Month: December 2010

When Congress finally, belatedly passed legislation to help fund health care for the 9/11 responders, the New York Times — with thanks to the media's favorite pop-culture professor quote machine for more than a decade, Syracuse's Robert J. Thompson (full disclosure: I've even called him for a quote before) — put Edward R. Murrow's name in a headline suggesting that The Daily Show's Jon Stewart was his modern-day equivalent. All because Stewart devoted one of his final shows of 2010 to 9/11 responders and the need to pass said legislation. And whenever the NYT publishes, you can be sure that TV will follow. And so it was that ABC News' Sheila Marikar asked if the NYT comparison was "incredibly apt" (as friend of the site, Mediaite's Rachel Sklar suggested) or "ignorant garbage" (as Columbia University's Todd Gitlin suggested). CNN also asked its in-house comedian/host Pete Dominick about Jon Stewart's role as an advocate. Roll that clip, shall we?   The debate, of course, could be asking a better question. Dominick even brings up the point. It's not whether or not Jon Stewart is like Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite. Because he's not. Stewart is a comedian, so he is not held to the same journalistic standards that Murrow, Cronkite, or today's journalists are. It's not as if this is a new question, either. Four years ago, Hollywood made...

Dave Chappelle hasn't made another TV series since leaving Comedy Central behind five years ago, nor has he starred in a big-screen movie recently. So he must have disappeared, according to CNN, which devoted a "Where Are They Now?" segment to Chappelle this week. Where is he now? If CNN simply Googled him, the cable news network would have known that Chappelle and his family celebrated the holidays in Miami, he still lives in rural Ohio, and that he is performing stand-up comedy in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City whenever the urge to perform compels him. But that's not a sexy answer, is it? That's not going to keep you tuned in after the commercial break, is it? Here's how CNN played it:...