Jon Stewart is getting serious

Stewart Unbound has no fear of alienating prospective guests. “Who knew,” he “>said on June 11, he’s been thinking about things he’s done right and done wrong. Among the latter: his interview with Donald Rumsfeld. Stewart had thought he could dissolve an architect of the Iraq War “into a puddle of atonement” by confronting him with “the most Socratic line of questioning.” As it turned out, Rummy easily evaded him, leaving Stewart thinking he’d never get his chance again. But when Rumsfeld told the Times of London earlier this month that “the idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic,” Stewart pounced on his retroactive skepticism: “Time for Stewart v Rumsfeld, Round 2: The Grudge Match.”

The pounding Stewart gave him was a classic “Daily Show” deconstruction. Rumsfeld ran to Fox to deny the Times of London quote; he claimed that what he’d actually said was, “I didn’t want the Iraqis to believe, inaccurately, that the U.S. intends to impose its form of democracy on their country.” And where might Iraqis have inaccurately gotten that impression? Cue Rumsfeld clips touting American-style democracy for Iraq on April 10, 2003, November 23, 2004, December 8, 2004, February 6, 2005 and March 20, 2005. Knockout. “I never thought I would say this,” Stewart crowed, “but we got you, Donald Rumsfeld, we got you.”

But as “We Got Him!” and fireworks flashed on the screen, Stewart found himself unable to gloat, calling it a “strangely hollow” win. “You know,” he said, “I placed a lot of stock in the idea” that catching Rumsfeld – or Bush, Cheney or Rice, or Douglas Feith or Judith Miller, or Richard Perle or Paul Bremer or any of the other architects or enablers of the Iraq War – “in some sort of logical trap, or forcing them to admit the errors of their ways, would be an ultimate victory. But now I wonder…. If you can get one of these guys to admit their mistakes, you may have a moment of satisfaction and catharsis. But it doesn’t mitigate the horrible consequences of the decision, and doesn’t seem to stop the next guy from repeating the mistake.”

So why do it? His answer recalls the punishment of Sisyphus, forced to push a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down again, condemned to useless labor for all eternity:

“People of the future: Is it futile to try to pin these people down? Yes. Would it be easier to give up and let Rumsfeld go, preferably on an ice floe in the North Atlantic? Yes. Because no matter what evidence, no matter what arguments or historical facts you put in front of these people, they think learning curves are for pussies. And even if they did learn, it wouldn’t change the past, or prevent the same mistakes in the future. Which is why I want to say to you, in the future: Please, never stop trying anyway. Because there’s always hope that one day, they’ll think, just for a second, and that second will be enough time for us to shove those mother[bleep]ers onto that ice floe.”

Albert Camus said that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” In an absurd world, the struggle itself – the struggle toward the heights, not victory – “is enough to fill a man’s heart.” Must one imagine Stewart, like Sisyphus, happy?

Last week, on the day that nine African-Americans were slaughtered in their Charleston church by a white supremacist, a somber Stewart quieted his audience at “>interviewing Malala Yousafzi, the 17-year-old Pakistani shot in the head by the Taliban for promoting education for girls. She survived, won the Nobel Peace Prize and launched the Malala Fund. The power of ridicule, Stewart rightly says, has dispiriting limits. But Stewart also possesses the power of attention. In the clamorous info-marketplace, nothing is more scarce, or more valuable, than attention. By giving her his platform, Stewart cleared a quiet place for us to hear her story and learn hope from her.

I know Jon Stewart has always been adamant that he’s a fake journalist, not a real one, so I’m sure he’ll like even less what these final shows leave me wanting to call him.

Teacher.

Marty Kaplan holds the Norman Lear chair in entertainment, media and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Reach him at martyk@jewishjournal.com.