While The Daily Show is still very much a comedy show, there are occasional segments that move beyond comedy into a brand of political commentary that’s done in a light tone, but with a force behind it that makes it really difficult to laugh. They’re those segments that clearly are so important to Jon Stewart, that the jokes take a back seat to an argument carefully built on logic and evidence. Last night had one such segment.
Clearly, education is an important topic to Stewart. During the interview later in the show, he talked passionately about his own mother, a former teacher, and how hard she worked. And that passion was clear in how he methodically set up various Fox News pundits to claim that teachers were greedy and selfish and swimming in cash, while bankers and people making over $250k a year were above the need to sacrifice and living near the poverty level. It’s a pretty tough segment to get through without getting angry, which might not be the traditional goal of a comedy program, but something that can be counted as some form of success with The Daily Show.
