One of the things I have missed most this summer (in addition to Taco Bell and singing in the choir) has been The Daily Show. I watched it from the very beginning, when Craig Kilborne spent most of the half hour making fun of Kathy Ireland or the guy who played Scotty on Star Trek; and though I loved it then too when no one was watching it, I love it more now that everyone is. Thanks to the internet, I can still see the headlines and interviews and a friend from school e-mailed me a clip today of Jon Stewart's interview with Bernard Goldberg about his new book The 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is #37). Barbra Streisand is one of Goldberg's targets, ostensibly for things she posts on her personal weblog.

But Jon made an excellent point during the interview (aside from the more general point that the book is pretty stupid) -- that in a capitalist society, the market will continue to produce what people demand. That there are shows on TV with lots of sex jokes isn't a result of marketing executives thinking that that's what should be on TV -- it's a result of research that shows that that's what people want to watch. People who don't want to watch it turn it off. What is most interesting to me is Goldberg's contention (muddled though it is) that the book is important because it points out that certain people are "making our culture more crass" and that "neither liberals nor conservatives" want to sit down with their kids during "the family hour" and watch a show with lots of sex jokes. But I don't get it -- no one, not an NBC executive or a gangster rapper or Barbra Streisand, is making any parent (liberal or conservative) sit down and watch those shows, with or without their kids. And I thought conservatives wanted to leave those decisions in the hands of parents.

Now, I could point out that since the massive FCC deregulation effort of the Reagan administration there is ostensibly less choice of quality, stimulating, educational programming available now that the media is under no obligation to devote certain amounts of coverage to it (and, moreover, since the budgets for public television and public radio are being cut to threads) -- but the truth remains that someone is turning this stuff on and sticking around for the commercials. I really do believe that given the choice, people by and large would express a preference for well-made television that is intellectually stimulating; but as long as the market dictates what's broadcast and that market is driven by an 18-35 demographic with lots of disposable income, we aren't going to have lots of choices.