First, some quick introductions:

• Jonathan Gray (University of Wisconsin-Madison) co-edited Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era and is author of Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality.
• Amber Day (Bryant University) is author of Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate.
• Chuck Tryon (Fayateville State University) wrote for many years at his blog The Chutry Experiment on political television, and is author of the forthcoming Political TV.
• Geoffrey Baym (Temple University) is Professor Colbert himself, having written many of the canonical treatments of Colbert, and is author of From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News.
• Ethan Thompson (Texas A&M-Corpus Christi) co-edited Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era and is author of Parody and Taste in Postwar American Television Culture.
• Nick Marx (Colorado State University) is co-editor of Saturday Night Live and American TV and is currently editing a reader on comedy studies.

Jonathan Gray:

With each of the other major change in hosts of the various late night shows in the last few years, the new host has been given considerable scope to change the show considerably. It may still be called The Late Show, therefore, but the set’s different, the band’s different, Colbert’s not doing Top Ten lists, Rupert and Biff are gone, etc. What struck me immediately about The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, therefore, was the same old voice announcing the date, the camera swooping over a fairly familiar looking set, while the same ol’ theme song played. Interestingly, then, while a lot has been made about whether Noah can “replace” Jon Stewart, in fact he seems only to have been asked to fill the chair and role of convenor, as Jon’s show, style, and feel are very much still in play. This extends even to Noah’s comic style at time: I’ll discuss a few differences, but so much of his delivery, his play with the camera, his faces at the on-screen bad punny section titles, and so forth felt very “Stewartian.” Even the crappy, unfunny, politically sterile segment about police racism and brutality on Wednesday night’s show feels like the junk that Stewart’s lesser staff members phoned in some times.

I wonder, though, how much of this continuation is a bridging strategy. I think here of the advice I give to grad student lecturers, to teach the regular professor’s class as the professor did, and to leave changes to the second time they teach it. Maybe Week 10 or Season 2 of Noah’s Daily Show will look as different from Stewart’s Daily Show as Colbert’s Late Show is different from Letterman’s, but for now it’s a shrewd move with a not-entirely-popular choice for replacement to keep the machine running rather than reinventing it.

And run it did. Noah is good at this job. He’s funny, he mixes groany dad jokes with edge with skill, as did Stewart. He has good chemistry with the camera. He exudes an intelligence becoming of the role. Nor is he just aping Stewart completely: his own segments seem to move quicker, his delivery and pacing crisper; his relative youth means he doesn’t need to adopt the patrician mode that Stewart did increasingly; and like John Oliver, he can use his non-Americanness to great comic and satirical effect. I was not one of Noah’s many detractors, but I still expected far less than he provided in those first three nights.

Still, though, he’ll need to improve with interviews to keep me from turning off the TV half way in. While the experienced Colbert was booking Jeb Bush and Joe Biden in his first few days, The Daily Show’s bookers either lost their mojo completely, or were savvy enough to give Noah training wheels, opening with Kevin Hart then moving to the founder of a new dating app. Even Chris Christie was a wise first “real” interviewee, since one can count on Christie to know the audience and show and move the interview himself. Even then, in the interviews Noah has been feckless, clearly out of his depth, starstruck, wooden, and a far, far cry from Stewart. Admittedly, Stewart was a superb interviewer, and it’s early days, but the beauty of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was the two shows in one — critique of the news, then an interview with bite — and unless Noah is a quick study, and as much as the producers may have kept a lot of the old Daily Show, the new one may be only half its former self. I’ll definitely stick around, though, and I don’t begrudge Noah the need to improve.

Amber Day:

This first week of Trevor Noah’s tenure on the Daily Show has had its ups and downs, but I do think that the host shows a good deal of promise.

I agree with Jonathan that the interviews have been disappointing.  In particular, the first two interviews both began with what seemed like a pre-rehearsed (or pre-agreed upon) opening joke that fell so flat as to be almost unintelligible (Kevin Hart’s supposedly disappointing gift of ties and the Whitney Wolfe conceit that interviewer and interviewee were on a date).  Like Jonathan, I may well end up turning off the program half way through (or more likely, cherry picking segments to watch on the Comedy Central website), though I do acknowledge that being a good interviewer is a skill that is entirely different from delivering a tight monologue, and one that will almost certainly take some time to develop.

