Simon Says
I suppose I should say something here about last night's installment of 60 Minutes II (where correspondent Bob Simon talked to and about Stan Lee), as both Mark Evanier and Franklin Harris had very nice things to say about my comment in response to Heidi MacDonald's review of the segment, wherein I noted that the thing everyone seemed to be missing is that this segment wasn't really about Stan Lee at all. It was about Bob Simon blowing his own horn, implying he was the impetus for Lee to dispute his contract. That's what all the "two years ago" footage was about. It was just filler so Simon could show himself off and puff himself up. I guess I've watched so many Daily Show segments that I thought that was obvious - Jon Stewart's crew are all experts at puncturing the media's sense of self-importance. It's almost like, the more irrelevant these so-called reporters and correspondents become to actual news (and the stenographers-to-power phenomenon has only escalated the deeper they find themselves in the Bush Administration's pocket), the more they have to convince themselves of their own essential role. I think this is the reason a lot of pundits try to dismiss The Daily Show as some sort of bad influence on young people, or even accuse the show itself of being dismissive of reality rather than satirical of same - they have a hard time accepting blame for their own part in contributing to the absurdity of current public discourse, and they've long since learned to ignore any pangs of guilty conscience in favor of filthy lucre. Bob Simon may have scored his one good beside-the-point last night by observing that Stan Lee was far from poverty-stricken before the contract dispute arose, but one wonders how much Simon's raking in to recycle his own puffery and proudly display his ignorance of his subject matter.
I suppose I should say something here about last night's installment of 60 Minutes II (where correspondent Bob Simon talked to and about Stan Lee), as both Mark Evanier and Franklin Harris had very nice things to say about my comment in response to Heidi MacDonald's review of the segment, wherein I noted that the thing everyone seemed to be missing is that this segment wasn't really about Stan Lee at all. It was about Bob Simon blowing his own horn, implying he was the impetus for Lee to dispute his contract. That's what all the "two years ago" footage was about. It was just filler so Simon could show himself off and puff himself up. I guess I've watched so many Daily Show segments that I thought that was obvious - Jon Stewart's crew are all experts at puncturing the media's sense of self-importance. It's almost like, the more irrelevant these so-called reporters and correspondents become to actual news (and the stenographers-to-power phenomenon has only escalated the deeper they find themselves in the Bush Administration's pocket), the more they have to convince themselves of their own essential role. I think this is the reason a lot of pundits try to dismiss The Daily Show as some sort of bad influence on young people, or even accuse the show itself of being dismissive of reality rather than satirical of same - they have a hard time accepting blame for their own part in contributing to the absurdity of current public discourse, and they've long since learned to ignore any pangs of guilty conscience in favor of filthy lucre. Bob Simon may have scored his one good beside-the-point last night by observing that Stan Lee was far from poverty-stricken before the contract dispute arose, but one wonders how much Simon's raking in to recycle his own puffery and proudly display his ignorance of his subject matter.
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