J---

By John Bertosa
There is a four-letter word in the English language that I have grown to despise.
I completely loathe this word because it has turned people who use it into deceivers, if not outright liars, 99.9 percent of the time.
And what is this profanity? It’s just the word “just”-- as in “I’m just joking” or “I’m just saying.” It is a safe bet that when someone states “I’m just joking” what they really mean is “I’m making a humorous statement but I’m also mixing in a serious observation which I feel will be more easily accepted if told in a light-hearted manner” and when people say “I’m just saying” what they really mean is “I stand by the simple, obvious meaning of what I just uttered but I also am trying to make another point using allusions, innuendos and/or other wordplay.”
Now, this brings me to this week’s topic here at Subject to Debate -- should we take seriously The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and other comedic observation shows like David Letterman?
And the answer is the jokes should not be taken literally but, yes they should be taken seriously because the shows are not "just" comedy.
One reason these shows should be taken seriously is because people in our society are using the Daily Show to get their news. They aren’t purposefully sitting down with notebook in hand believing every word, but they are picking up on the facts. Why are they doing this? Because political and world events are used as the set-up for the joke, heck, real-life politicians are coming in to sit down and be part of the process.
Case in point -- Over the summer, a very intellectual relative of mine was talking about an episode in which President Bush, traveling overseas, was seen addressing an Eastern European congregation using very colloqiual language. Now my relative didn’t focus on Jon Stewart’s joke about how such English could never properly be translated into Polish or Hungarian, she dwelled on the actually news element.
And then there is an acquaintance of mine, college-educated, who is regularly quoting Bill Maher during political discussions.
All this is in addition to the "real" news shows covering what the Daily Show and The Colbert Report are saying.
Now, intent is another reason this is not “just” joking. Humor in ye olden days used to just be about word play, whether it was a limerick or a “Why did the chicken cross the road.” But from Lenny Bruce in the 1950s through Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor in the 1970s, social observation matured as the popular basis for jokes. These comedians intended to have people think about the different aspects of our society when we laughed at their jokes.
And this humor's maturity has reached a new zenith with the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. No longer are comics just basing their jokes on the news, they are adopting a news format to give their humorous observations.
And when almost all the comedy is focused against one side or the other, it's not "just" joking, it's called preaching. And that is my problem with the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
The writers on those shows see the world from a certain viewpoint and they want to make the argument that you should to.
The only difference between these writers and George Will, Maureen Dowd and Rush Limbaugh is they do a better job of sugar-coating their observations.
So, if you want to defend the Daily Show writers' Freedom of Speech or even go out on a limb and defend their viewpoints, that's fine. But don't act like these are "just" jokes or say these shows don't have political viewpoints and should not be taken seriously.