On the other hand, I think that the comedy portions of the program this past week were well done.  Noah’s self-deprecating bits about the perils of trying to fill Jon Stewart’s shoes struck the right opening note, while momentum continued to pick up as the week progressed.  Here, the one segment over which I disagree with Jonathan was the correspondent piece about racial profiling and police brutality.  I thought the segment did a very good job of highlighting the radically divergent ways in which the majority of white Americans versus black Americans view the police force, while very deliberately allowing the spokesperson for a police anti-bias training program to make a case for why such a program is necessary and what it is meant to accomplish, a message that slipped through in the background while the correspondents clowned in the foreground.  Though it was certainly gentle, I think it was a form of advocacy journalism tailored for an exceedingly touchy subject.  I happened to be watching that episode with my mother-in-law, whose political views are widely divergent from my own, but it felt like a conversation starter that we were both comfortable with, while it did still have substance.

The other highlight of the week for me was the extended story on Donald Trump being akin to an African president, detailing his striking similarities to notorious military strong-men and megalomaniac dictators like Gaddafi or Amin.  Though Trump is certainly an easy target, the piece allowed Noah to use his own background and knowledge to provide global context for the American political race, while also producing a very funny segment.

Going forward, Noah will, of course, have to grapple with the ins and outs of American party politics, but he would do well to continue to draw liberally from his strengths: an international perspective, as well as a heightened sensitivity to contemporary race relations.  If he can manage to bring some of that savviness to his interviews, he will have it made.

Chuck Tryon:

During the opening monologue of his debut episode on The Daily Show, Trevor Noah promised to uphold the legacy of Jon Stewart by continuing the “war on bullshit.” For those of us who became accustomed to Stewart’s relentless attacks on cable news, however, Noah’s contributions actually look quite a bit different, at least so far. Thus far, Noah has generally offered a much more genial perspective, one that draws on his experiences as a non-U.S. native to denaturalize some aspects of American political discourse rather than focusing excessively on cable news (although he did offer a mildly humorous critique of cable news’s tendency to focus on distractions such as “pumpkin spice” season). That being said, like Jonathan and Amber, I also see plenty of room for Noah to grow into the role of Daily Show host and to adapt the format to his comedic strengths, in much the same way that Stewart refocused the show away from Craig Kilborn’s sterile, apolitical humor.

This “outsider” status was powerfully displayed in the inspired segment in which Noah compared Donald Trump to a laundry list of African dictators. Like Amber, I appreciated this segment, in no small part because it provided a more global perspective on American politics, but also because it brought a fresh perspective to the Trump parodies, which have become overly obvious in recent weeks. Other segments were somewhat less successful. I was somewhat ambivalent about the police brutality sketch, in that its politics seemed somewhat incoherent to me, but that’s likely a product of the writers finding their stride, rather than any limitations on Noah’s part. The “Panderdemic” segment also showed promise, as Noah worked to pick apart the ways in which politicians seek to appeal to specific voters, often in disingenuous ways.

Perhaps the biggest concern about Noah has been his performance during interviews. But it’s worth remembering that Stewart, especially during his early career, seemed equally star-struck during interviews. And while I’m no fan of Chris Christie, Noah was probably better served by taking a relatively genial tone with him. In fact, Noah did offer a subtle pushback against one of the common tropes of conservative politics, in which presidential candidates campaign against “the government,” even though they are part of that government. He also managed to tease out some of the absurdities of Christie’s draconian immigration policy. These moments suggest that Noah may be a quick study on American political discourse, and I’m willing to give him time to develop his skills as an interviewer while waiting for Colbert to start.

Ultimately, I think Noah will grow into his role as host of The Daily Show. It’s unfair at this stage to hold him to the high standards established by Jon Stewart, who seemed to become the political conscience of cable television over the last few years, but given time, I’m hopeful that Noah can bring a unique perspective to the fake news genre.

