notjustaboutsex

Jon Stewart (Photo credit: Belltown Messenger)

Yesterday, at an event held by the not so new school, Nancy Giles, writer to CBS News Sunday Morning, Tim Carvell, head writer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Victor S. Navasky, of The Nation and Columbia Journalism School, joined author Marvin Kitman to discuss  the above topic. In the beginning, it seemed that all Marvin Kitman had to do was breathe to get a laugh from the crowd, though joke making wasn’t the point of the talk. The idea of having to make apologies for points of view was discussed, an example being the baseball player who was fired for talking about Fidel Castro. Carvell said that  being Catholic, guilt is his default setting, so he does think about what he writes, but luckily for him and Jon Stewart, they have fact checkers to make sure they’re not faux pasing. It is an interesting question though on wha tis considered an offense in a democracy, ala Hilary Rosen and Mrs Romney’s work history.

 One of the most interesting topics was the  idea of sacred cows… it being decided that one’s cow may not be another’s, ie. the holocaust for Jews and slavery for Blacks. I think premature balding and ejaculation are really unmentionables, along with post-Patriot Act surveillance techniques and the cruelty of unfettered capitalism, but as usual,I kept quiet.

Someone mentioned the joke of the terrorists giving up because they ran out of virgins (great one) and then moved on to the power of cartoons.Mr. Navasky, on the brink of beginning the process of finishing a book on political cartoons, talked about the way charicatures can ‘penetrate to the ultimate truth’ of a person or situation, better than text. He mentioned how the Danish cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in the turban brought a violent response from parts of the Muslim world, while the offensive and disgusting photos from Abu Abu Ghraib prison  torture had little world reaction. 

 For myself, Ive  never forgotten the wolf/landlord trying to toss the mice family out of their log cabin in an early black and white cartoon that my father showed at the theatre… a forward flash to my real estate issues today. Mr. Navasky said that cartoons work because people see truth faster in the grotesque. Still wondering why cartoonists did so well during the Bush regime…wasn’t that grotesque enough in itself?

Again, it was decided that there are too many opinions and not enough straight news…at least in this country, though ultimately, news editors, deciding what to talk about, are still making opinions.  I look forward to one of the audience member’s announcement of a new site…The Apocolypse Review.