Amy Goodman and Jon Stewart should join forces

I think Amy Goodman and Jon Stewart should join forces to create a youth led movement for accountable and democratic news media.

Why?


1. Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" last Halloween was basically a huge waste. Somewhere around 200,000 young people showed up from around the country, displaying their creativity, intelligence, and passion for all America to see---but why? It was a perfect rally for the hipster generation---all the material accoutrement of the revolutionary events our parents marched in to create real change during the 60's--but no real content, except to mock and/or laugh. But Jon did prove that if he wanted to, he could get the younger generation to show up. And that's not nothing.


2. Later, when Rachel Maddow interviewed Jon Stewart, he seemed to suggest that the rally's purpose  was to send a message to the media, not the right wing. He even says the 'real' fight going on in America isn't between Democrats and Republicans, but between corruption and not. And yet, he never went far enough to say what causes the myriad of problems that we find in the media.


3. Amy Goodman represents everything that Jon Stewart seems to want out of the media, under his definition that it is the media's job to shine light on corruption. She has an incredible record of seeking out the stories in our country and around the world that the people in power don't want anyone to hear. And yet beyond the war crimes, the corporate exploitation, the government crackdowns on activists, the corrupted judicial system and our crumbling environment--Amy Goodman's real cause is independent media. As she explained in the heart wrenching 2006 documentary "Independent Intervention", there is no chance for our democracy, and the world's population, without a robust independent media.


4. In Jon Stewart's most recent interview with Chris Wallace, he seems to be even closer to acknowledging publicly what really ails the news media, as he admitted that the bias of places like the New York Times and CNN isn't a liberal agenda but towards "sensationalism and laziness"(clearly caused by profit motives). Stewart seems truly pained by this, it's obvious throughout his interviews and on his show that he deeply feels there is a problem with media today.


5. Amy Goodman has no problem at all stating what the problem is, as found in the "About" section of Democracy Now!: "But the last two decades have seen unprecedented corporate media consolidation. The U.S. media was already fairly homogeneous in the early 1980s: some fifty media conglomerates dominated all media outlets, including television, radio, newspapers, magazines, music, publishing and film. In the year 2000, just six corporations dominated the U.S. media."

6. Jon Stewart is incredibly funny.


7. Amy Goodman is so dead serious.


Is this not a match made in heaven? Our generation is desperate for a cause, and here, two of the biggest heroes in the media--one with a proven track record of inspiring his audience to action, the other with a the kind of experience and integrity that all journalists should aspire to. Jon needs to make the connection between the corporate monopoly on the media and the problems in the media today. (These points are made brilliantly and methodically in Robert McChesney's book "The Problem of the Media".) And Amy Goodman needs someone who can strike an emotional chord without alienating people with her penetrating honesty and intensity.


I don't know how exactly this union should start---maybe Amy could come on the Daily Show? Or Jon to Democracy Now? Maybe Jon could mention Amy's existence to his viewers? I can't really imagine it. I just want them to come together.


If you could pick two of your heroes to join forces who would they be?

Jon Stewart Flipping the Fuck Out

Two nights ago, Jon Stewart dedicated his entire show to mocking Glenn Beck. If you haven't watched Glenn Beck, I think you should. Millions of people watch and listen to Glenn Beck everyday. They do so to gain information. He has had five books be #1 on the bestseller list. This makes me feel completely crazy. And really freaks me out. It has also made Jon Stewart completely crazy. Please watch him freaking the fuck out here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-march-18-2010-gary-locke

It's nothing short of amazing. It did make me wonder if Stewart might be getting pushed over the edge a little bit though. In fact, this whole week he seems to have taken a fever pitch. He perfectly pointed out the criminality of our banking institutions by comparing them to a individual actor, in another episode he equated all politics to WWE conflicts--asking, So you're saying it's all fake?, later one of his correspondents tried to hack into the meeting of the insurance head honchos. Jon Stewart is the only popular news commentators willing to point out how mind-blowingly ridiculous basically everything on the news and most of the policies that come out of congress actually are. I'm really starting to wonder if Stewart is going to turn one of these days, Al Franken style. Stop telling everyone at the end of the day, I'm just joking, and ask people instead to take him very seriously. But I guess that would probably ruin it all. Jon Stewart's makin jokes, that's why we're all listening, in the end.

Democrats Need to Start Playing

It is now popular for opinion columnists to write about the impending victory of the Republicans in fall of 2010. I think this should be described as what it actually is: a victory for Fox news. For some reason, Jon Stewart is the only 'news' source that consistently reports on the kind of gross and overwhelming lies that Fox News perpetuates every single day. To date, the Fox News Channels consistently garners about 3x as many viewers as the second place news channel, CNN.

As movies like OutFoxed and the Daily Show demonstrates almost every night, the Fox News Channel is anything but news. It's very difficult for me, and probably most liberals, to even watch the shows, because they are so thick with bias, exaggeration and confounding facts.

