The Republican debates were a sorry spectacle indeed. Only a couple of relatively intelligent things were said. Chris Christie outlined a proposal to change Social Security benefits and governor John Kasich of Ohio felt the need to defend taking healthcare money because it would help those who needed it. The candidates had apparently all forgotten about Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and they all advocated building up the armed forces, sending ground troops where needed and bombing the hell out of anyone who did not "respect" us. Everyone was opposed to abortion (with the honorable exception of former governor George Pataki, who said it had been the law for 42 years and it was time to stop trying to change that), some even backpedaling on their acceptance of exceptions for rape and incest. Everybody wanted to get rid of Obamacare but no one offered an alternative. Both Rand Paul and Rick Perry gave Donald Trump a hard time because he had once supported single- payer healthcare, a position they both said was not allowed to Republicans! All the candidates said they wanted to restore the "American Dream" but none of them suggested how that could be done. The only mention of unions was by Christie and Jeb Bush, who bragged about how they had fought and defeated the teachers' unions. That one of the well-established reasons for the shrinking of the middle class is the shrinking power of unions was not even mentioned by any of the participants or the well-coifed moderators. Chris Christie, Trump, and Rand Paul competed for worst "hair."
The problem with Jon Stewart is that most of what he parodies -- politicians and media -- is already something of a parody. Are those who found him funny totally unfamiliar with Chaplin, Keaton, Preston Sturges, Lubitsch, Evelyn Waugh, Lennie Bruce? I strongly recommend the book Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm --and After. Compiled with an introduction and notes by Dwight Macdonald (1960, The Modern Library), particularly the sections "self-parodies: conscious" and "self-parodies: unconscious."