Geoffrey Baym:

I want to build briefly on Jonathan’s suggestion that Trevor Noah has kept “the machinery running” through his first week.  While it is right to consider what changes Noah will make to the program as he settles in to the role, I’m also quite interested in the power of the machine to operate as designed.  Or to put the point differently, we’re seeing what I would characterize as the institutionalization of the form.  When so many of us began paying careful attention to The Daily Show more than a decade ago, it seemed like something unprecedented and risky – a novel mechanism for engaging with and interrogating the public political conversation that had more to do with the particular vision and talents of the host than it did the power of formal convention or institutional lineage.  And the host himself long insisted that he was an institutional outsider, a jester throwing spitballs, rather than the opinion leader and influence broker he so clearly became.  That of course is the point of the long-running joke: “From Comedy Central World News headquarters in New York, this is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Unlike those long-established and institutionally entrenched news outlets on the other channels, Comedy Central of course had no “world news” operation, nor a “headquarters” where nationally significant command and control decisions could be made.

Notably, that intro line remains – the only difference being the last two words (“with Trevor Noah”) – as does the swooping camera motion, the spinning globe, and the theme music.  All of this suggests that the joke has taken on new complexities, it seems now to fold back in on itself.  Like the institution of nightly news it long imitated, The Daily Show truly has become more than the personality and skills of its host. It is an institutional product – conceptualized by a team of producers and writers, governed by production conventions and audience expectations, and located in a particular cultural milieu.  It may have a new set, new font, and a new graphics package, but those are the same kind of cosmetic changes that all news operations make periodically, just as they bring in new anchors and new correspondents from time to time.  Certainly, Noah’s personality and interests will begin to shape the content.  Chuck and Amber are right that the Trump-as-African-Dictator gave us a glimpse at the more global and ethnically nuanced discourse most of us are expecting to see from Noah.  And of course, his interviewing skills are far from where they’ll need to be.  But through a wider lens, this Daily Show is remarkably like the last Daily Show (or the one that John Oliver hosted while Stewart was on leave directing Rosewater), and that continuity is for me the major take-away here.

Finally, there are important linkages to be made between the institutional consistency of The Daily Show and the work that Colbert (and Stewart apparently) are doing on CBS.  After nearly a month on air, the Late Show looks a lot like a more grandly theatrical, if perhaps slightly less subversive, Colbert Report.  Just the other day, John Oliver sat with Colbert for an interview, with the two explicitly positioning themselves as former Daily Show correspondents.  Oliver, of course, has taken the genre of news parody in a new direction on his HBO show Last Week Tonight, devoting 18 minutes per episode to deconstructing often obtuse public problems.  Meanwhile, back on Comedy Central, Larry Wilmore (formerly The Daily Show’s Senior Black Correspondent) is still holding on with his panel discussion program, The Nightly Show.  Scholars of TV and political communication have long been looking for “The Daily Show effect,” and finally I think we can identify one.  Jon Stewart’s show spawned numerous copycats, both in the US and around the world, but more importantly, it has seeded the landscape of political television and created a new kind of media institution while doing so.

Ethan Thompson:

A few minutes into Trevor Noah’s first interview with Kevin Hart it hit me, and I felt oh-so-stupid for not realizing it sooner: the shift from Jon Stewart to Trevor Noah is first and foremost a generational shift.

Stewart was 37 when he started back in 1999. Have you seen a photo of him recently? Noah is now just 31. Stewart’s departure was a chance for Comedy Central to reset the show with a new host who might appeal to a more youthful demo. The olds will keep tuning in anyway, and if Noah isn’t quite suited to their (my) tastes, there’s always Oliver, Wilmore, Maher, Colbert, and/or Myers to queue up on the DVR or switch the channel to later. The Daily Show may be the house that Jon Stewart (re)built, but Daniel Tosh has done more for Comedy Central in recent years, and I expect that that is the audience the network hopes to attract. I wish them luck.

I could think of at least a half dozen people I would have rather seen taking over the anchor spot, but that’s because I was thinking of established people in the post-Boomer/Generation X cohort. Dumb me, and smart Comedy Central. I thought Noah’s first week of programs was solid. He has the presence and personality to carry the show as host, and the various correspondent pieces showed that the program can sail on without Stewart’s guiding hand. I’m glad that Comedy Central is investing in Noah as a host who might cultivate another generation of satire fans.

