{"id":439,"date":"2006-01-06T16:48:22","date_gmt":"2006-01-06T16:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=439"},"modified":"2006-01-06T16:48:22","modified_gmt":"2006-01-06T16:48:22","slug":"jon_stewart_hosting_the_oscars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2006\/01\/06\/jon_stewart_hosting_the_oscars\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Stewart Hosting the Oscars"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Jon Stewart is going to host the Academy Awards<\/a> this year. I think that’s great. Really, it’s just wonderful. I’ve got two questions, though… who the hell is Jon Stewart and what has he got to do with the movies?<\/p>\n


\nOkay, I’m just kidding with the first question. I do know who Jon Stewart is. He’s such a media darling, of course I know who he is, even though I don’t have cable and have never seen an episode of The Daily Show<\/i>, and moreover, I don’t much care.<\/p>\n

The second question, however, that one has meat. Why is a television personality hosting an awards program dedicated to movies? Granted, there’s not a lot of difference between TV and movies these days, especially with the rise of affordable home theater set-ups, the steadily shrinking window between the theatrical release and the DVD, and Jennifer Aniston leaping from Friends<\/i> to Rumor Has It…<\/i>. But honestly, isn’t there anyone — anyone?<\/i> — available who is more associated with the big screen than the small? Isn’t there a movie star out there today who is classy and funny and well-liked enough to take this job? Is this some misguided effort to attract that all-important demographic, the youth audience, to a program that is charitably described as “stodgy?” Is the youth audience going to fall for such an obvious tactic? Has anyone considered the possibility that Stewart, a political satirist who trends leftward, will bring unwelcome baggage to the Oscars, proving once and for all to a certain segment of society that Hollywood is a den of festering liberalism? Come on, enquiring minds want to know these things. Oh, and one more thing: is he really, truly, all that funny? Because the clips I’ve seen of his show haven’t exactly caught my fancy. For that matter, why do we need to have a funny host for the Oscars anyway? What’s wrong with a dignified, stately, serious-minded presentation once in a while?<\/p>\n

Not really knowing anything about Stewart, I guess I shouldn’t be so judgmental. And I suppose the fact that he’s a television personality doesn’t have much to do with anything. Johnny Carson hosted the Oscars several times, and I don’t think you can do much better for a host than that. And god knows Stewart has got to do a better job than Letterman and his weird “Uma\/Oprah” thing.<\/p>\n

I guess it just troubles me that there seem to be a lot of guys like Stewart these days, who appear in venues I don’t see and garner lots of attention but who are little more than faces and names to me. When folks start talking about The Daily Show<\/i> or any of the other buzzy, cable-channel programs that generate the water-cooler discussion these days, I feel left behind. Out of the loop, unhip. I feel old, because the heroes of this moment are not my heroes. And that really sucks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Jon Stewart is going to host the Academy Awards this year. I think that’s great. Really, it’s just wonderful. I’ve got two questions, though… who the hell is Jon Stewart and what has he got to do with the movies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}