Word: stewart
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...only quarrel with your Twain story is with Rick Stengel's comment that Twain is the godfather of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. He may be their godfather, but there is no doubt in my mind that he should be considered more a legitimate father of George Carlin and Bill Maher. Alice A. Grimes, Watertown, Massachusetts...
...only quarrel with your Twain story is with Rick Stengel's comment that Twain is the godfather of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Twain may be their godfather, but there is no doubt in my mind that he should be considered more a legitimate father of George Carlin and Bill Maher. Alice A. Grimes, WATERTOWN, MASS...
...tradition in American politics and culture: the comedic commentator on serious matters, the funnyman as our collective conscience who can utter uncomfortable truths that more solemn critics evade. In an election year when so many Americans are getting their news from nontraditional sources, Twain is the godfather of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as well as the comic voices who influenced them, from Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor to Kurt Vonnegut. And Twain, with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, created the literary dna that helped shape race relations in America over the past century...
...century after his death, in 1910, we get a lot of our news from people like him--funnymen (and -women) who talk about things that are not otherwise funny at all. This is an election year in which some of the most closely followed commentators are comedians like Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and the cast of Saturday Night Live. All of them are descended from that man in the white suit...
What, if anything, about this benighted moment of American life will anyone in the future look back on with nostalgia? Well, those of us who have cable are experiencing a golden age of sarcasm (from the Greek sarkazein, "to chew the lips in rage"). Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann are digging into our direst forebodings so adroitly and intensely that we may want to cry, "Stop tickling!" Forget earnest punditry. In a world of hollow White House pronouncements, evaporating mainstream media and metastasizing bloggery, it's the mocking heads who make something like sense...