David Brooks in The New York Times:

"I’m totally confused about what the political impact of Stewart-stock and Colbert-palooza will be. On the one hand, watching their shows I get the impression they are generally mainstream liberals. On the other hand I do think their shows are unintentionally conservative. Just as the show '60 Minutes' sends the collective message that political institutions are corrupt, so the Comedy Central shows send the message that politicians are buffoons. Both messages undermine faith in political action and public sector endeavor and so cut right against the intentions of their founders."

The only time I've admired either of these guys was during Colbert's speech at the White House correspondent's dinner... but even then, it's hard to accept that some political project exists behind the irony.

This guy is wrong. Drunk driving laws create a climate of fear that prevents people from driving drunk. I'd rather live in a world with clearly defined limits (like .08) than in constant fear that my driving is too "erratic" in the eyes of a random police officer.

I especially liked this line: "Bill Lewis, head of the Texas chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, agreed."

Bill Lewis must appreciate the rhetorical value of "Mothers."

Yesterday I read a couple of chapters from Martha Nussbaum's Poetic Justice. I’m not sure I agree with Nussbaum’s claim that literature’s ability, through “identification and emotional reaction,” to “cut through [one's] self-protective strategems” ought to be “palatable” or “pleasurable” (6).

For me, a good book or film is a harrowing, painful experience. Indeed, if a “novel constructs a paradigm of a style of ethical reasoning” that generates “potentially universalizable concrete prescriptions,” it cannot function as mere entertainment; it needs to break down its reader and inflict the pain of a new awareness, like an ethical boot camp (8).

A poetic kind of justice must punish readers if it is to have any motivational efficacy; otherwise, isn’t Nussbaum talking about something as brief, flighty, and forgettable as so many bad poems?

This argument reminds me of film historian Scott MacDonald's discussion of a political kind of spectatorship. MacDonald talks about a way of watching challenging, often boring, critical/avant-garde films (Adventures in Perception, 2009). The films he mentions are only political if the audience informally challenges each other to experience something new; sticking it out in the theater, talking about it afterward, but most importantly of all, paying attention. Few watch these kinds of films, especially because the escapism of Netflix is so much easier. Poetic justice in the cinema, therefore, remains a distant hope (especially if you ask Ray Carney about it).