Noah’s biography is compelling and much has been said about the potential his global perspective might bring to the show. This amorphous “global” perspective was rightly ridiculed on his first show. Still, the standout piece of the first week for me (and apparently the others writing here!) was Donald Trump: America’s African President. Whether or not this was a product of Noah’s global perspective, it was both meaningful and funny.

Television satire, especially the fake news variety, is expected to live and die by the personalities of the performers. Ever since Chevy Chase transitioned from Weekend Update host to movie star after the first season of SNL, fake news has been a springboard, with Colbert’s ascension from Daily Show correspondent to the Colbert Report to his CBS show the corresponding bookend. Stewart’s tenure is an anomaly.

The truth, of course, is the other writers and producers are largely responsible for making the show funny and meaningful on a consistent basis. I hate to take too much credit away from Noah, because I do think he has done a good job and it would be a different show without him. However, I think what Geoffrey Baym describes above as the institutionalization of news satire may ultimately be most interesting to consider. Comedy Central can choose a youthful host without a track record because the form has gelled enough that the program is not dependent upon the host the way it once was. There won’t be anything revolutionary about Noah’s Daily Show the way Stewart’s once seemed. The form, and not just the viewers, have matured.

Nick Marx:

Geoffrey’s description of the “institutionalization” of satire television and Ethan’s observation about generational shifts echo a lot of what I thought about the Stewart-to-Noah transition before last week–that The Daily Show has more or less become Saturday Night Live at this point.  That’s intended neither to slight nor compliment either show, but to highlight how both have been integrated into political, industrial, and social discourses beyond the programs themselves.  Noah’s hiring (like that of SNL’s Sasheer Zamata, Leslie Jones, or short-lived Daily Show correspondent Michael Che) was less about late-night transitions than it was about race, gender, and televisual representation.  It’s been heartening to see Noah, then, arrive in Stewart’s chair with little else around him changed and instantly shine.

Conversely, I was often much more appreciative of the way Stewart’s Daily Show shaped broader public deliberation about important topics™ than I was of his on air presence (good riddance, exaggeratedly-Jewish-Jerry-Lewis voice!).  Noah seems to be, at least so far, a much more conventionally funny and likable stand-up comedian.  I expect that we’ll see a lot more bits rooted in Noah’s race and nationality (like the Trump-as-African-dictator segment), and I hope the show will continue experimenting with correspondent segments in act one, or even entirely interview-free episodes.  Like Colbert’s Late Show, The Daily Show is clearly still struggling to find a new voice while paying proper homage to its predecessor.  Fortunately, it’s also got the charismatic ringleader to find that voice quickly.  Here’s to hoping Noah doesn’t jump ship after seven or so seasons to make buddy comedies with Will Ferrell.

But Daniel Tosh and his apology don’t matter. Men who like to rape women are not going to rape less women based on whether or not Tosh apologizes for making an unfunny rape joke. Tosh was not apologizing for contributing to the climate of fear in which so many women exist. Like a chastened child forced to say “sorry” on the playground, Tosh’s apology had nothing to do with making amends with those he offended and everything to do with getting out of trouble. That’s generally how these “scandals” go.

But with the entrance of comedian/actor/director Louis CK, this public story became infinitely more interesting. On July 10th, in the midst of the kerfuffle, CK logged onto Twitter and defended Tosh. Comedians offend people for a living so when they defend other comedians (and they often do), they are really defending themselves and their craft. But soon enough CK realized that he made the critical error of alienating his base (liberals, feminists, academics) so he headed to The Daily Show to assure them that when he tweeted his support for Tosh he had not been aware of the rape-joke scandal. You see, he was “in Vermont.” I think we can all agree that this is a terrible excuse. But CK then went on to discuss how the incident led him to read some blogs on the subject of rape and that he now understood how rape “polices” women’s lives, adding: “They have a narrow corridor: they can’t go out late, they can’t go to certain neighborhoods…”

