It’d be interesting to know if those who read a lot also have cynical views of politicians. Perhaps reading is destroying democracy. Or maybe it’s higher education that’s doing it, or the acto fo googling “Dubya.”

It certainly couldn’t be the politicians themselves, because they are holy, infallible visionaries who only occasionally get indicted.

Jon Stewart is acting unwittingly as a foil for Bush.  Every night thousands of irate Bush haters tune in to Stewart to vent their rage. Stewart has inadvertently acting as a foil for almost 6 years. If Stewart has not acted in this capacity, someone might have tried a change of leadership. Bush’s fall from respect is simple. he never gave the proper respect to the fifth commandment. something his good buddy Jesus Christ would never have missed. This may be the worst case of strange bedfellows ever recorded.

The US isn’t a democracy.  Being able to vote every 4 years, and letting rich people run our lives afterwards isn’t democracy.

Both political parties are sides of the same coin.  Both are filled with rich people, both are willing to take away our freedoms to protect themselves.  We fear the government more than it fears us… Simple proof that the Constitution is nothing more than toilet paper for the president.

I watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report everyday, never miss an episode. I am also a young voter. Jon Stewart is not the reason why I don’t vote, the reason why I don’t vote: the candidates. I have yet to see a candidate that I feel compelled to give my only vote to. The only thing Jon Stewart does is show me how stupid these candidates truly are. Why would you want to vote for someone that can’t even speak a complete sentence or someone who flip flops on every issue? I don’t, but thats all that is out there. So don’t blame Jon Stewart for young voters not voting, it’s not his fault there are no politicians worth voting for.

why blame president bush i think hes a a great guy with an all american yankee doddle attitude hes no war criminal in fact i think of him as a pencil pusher rather thanas a blood thirsty monster and war monger but the guys who own the pencils are different they are the bosses at general motors and lockheed martin and exxon mobil and mc donalds they need wars they need mindless easily maniulated people to power there drive for the accumlation of capital and averting the crisis of overproduction so lets not blame comrade bush for our troubles but look at the real reason that is capitalism its the same thing as attributing the crimes of stalin on “communism” but for now patrty on dudes

This is just plain outrageous!

Please visit http://www.enemyofdemocracy.com to send a message to the Post and the “researchers” and to support Jon!

Thanks!

Paul

This is just another example of blaming the wrong people for the problems we have today.  Jon Stewart reads our minds each night, that is why we watch his show.  He isn’t making us cynical, he’s giving us an outlet for our frustration.  I am a Daily Show veiwer and I always vote in the elections.  But instead of blaming Jon Stewart people should focus on why we’re upset.  The people running for office or all ready in office are our problem.  This week the Senate refused to pass the minimum wage bill to help the poorest in our country.  That’s the problem in America, the poor getting poorer, the war in Iraq, the school systems and I could go on.  THat’s why I’m cynical and thankful that there’s Jon Stewart to at least make me laugh.

Does anyone know anyone that watches the Daily Show wih any regularity that does not vote? Seriously, people who don’t vote don’t care about the majority of topics touched upon by this show. What a bunch of BuSh.

I haven’t missed an episode of the Daily Show since before John Stewart took over.  I used to record tv shows on tape!  I didn’t become cynical until 2000...end of the year, I think.

Hell yes he read the article Jennifer, and very carefully I’d say. What you read is a basic intellectual skill known as interpretation. Bear in mind that Lawyers and Journalists are both advocates. Journalist’s just have a much larger jury. Look, like it or not, Stewart’s on his way out. Coming events cast their shadows beforehand. First Bill Mahr, now this. Whole Goddamn paradigm reminds me of The Smothers Brothers Show back in the day. Wildly popular with this crowd’s parents, would seem banal by contemporary standards, but adjusted for relativity? The same substance and objective comedy. Ask Bob Scheer about it, he’ll tell you, he was around...In fact he oughta post a comparison piece. But then again, look what happened to him at the LA Times?...Reminds me of some Old Bob Dylan songs, with an Orwellian context “---Ooooooo the LA Times they are a’changin’.” and “---Lord Lord they shot poor Bob Scheer dowwnnnn, Lord Lord they made him lay his 60’s radical pen downnnnnn.” Ask him how those Ol’ songs go, trust me, he knows the tunes. Yes I know, I’m a horrible man, I even enjoy it sometimes. But allow me this small dispensation. Any guy who sticks to his Marxist keyboard, even if he’s dead wrong, and then plays the typer on Big Sister Hillary’s big ass can’t be all bad. Besides he never sent anyone to The Gulag, or Isla del Pinos, now known as Juvenes.

Did the WaPo author read the actual study? Here’s a quote:

“We have demonstrated that there are attitudinal effects to exposure to The Daily Show, but what of behavioral effects? Increased internal efficacy might, all other things being equal, contribute to greater participation. Citizens who understand politics are more likely to participate than those who do not. Moreover, the increased cynicism associated with decreased external efficacy may contribute to an actively critical orientation toward politics. This may translate into better citizenship,because a little skepticism toward the political system could be considered healthy for democracy.”

