Fox News embraces, extends the Daily Show

Ouch. This is seriously painful. FNC has created their own right-leaning fake-news show. Something like that might actually be fun to watch, if it was actually funny.


What's pathetic about Fox's attempt at cool is how it has all the awful awkwardness of Saturday Night Live's humorless Weekend Update sketch with almost carbon copies of the Daily Show graphics, set, and, yes, even the sweeping crane shot at the beginning of the show. I'd at least give them points for trying something different -- but they didn't.

In fact, they did something ridiculous. Since the Daily Show's left-leaning humor is mocking right-leaning media, they style their show after Fox News (ie crazy music, bombastic graphics, highly partisan corespondents). If Fox News was really trying to skewer the left, wouldn't they style their show after NBC News and NPR? But this is what happened: Fox News has stolen the Daily Show's style -- which is mocking Fox News. It's like they're making fun of themselves, but they're not even in on the joke.

But then again, maybe this is part of Rupert's master plan -- make it so bad that the TDS crowd starts watching Fox for the camp factor, abandoning Stewart's occasional earnestness and righteous anger. And really, at the end of the day, that's all it's about -- eyeballs on the screen.

(Stewart! Colbert! Surnow? - Paper Mag, video clip included!)

(Also -- "qualified yes"? WTF?)