I don't like Fox news, and I wish they didn't exist. But I also don't think they are going away anytime soon. The left's answer to the network, MSNBC, though, I find even more annoying. Especially Rachel Maddow. She seems to think that she's going to beat Fox News by emphasizing, over and over, how stupid they are, or at least how much more clever she is. This is really stupid. People watch Fox News to be entertained, not to learn. And they are entertained, because Fox News emphasizes how scary and terrible the world is, and when people feel something, even if it's a bad feeling, they keep watching.

The left also needs to entertain. Except the emotion that they should stir is compassion, not fear. This would be a channel I would gladly watch. Rachel Maddow should be made over to look like a soft comforting woman, who, hour after hour, details the horrible and outrageous travesties that insurance companies have committed against people just like me. MSNBC should make these sob stories news, in the same way that Fox constructs stories and construes facts to make people afraid. In fact, I don't even think MSNBC would have to lie as much as Fox does, at least with the health care issue. The left needs to 'stoop' to Fox's level. I don't think it's stooping. It's a way of reminding liberals around our country why they are bleeding heart liberals in the first place. And it's not because they think they are more intelligent than everyone else. But rather that they see the inequality and suffering that is caused by individuals who are afraid, and they want to do something about it. And that's what the liberal media needs to remind them of, and the only way they will ever have a fair competition with Fox News.

The Methuselah Foundation

I found out about the Methuselah Foundation through Hulu's non-profit advertising. It was nestled between an ad for saving the rainforest and encouraging people to send their children to camp--in other words, it was presented as just another harmless foundation, a cause that is meant to tear at our heart strings. Its mission?

"The Methuselah Foundation is a non-profit medical charity dedicated to extending healthy human life through proven programs supported by people like you. The Foundation supports a variety of strategies that will accelerate progress toward a comprehensive cure for age-related disease, disability, and suffering."

So they have created a foundation dedicated to extending healthy human life. Now, it could be suggested that in a broad sense all of medicine has this goal, as it attempts to keep people healthy, and thus living longer. But the Methuselah foundation is tweaking this project, or at least making it more explicit. After all, it isn't a far stretch to take 'comprehensive cure for age-related disease' to mean 'comprehensive cure for death'. To encourage this type of research, the foundation is sponsoring the mprize, a motivational tool to get scientists to lengthen the life of lab rats. From what I can tell, essentially, this foundation is dedicated to finding the fountain of youth.

This confuses me. When I was in 4th grade, we read Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit. In the book, one family finds the fountain and lives forever, only to spend their eternal lives lonely and unfulfilled, living in an ephemeral world. The message of the book is clear: living forever would suck. I thought it was just understood--that eternal life is just one of those things that sounds good but we all realize is bad at the end of the day, like eating ice cream at every meal.

Apparently, with this kind of foundation being formed, it isn't. I can see the appeal of wanting to extend life (to an extent..hehe), but I also feel strongly that extending human life too long is actually just accelerating the experience of death. I think the mistake is in forgetting how our experience of time is linked to the amount of time we experience. To live for a thousand years would just mean that a year would seem to us like a week, and more likely than not, we would squander it in similar ways. Life's pace would slow, adolescence stretch for decades, children would rarely, if ever, be born--the milestones of our life cycle would be few and far between.

For these reasons, I think the whole foundation is wrong-headed. I'm not anti-relieving suffering at the end of life. But I'm pro-accepting death. Without it, I don't think there would be such a thing as life. It's a packaged deal, and it just seems futile and weird to try and avoid that. Why don't we take the energy surrounding the Methuselah foundation and start a different foundation: one dedicated to getting as many as people as possible to live like they were going to die tomorrow?

May I Root Against the Saints?

Jason Gay of the WSJ answers some important questions as the 3rd round of the NFL playoffs kicks off this weekend. Most important to me, of course, is May I Root Against the Saints?

His answer: May I root against the New Orleans Saints?

No, you may not. Rooting against the Saints is like rooting against Elin Nordegren. They're the Sentimental Team of the Century; if Dick Enberg were calling the NFC championship game, he'd need a trailer truck of Kleenex. Even if you forget everything that New Orleans endured during Hurricane Katrina—and how could you?—they're the Saints, the former Aints, one of the most hard-luck franchises in the history of hard luck. Not long ago, newborns came into the world in New Orleans hospitals with tiny grocery bags on their heads.

If the Saints win this weekend, we expect the Louisiana Superdome to levitate off the ground, stop at Parkway Bakery & Tavern for a roast beef po'boy and fly straight to Miami for the Super Bowl...

I couldn't agree more. By some strange and glorious miracle, or rather, Rodger Kamenetz's penchant for wanting to BE THERE when something incredibly amazing is happening, (this actually runs in the family, Anya calls it "having a bad case of the fomo's (fear of missing out)) I'm going to the Vikings-Saints game this weekend. I fully acknowledge that there are those in the world that are bigger Saints fans than me, and will do everything in my power to represent them wholeheartedly when I take my seat in the dome! Ahh I'm already getting stomach aches with the excitement!!

THIS JUST IN: Media is Changing

I know, this is a gimmick...

But it's bangin'