Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like without Jon Stewart.
The host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show is often the only thing standing between me and a vial of hemlock. Last Thursday’s show was a classic. The first segment featured one of Stewart’s blistering takedowns of the hypocrisy that passes for fair-and-balanced journalism on Fox News. It’s not hard to make the eye-bulging loudmouths over at “Bullshit Mountain” — as Stewart has so aptly tagged Roger Ailes’ Republican propaganda machine — look stupid. But making them look like the gilded fascists of The Hunger Games requires Stewart’s adroit team of soundbite-sniffing bloodhounds.
Clip after clip of Fox pundits pig-piling on poor people reveals a veritable circus maximus of hate, targeted at the “moochers” and “takers” who use food stamps and welfare checks to basically, um, survive. But then Stewart yanks out the rug with an onslaught of excerpts showing those same pundits applauding the politicians, CEOs and lobbyists clever enough to exploit tax loopholes for personal and corporate gain. The disconnect is deafening.
But that was just the first part of the show.
In the segment that followed Stewart, admitting he needed to calm down, gleefully offered up Senator Mitch McConnell’s latest campaign ad, which features the senator smiling, glad-handing, walking, talking and chewing gum all at the same time, but without any sound except for an elevator-friendly music score. What was McConnell’s staff thinking, posting two-plus minutes of content-free b-roll of the Yertle the Turtle lookalike on the interwebs?
Seizing on this low-hanging fruit, Stewart’s staff dubbed in their own soundtracks — including Sir Mix-A-Lot singing “I like big butts…” — in an effort to make “a boring person fun.” Stewart then invited viewers to offer their own musical scores at #McConnelling.
After taking this week off, The Daily Show will return for what promises to be a viral-hashtag-mashup free-for-all.
For more Viral Video nuggets, go here.