You can find the study here:

http://apr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/3/341.pdf

There’s also an interview with the Researcher’s at the Daily Reflector

Remember what brought us down this dark road in history. I refer to it as pre-regan and when regan became to power. Look costly at the shift in politics foreign and at home. Its not going to get better if we don,t wake up and see reality for what it is. For the democrats to win they need to start listen to the people who in the past try to communcate with them but they didn,t want to listen or take what they were saying serious. They need to keep in mind these are there voters.

Well if democracy hadn’t poisoned itself to begin with the government wouldnt be looking for a scapegoat to pin its fuckups onto…

Maybe they’ll make Stewart drink Hemlock?...Don’t start jumpin’ up and down. They did Bill Mahr didn’t they? Even if he was an impudent sneering, effeminate little shit he got the boot from ABC because he saw things far too clearly and had tendency to speak much too plainly and directly...called The Decider a sack of shit if I remember correctly. Stewart’s wildly popular with the paleo-Left. I wonder if they would raise hell if neo-Con influence [covert action] did end up blowing him off the air? Because this leads me to think they may be preparing the ground work to do just that...or castrate him one...That, and the accompanying Washington Post article was somewhat hazy in my estimation. I could get dawg drunk and be more informative than that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/the-real -daily-show-ef_b_23653.html

Enough said.

An article at Tom Paine regarding this study:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/05/24/the_daily_ show_cause_and_effect.php

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

AW GEEZ

HA HA HA HA HA

What nonsense.........

Why is truthdig posting this story? do they believe this crap? Their parroting of this story, with critical analysis of it makes me question their motivation.

With the higher registration and increased number of younger voters that participated in the 2004 elections, I find the basic premise of this arguement to be largely flawed right out of the gate. I first caught the Daily Show on an August vacation in 2001, right before 9-11. I became a regular in the year following 9-11. It is apathy, not cynicisim, that actually depresses voter activity across the spectrum of the voting public. And pollsters will point to the fact that negative campaigns often work better than any others. To state Jon Stewart should have used his show during the last five years of this administration to expose the lies and deceptions of the past few years tells me someone has not been a regular viewer of his show. He exposes more hyprocisy in one show a week than the cable shows get around to in a full month of Sundays. His show, targeted to a younger audience mainly made up of college age individuals, using comedy and wit are, indeed, what is needed to spur thought, expose the hyprococy, and defeat the apathy that for too long ruled the roost among younger voters. It was watching his show that prompted me to go online to find out details and facts often deluded or ignored by the mainstream media. I would suggest that is comedy shows like his that actually spur individuals to get involved rather than drive them from political discussions and activism. It is the truth that sets people free. Comedy is just one key to unlocking the door to educating the masses of how important it is to keep an ear tuned to the political process.

This crap passes as analysis? I’m GLAD people are more cynical about the (corporate controlled) media and the leading “2” political parties.Of course no one thinks it wise to opt out of politcs, but isn’t that a phony dichotomy? That either you swallow the crap the Rep/Dems are shovelling, along with their media lap-dogs or you give up. Personnally, I vote for the smartest, least bought off candidate (usually a Green). Haven’t given up, don’t support corporate whores and I like the Daly Show!

The influence of Stewart and Colbert is directly proportionate to the extent that mainstream media has become amenable to those who run our governments.  When NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN & Fox stop their willingness to be agreeable to nonsense answers from the administration officials, perhaps we won’t need Stewart anymore.

Maybe they become disenchanted with politics after watching the Daily Show because people like Jon Stewart are not afraid to speak truth to power. And these days the truth is pretty discouraging.

Give me a more informed citizenry anyday, and let the chips fall where thay may.

Just blame the couch...The politicians corruption,hipocrisy and all for themselves attitude is what turn people off!!!

Hard news? What hard news?

The young people have every right to be cynical about politics as it is practiced today, where money will buy you high office, where elections are rigged and stolen, where the laws are ignored or circumvented by the people entrusted to make and safeguard them, and where money extracted from people in the form of taxation never returns to them by increasing their safety, improving their health, or educating their young people.

Politics today is not democracy. Jon Stewart may be the best hope democracy has to flourish.

The Daily Show only points out the morons in politics it does not create them.  (Do I really think that or is Jon Stewart making me think it???)

