show, Stewart is America's most popular fake news anchor on the left.
· With the 65th Golden Globes Awards having succumbed to the strike plague, all eyes turn to its far wealthier and more powerful cousin Oscar, whose coughing up of blood into a lace handkerchief doesn't strike us as a good omen. [Variety]
· The loss of the Globes was the first real sting felt by the film industry since the start of the strike, resulting in studio executives demanding of a supposedly merciful God how He could have allowed them to go about all that For You Consideration campaigning in vain. [Variety]
While Stewart lamented his program's inability to get the kind of side-deal the WGA made with Worldwide Pants (the Guild, it seems, isn't really embracing the idea of giving corporate monolith Viacom a break), he still dedicated most of the show to the strike; in the above segment—one probably not as improvised as the WGA would like, but given the pro-cause subject matter, the union probably won't be sending anyone over to Stewart's office to have a testy sit-down about strike rules—the host details the dispute over internet compensation, explaining how the $1.99 fees charged for iTunes downloads of his show are purely a shipping and handling charge, the proposed "Shut The Fuck Up" formula for new-media residuals, and how the viewing of written content on iPods clearly falls under the "Hickory Farms promotional cheese" principle.
Comedy Central's Daily Show followed in the footsteps of the other late night show hosts and returned on air last night despite the absence of its writers. Just as we thought, Jon Stewart's humor is mostly unaffected since the majority of it consists of making kind of funny "Jewy" noises and knitting his brow. In a nice touch he insisted on substituting an indefinite article for the definite one in his show's title. Watch video here.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, both members of the striking Writers Guild, will go back on the air January 7. In a statement yesterday, Comedy Central said they were still hoping for a "swift resolution to the current stalemate that will enable the shows to be complete again." The implication is that Stewart and Colbert are reluctant to go back to work—so why the hell are they? Other late-night hosts like David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and Carson Daly (okay, in his case, "late-night host"), are also heading back to the airwaves. [NYTimes]
With Conan, Jay, Jimmy, and the rest of the late night gang announcing they're reluctantly headed to back to work without their striking writers, it seemed inevitable that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert wouldn't be far behind. They've released this joint statement on their January 7th return: "We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence." A more disappointed than ambivalent WGA has already issued a reminder that writerless versions of the shows aren't going to fill the Colbert and Stewart-shaped holes in our lives: "Comedy Central forcing Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert back on the air will not give the viewers the quality shows they've come to expect. The only way to get the writing staffs back on the job is for the AMPTP companies to come back to the table prepared to negotiate a fair deal with the Writers Guild." [AP, WGA.org]
The Writers Guild of America (WGA), which represents TV and film writers striking over their Internet pay, has decided to negotiate with individual bosses instead of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Late-night hosts David Letterman and Jon Stewart will be the first to take the bait and negotiate side deals to get their shows back on the air, the New York Times reports. We're pretty sure Viacom will settle with Stewart's writers quickly. As the Daily Show scribes themselves pointed out, the company's $1 billion suit against Google/YouTube indicates they must understand the value of video online.
