Jon Stewart Devastates Glenn Beck in a Brilliant, Dark, Stunning Parody

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG 

By Mark Karlin

Over nearly 10 years, BuzzFlash has repeatedly received e-mails and letters from readers thanking us for helping them by offering articles that dispel the right wing/centrist mainstream media myths.  During the Bush years, many a time people wrote something akin to "I don't know how I would have survived with my sanity intact without you."

Since I only have a salary of $22,500 a year, these are the rewards of our work.

But who do I go to in order to make sure that I maintain my sanity?

Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show."

In fact, it is the only program I watch with any regularity on television. (Alas, the cable package that includes MSNBC costs more, so I watch Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann in the day-after clips.)

Stewart has an occasional commentary that doesn't carry his usual punch, but not often.  "The Daily Show" connects the dots, lets buffoonish politicians and newscasters speak for themselves in clips, and ties it up with an arched brow, an obscenity deleted, or droll ironic comment by Stewart or one of his correspondents. Irony is their "Excalibur" sword for exposing the truth.

Stewart and "The Daily Show" get the bigger story of actually stringing together the ludicrous hypocrisy and idiocy of what the mainstream media doesn't report because the MSM is basically a stenographic megaphone for the status quo.

Which brings us to the second segment of the November 5 broadcast in which Stewart went solo and delivered a dark, devastating, stunning parody of Glenn Beck.  The first segment was a usual maddeningly comic "report" on how the GOP basically opposes the Democratic Healthcare Reform bill because it is "too big."

But the second segment was something else altogether, a tour de force performance by Stewart in which he analyzed Glenn Beck's appendectomy (according to FOX) as, well, Glenn Beck might comment upon it.

With no clips and just a few props, including a hilarious chalkboard presentation that tied Beck's lower gastrointestinal system to all sorts of alleged conspiracies against his "inner organs," Stewart, replete with gestures that mimicked Beck (including getting into the face of the camera lens) left no doubt that the Beck phenomena is something akin to sheer lunacy.

I would guess that Stewart was the driving force behind the creation and writing of the "Beck Segment," because it was delivered with such convincing aplomb and attention to gesture that its genius seemed to come from within.

As Stewart ended the parody by walking off camera, and "The Daily Show" cut to commercial, it was clear to me that Stewart knew he had nailed it.

It was so brilliant and stunning that sometimes I and the audience couldn't laugh because you didn't want to miss the next deft comment or movement by Stewart.

So who does BuzzFlash turn to to keep its sanity?

Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show."

It would be hard to carry on without them.

As for Beck, Stewart somehow made comic art out of the opportunistic street performer and wiped the floor with him.

Just masterful.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG 

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