Satirist Jon Stewart is a Gandhi for our time

Jon Stewart's Gandhian Struggle -- by Kelly Rae Kraemer

I'm a college professor who usually despises TV, yet I'm addicted to the Daily Show. I'd love to cancel my cable subscription; I'm sure there's a better way to spend $38.04 every month, but I have to have my nightly dose of Jon Stewart. I was a bit alarmed to learn that many young people rely on Stewart as a news source, but not at all surprised when researchers found that his viewers are better informed than those who watch CNN or Fox. It could be a matter of self-selection, better-informed people choosing to watch the "Daily Show" because it addresses itself to a better-informed audience, but I think there's a different answer.

Jon Stewart wages a daily satyagraha, an on-going nonviolent struggle in which he clings to the truth, Gandhi-style, making us laugh as he gets us to think. As a result, Stewart, on his fake news show, often does a better job revealing what's going on in the world than the real news media. That's why so many young people turn to his show for their daily news, and that's why I'm glued to the boob tube every night.

Now, let me be the first to say, Jon Stewart is no Gandhi. Moments of profound wisdom are interspersed on his show with fart jokes and penis humor only a twelve-year-old boy could really enjoy. And I'm writing with tongue at least partially planted in cheek, as I sincerely doubt Stewart ever gathered his writers together and proclaimed, "Hey, kids! Let's put on a Gandhian show!" One of the beauty's of Gandhi's method, however, is that anybody, even a late night comedian on basic cable, can use it, albeit in this case unwittingly.

Think about the underlying truths hiding in what appear at first to be casually tossed off one-liners: "War-in many ways it's the only remaining obstacle to peace." Or (as a professor this one's my personal favorite) on the Iraq Study Group report: "I'm glad they got a study group together, but the test was three years ago." Sometimes the jokes are less subtle, but the truths no less profound, as when Stewart mockingly summarized Donald Rumsfeld's proposal to cut off aid to Iraq for 'bad behavior': "You destroy a country's infrastructure and this is the thanks you get! After all we've done to you!"

Sometimes Stewart's satyagraha becomes apparent in the passion for justice embedded within his sarcastic reviews of the daily news: "The Senate voted not to raise the minimum wage...the lower strata of American society has had a free ride for too long...So kudos to Congress for literally taking a giant shit on the poorest of the poor!" Daily Show 'correspondents' get in on the act, too, as when John Oliver described Bush's Iraq strategy: "The President believes in fighting a war up to the last second, giving armed conflict every opportunity to work until all violent means have been exhausted. Only then do we put diplomats on the ground."

Stewart routinely challenges his interviewees. When Anderson Cooper told him CNN has a "sense of mission," Stewart asked, "When's it gonna show on air?" His tenacity in holding on to the truth as his interviewees try to spin it showed clearly when he debated marriage with Bill Bennett:

JS: Why not encourage gay people to join in that family arrangement if that is what provides stability to a society?

BB: Well, I think...gay people are already members of families. They're sons and they're daughters.

JS: So that's where the buck stops? That's the gay ceiling.

BB: Look, it's a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a woman.

JS: I disagree. I think it's a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

As in most nonviolent struggles, the method often leads to surprising successes, as in this exchange with Ken Mehlman, then Chair of the Republican National Committee:

JS: What happened to these guys? They came in and they were gonna be the straight talkers, the adults. And it seems as though they've become the parsers, the guys that are saying, 'I never said that Al Qaeda and Saddam were responsible for 9/11, I said they were in a relationship' ...They became parsers. When did that happen?

KM: I think greed, cynicism, all those things caused us to do it.

JS: Really?

KM: Yes.

JS: Did we get that on camera?

Stewart clung to the truth as Mehlman tried to spin it:

JS: Do you think the President and the Vice President will be more open with the American people?

KM: Well, I think they are pretty open right now, and I think that they're going to continue to be open.

JS: When you say they're pretty open right now...about what? Because I've been watching them. Here's the frustrating thing for me. They'll say this-'I trust the American people.' So why are you tapping the phones?-'I can't talk about that.' They seem to call confidentiality when it suits them.

KM: Obviously a lot of these issues are national security concerns...Every administration has this... When they have internal meetings, if everything's 'let's tell you what we met about' then there's not gonna be serious internal discussion because people will think it'll be in the newspapers.

JS: Right. It'd be like open government.

Okay. Maybe the revolution is not at hand, and Jon Stewart is not leading the way. His show by itself cannot explain the world, let alone change it. Nonetheless, I think he's pointing us in the right direction, away from the 'truthiness' mockingly celebrated by his buddy Stephen Colbert and toward the quest for truth. People are turning to Stewart to help them understand the world because Stewart is honestly trying to understand the world. I bet Gandhi would get a kick out of it.

(Kelly Rae Kraemer , Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Peace Studies at the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University in central Minnesota.)