It was refreshing to watch a smart comedian like CK speaking in favor of educating and informing himself on all angles of a complicated issue before speaking about it on national television. As CK states in the above interview “all dialogue is positive.” The fact that for almost two weeks, a corner of the media (including cable news programs, blogs, tabloids, online magazines, and social media addicts like myself) was engaged in a critical discussion of rape and power and representation is pretty amazing. I’m a big believer in the power of dialogue, context, and debate so I was happy to see that Louis CK was doing just that instead of reciting the “hyperbole and garbage,” to use his words, that is usually offered up in response to delicate topics. But then, because he’s a comedian, CK capped off this great moment of nuance and understanding with a piece of advice to all of those angry women who had been talking and writing and complaining about Tosh: “Now that we heard you—shut the fuck up for a minute.”

Here’s the thing: I don’t want to shut the fuck up. That’s why I am still talking about Daniel Tosh and his incredibly stupid rape joke almost three weeks after it happened. Because the point is not that comedians can’t make jokes about rape. I believe even the most horrifying of human experiences can become the subjects of genuinely funny jokes if they cause us to think about these horrors in a new light, either by overturning what we thought we understood about the subject or, even better, by forcing us to look at ourselves and our own culpability (and sometimes, if the offensive jokes are really funny, none of those things even matter). For me, stand-up comedy is at its best when it walks the line between hilarity and horror; make me laugh when my first instinct is to cry. Isn’t that the comedian’s job?

And when comedians or celebrities or politicians or even good old-fashioned real folks screw up and say or do something that is wrong or hurtful, we owe it to ourselves to talk about it rationally and in context. We need to stop going for the easy fix, the easy laugh, and the sound bite. Because taking down statues and banning costumes from movie theaters don’t stop pedophiles from raping children or maniacs from shooting moviegoers. These measures only offer the appearance of having done something. They offer powerful images and headlines but they won’t stop these atrocities from happening again. Instead we need to talk to each other. And once we’re all listening, I’ll be happy to shut the fuck up.

The “Occupy” movement that has taken hold in cities and towns across the United States was first ignored, then mistreated by some, revered by others, and, strangely, mocked by still others.  There has been some thoughtful reporting of the movement in corporate media, and I do not want to lump all coverage together. But when I think about how anti-war protesters were marginalized by cable news in 2003 and how the Tea Party protests were glamorized in 2009, I’m quite intrigued by the TV journey this movement has taken.  Three moments in the recent coverage stand out to me:

Fox News vs. Jesse LaGreca: In this interview (which actually did not air), a Fox News reporter listens to LaGreca’s eloquent defense of Occupy Wall Street, which includes a spirited critique of the news coverage.  The Fox News reporter then challenges La Greca and says, “…you wouldn’t be able to get your message out there without us.”  Sadly, LaGreca did not correct his interviewer.  How did Occupy Wall Street launch and organize, if not via social media?  TV news was late to the party but still wants to take credit for throwing it.

MSNBC takes to the streets: We all know that MSNBC has executed a few brand shifts over the years and has emerged from a confused adolescence into a focused adulthood.  The brand it has settled on is “to-the-left-of-CNN,” and some of its personalities reflect this more than others.  During the eight hours I’m in my office each weekday, I keep the TV on MSNBC, partly because I have no remote control for that TV.  So, when I see Dylan Ratigan participating in a secular call-and-response with NYC protesters, I scrunch my face a bit and wonder whether this cheerleading is productive.  I’m no believer in journalistic objectivity, but I’m also suspicious of news folks who insert themselves into the story.  With Glenn Beck it was demagoguery, but with Ratigan it feels like shameless self-promotion.  Which, in light of MSNBC’s recent promotional spots, fits in quite well with the network.

The Daily Show throws rotten fruit at the stage: First, I wish people would stop looking to Jon Stewart to be the voice of the young(ish) Left.  He isn’t truly happy with a rally unless he’s staging it on the National Mall and taking a firm stand against taking a firm stand.  And, at times, TDS goes out of its way to sever its ties with liberal causes.  Case in point: Samantha Bee framing a Occupy Wall St. segment in terms of potty breaks and bad hygiene.  Yes, we get it.  You can be as grouchy toward these protesters as you can be toward the Tea Partiers.  But without Bee’s charm, this is a Fox News story.