OH NO! Stewart’s show smashes the rosy picture that is force fed to us by the corporate-owned mainstream media channels. Owned by the same corporations that channel millions of dollars into Republican campaigns. The media and the Republicans have a nice little dance going. Dirty dancing. Shocking in it’s vulgarity. The cynical views of politics “could Lead them to just say no to voting.” OH MY GOD! REEFER MADNESS! Well, we all know what dirty dancing leads to, and to anyone paying attention, the sordid goings-on between media and the GOP is graphically apparent. Heaven forbid there should be a viewpoint expressed that competes with the mind-numbing mainstream media that is keeping America sheltered from the truth with it’s glorified hype. Next Stewart will probably say there is no Santa. Please don’t ruin that for us Jon!

What Democratic country are we talking about? Is it the one with two stolen elections of 2000 and 2004? People go to college to learn to think for themselves and practice intelligent discernment in politics and any other field.
In Nazi and Communist occupied contries, the first target were the college educated, the intellectuals, AND the spiritual, (martyrs for truth, not the jingoist religious.)

Are they just making this up? In my experience, to understand the humor you would need to understand the issues. I have watched the show with my teenage daughter and when she doesn’t understand or is unaware of the topic, I will pause the Tivo and try to fill her in. If anything, the show seems to engage her, not turn her off, about politics. I would be curious to know if the study was done by a conservative group, perhaps trying to squelch dissent. I think the Daily show is art reflecting life, not the other way around. It appears that the Daily Show has poked a sensitive spot and the swiftboat crowd is headed Jon and company’s way.

John Stewart, Enemy of Democracy? I don’t know, but it seems to me you have the start of a Goddamn Cultural Revolution in The DP here. Increasingly I’ve noticed even NPR’s starting to sound like a polite, subdued circumspect version of Sean Hannity...this is unprecedented...That and Stewart’s got a face only a mother could love, on payday, which I’m sure is very handsome.

DAILY SHOW FEINGOLD BODY ARMOR

One man’s cynicism is another man’s reality.

Rumsfeld’s dictum, i.e. “you go to war with the army you got” even if an absence of body armor is decimating your troops seems oddly to apply here. Personally I would want all youth protected by some cynical armor.

Jon Stewart runs clips of Dick Cheney telling fat lie after fat lie after fat lie. He makes it clear that a candidate who comes up against the GOP/Rove zero morality campaign machine will be accused of homosexuality, cowardice and having negroid blood in their family. He will likely point out that the Democratic candidate that seeks votes as an alternative to big business is collecting their campaign funds at the same troughs as their opponent.

There seems to be a youthful rumbling that Russ Feingold is a man willing to take principled positions. It would be well if this is true. Let’s hope that cynicism is intellectual armor not a state of mind.

That’s bullshit. You know what makes me cynical about politcs? Politicians.

Yes, it is bad, in isolation, that it makes people distrust the media and the electoral system. But if these instustions have been corrupted and that corruption is truly there, are we saying it is bad to appreciate reality?

Sure it is a problem that young people are not as involved as they should be, but it is this assumption that if they partcipated everything would be rosy that I can not support.

The Republican party and this adminstration in particular has shown a cynical disregard for the intent and text of our laws and Constitution. For people to assume that the system as practiced today is broken is an accurate assement of reality.

Only by recognizing that there is a serious problem will we be able to fix it as a society.

more BS from the so called liberal media.

how could any critically thinking young person not be completely cynical about our political system after seeing what these people have done to our contry-and their future??

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are some of the only people in the media that are willing to stand up and speak truth to power, and point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

lots of people who watch TDS have given up on mainstream news sources, because in their efforts to produce “infotainment” they have become utterly vapid and information-less, propaganda shills for the corporate overlords and the Bush administration.

I won’t even support NPR anymore, they’ve given up on objectivity and truth telling, and appear to have intentionally gone soft on investigative reporting or hard-hitting commentary-except when it comes to blaming Democrats.

one doesn’t have to spend much time comparing the breathless reporting of the blue dress and the impeachment debacle with the (nonexistent) reporting of this administration’s lies and deceptions leading us into a war of no return to be convinced that there’s no truth in journalism anymore.

The problem IS the mainstream media (MSM) and the corrupt and disfunctional political system.

That is why we are seeing the rise of the blogosphere and the popularity of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Noam Chomsky, and Gore Vidal.

Of course it’s the young who are so cynical. They are the ones who are getting hoodwinked into dying for energy and corporate interest in the name of democracy and freedom.

The article is just more proof of how out-of-touch the so called “liberally biased” media is. Mainstream media is a joke.

Long live Jon Stewart.

Cynical:

1. Believing or showing the belief that people are motivated chiefly by base or selfish concerns; skeptical of the motives of others.

2. Negative or pessimistic, as from world-weariness

3. Expressing jaded or scornful skepticism or negativity.

Yep, that sounds about right.  I have not voted for anything since… well, the 80’s.  For every one of us there are five self hating, life negating, right wing christian nutjobs standing on line to throw their rights on the bonfire they are building to burn atheists, gays and everyone else who they perceive as a threat to their terrified, narrow little worldviews.

Cynicism is the natural state of mind of thinking people in America.