• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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    2 months ago

    People pushing overt bullshit should not be given a platform. Even with that sort of mockery, there will be enough people who just see that he was on the Daily Show that feel it gives him an air of credibility. This is the same show serious politicians and academics go on, after all.

    It damages discourse. Sure, it doesn’t damage political discourse overtly, but it is anti-critical thinking, which damages all discourse.

    • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 months ago

      To be fair, this is the kind of guest the show needs to hold up against more “serious” guests who get up to all sorts of bullshit. Appearing on The Daily Show shouldn’t be considered a feather in anyone’s cap, save for comedians.

      • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldM
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        2 months ago

        Every guest on the daily show is there to promote something, it’s a glorified extended ad spot. A skeptic raining on their parade does not help sell their books or other product, so that’s never going to happen. The purpose is not to reveal truth, but sell shit.

        • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 month ago

          It’s a step left from Jerry Springer, and always has been. It’s The Onion of talk shows.

          If you need every implication of falsehood spelled out for you, then satire is not your thing, and that’s okay, but it doesn’t change the fact that the show started out on, and still airs on, Comedy Central. Its timeslot set it up to be watched before/after Saturday Night Live and so many others, and it started at a time when people were getting wise to the big conglomerates buying up all the news stations so they could control the narrative; Roughly the same time-period that gave us fark.com, Cracked.com, and TheOnion.com website literally went online the same year.

          If you think The Daily Show expects to be taken seriously, and/or even pretends to be an entirely trustworth news source in the slightest, you’ve missed SO, SO MANY memos.

          • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldM
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            2 months ago

            exactly, that’s why your suggestion above:

            this is the kind of guest the show needs to hold up against more “serious” guests who get up to all sorts of bullshit.

            is not going to happen. it’s not a serious show.

            • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 month ago

              You’re missing the point. The less serious guests like this jackass discredit those more serious guests. Without him, people are more likely to get confused and start taking the show more seriously, like you apparently have.

              Your personal obliviousness is not indicative of a trend among the general public. Pull your head out of your ass. We have to shift the overton window back to where bigotted idiots look like bigotted idiots, and you don’t do that by platforming them exclusively alongside respectable people, academics, scientists, whatever.

              Ideally, we wouldn’t be platforming bigotted idiots at all, and people like you wouldn’t confuse the show making fun of conspiracy theory whackjobs for a serious news source, but here we are.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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            2 months ago

            And yet many people do take their guests seriously. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do. A lot of people get all of their news from The Daily Show. I hate that, but that’s just how it is. So when they platform a fraud like Elizondo, that’s a problem.

            • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
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              2 months ago

              Sure kid, large numbers of people worth engaging, accomodating, or mitigating are using The Daily Show as their exclusive source of news. Next you’ll tell me Oprah is a good person.

              EDIT: added “large numbers”, for clarity.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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                2 months ago

                Who you personally care to engage with is not at issue here. There are far more people than that and they cumulatively guide society. Ignore that at your peril.

                • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  2 months ago

                  There are not enough such people getting their news from The Daily Show to matter, no way, no how, and whether I would personally engage with them on an individual level was not what I was getting at; I was referring to engagement and mitigation on a societal level, ie dumbing-down The Daily Show or turning it into a more serious show, neither of which would work anyways - the idiots would find other shows to reinforce their delusions. Pretending there are enough people to make that reasonable is an absurdly stupid proposition. Are you convinced most of the MAGA crowd get’s all their news from The Daily Show or something?