Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
From "Chappelle's Show" to "Da Ali G Show" to "Team America," this was a banner year for satire. Does the country have to go down the tubes to produce laughs this big?
Dec 23, 2004 | After years of turning to soggy, reheated "Saturday Night Live" sketches for our comic fix, after years of renting the same Monty Python movies and watching as shows like "In Living Color" and "Kids in the Hall" came and went, 2004 was the year that satire sank its razor-sharp teeth into a mainstream audience. Scathing, sophisticated humor seemed to spring up all over the place, from trusted old friends like "The Daily Show," "Doonesbury" and the Onion, to unexpected and bold new sources like "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss" and "Team America."
Suddenly nuanced, even odd, humor is warmly embraced -- and not just by stoners and comedy enthusiasts who can recite the punch lines from every Mel Brooks movie ever made. From the bold and bizarre comic stylings of Dave Chappelle to the strange postmodern twists and turns of "The Joe Schmo Show," we were finally -- after what feels like a lifetime of Adam Sandler vehicles -- treated to comedy that wasn't targeted at an 8-year-old audience.
But how did we go from fielding a steady flow of insipid comedies starring Tim Allen (who keeps hiring that man?) to watching Ali G quiz Pat Buchanan about whether Iraq has "BLTs"? How did we go from watching a self-serious Donald Trump march around in pink ties, issuing orders to his gaggle of reality sidekicks, to, one year later, being treated to a spot-on "Apprentice" parody that tricks its participants into selling reusable toilet paper to strangers on the streets?
Perhaps the rise of sharp, caustic wit simply corresponds to the excess of folly, vice and stupidity on the radar this year. When the going gets rough, artists like Aaron McGruder, author of "The Boondocks," "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and even filmmaker Michael Moore feel all the more emboldened to take off the gloves and swing with reckless abandon. Since comedy depends on such passionate attacks, it's no wonder this was a year to remember in satire. If the world is going to hell in a handbasket, at least we'll go down laughing.
"The Daily Show With Jon Stewart"
During the election, Jon Stewart made countless media appearances, including a stint on "Crossfire" in which he informed host Tucker Carlson that his show sucked and was bad for America. Such arrogant attacks might rub some the wrong way -- unless they actually watched the segment, in which Stewart not only makes Carlson look like a defensive, defenseless preppy boob, but has fun doing it. You can worry all you want about the report that 21 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 get their news from sources like "The Daily Show," but to plenty of Americans, this stuff feels far more fair and balanced than the "Target: Iraq!" pep squad on the nightly news. Take the "Daily Show" episode that aired in the wake of President Bush's appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor," in which Bill O'Reilly's comments to Bush about the media's liberal bias prompted Stewart and the show's talented writers to offer this incisive summary of the administration's wartime missteps:
Stewart: All the president did was deliver a simple thank you aboard a viking warplane under a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. But if you listen to the press spin, it was like he had prematurely declared victory!
[Cut to file footage of Bush on the USS Lincoln.]
Bush: In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
Stewart: [Disgusted] Spinners! If you listen to the liberal elite, they implied that Bush said we were about to find weapons of mass destruction!
Bush: We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.
Stewart: Wanna know how that turns out? It's, uh, very similar to Al Capone's vault. But those hippie press freaks! They would make you believe that the president implied Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were allies!
Bush: We've removed an ally of al-Qaida, and cut off a source of terrorist funding.
Stewart: Damn you, liberal file footage! Damn you, TiVo! Actually, O'Reilly realizes the left-wing media isn't the only problem. There's also left-wing academia.
O'Reilly: You went to Yale and Harvard, and they're all pinhead liberals over there.
Bush: (laughs) I haven't spent a lot of time analyzing why professors feel the way they feel.
O'Reilly: You just want to get out of the class. I was the same way.
Stewart: Seriously, educations is for jackasses.