Aside from these moments, we see a lot of the same old material: violence-driven stories that point out the NYPD’s excessive force or dismissive stories that paint the protesters as a nuisance.  As I write, @Occupy_Boston is tweeting for reinforcements as Boston PD is threatening to remove the protesters from their campsite.  Impending police action was the main thrust of the local Boston news coverage of today’s largely student-led march.  These stories are all to be expected.  And while at one level I question the usefulness of much of this coverage, I know full well that I searched the sky fruitlessly for a news helicopter covering the Occupy Boston march I attended on October 8.  There was no news helicopter.  There was no aerial shot to capture the crowd of marchers descending on Newbury Street and befuddled Brooks Brothers shoppers.  There were many tweets and cell phone videos that could only fit a handful of protesters into the screen.  Even though television news often misses the figurative big picture, it’s the only outlet with the means to give us the symbolic value of the literal big picture.

I quit The Daily Show cold turkey this summer. I had stopped watching the cable news networks long before that because I couldn’t take the yelling, the distorting, and the shallow reporting anymore. And unfortunately, The Daily Show just kept reminding me that what I hated was there, unrelenting and unchanged. Jon Stewart thoroughly depantsed Jim Cramer in an interview; he went right back to his boobish antics on CNBC. The show exposed Fox News’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal hypocrisy; the network’s ratings stood strong. Stewart mocked Glenn Beck’s chalkboard hysteria in an impression so spot-on it might as well have been the real thing; some weeks later, Beck trotted out his chalkboard on the National Mall to many thousands of devoted supporters. So at some point I just couldn’t take any of it anymore, neither the inanity of the TV news media nor the seemingly ineffectual mockery of it. I was just exasperated by the lack of consequences for what I perceived as journalistic injustice and felt alienated by seeing it paraded on TV so much.

Then I heard rumblings about a rally, at first a (seemingly) grassroots movement to encourage Stephen Colbert to host a Rally to Restore Truthiness, then the real deal, an official announcement of the Sanity and Fear rallies. I was highly intrigued. This, I thought, this promised to finally…um…er, what exactly? I didn’t really know. But the call to restore sanity spoke directly to my frustrations with the karmic illogic that had driven me away from anything related to basic cable news. I was mostly excited that this was to be a public gathering, not a TV show, where I could share thoughts in the moment with like-minded people, rather than just yelling at my TV screen.

So I went to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Did it reinvigorate my faith that blowhard news pundits would be shamed into doing credible work and real journalism would rise up? No, not at all. In fact, as affecting as Jon Stewart’s ending speech was, its substance was really no different than what he had been saying on his show when I stopped watching. But thankfully, at least, my feeling of alienation was obliterated by the roar of the crowd, the graciousness of the gathered, and the recognition that it wasn’t just me and my TV screen in a battle, it was a huge group of us (plus innumerable signs) yearning for rationality and accountability.

In fact, skimming tweets after the rally, it became overwhelmingly evident that the TV experience was quite different than the live experience. Yes, both at home and on the Mall, there were moments of boredom (turns out John Legend is a Chicago Cubs-caliber rally killer). But to cite just one example, the bit I saw mocked the most on Twitter, the Mythbusters-directed wave, was actually a joy to experience live (in my section of the crowd, at least). It offered our first glimpse on the video screens of the whole assembled audience, which resulted in a collective “Woah,” and waiting first for the wave to get to you and then for it to finally end after you really hit home what a mass of humanity we were. Ok, I’ll grant that the group sounds thing fell pretty flat live (coordinating movements with strangers is fine; making weird sounds with them is uncomfortable). But the group jump was followed by awestruck, giddy laughter as we now not just saw but fully felt our mass together. That visceral feeling of unity was exactly what I traveled to experience firsthand (even if it was measured by science as no more impactful than a minor car crash). It was what I had lost from being immersed in the divisiveness of TV news images and online comments sections. The subsequent events and Stewart’s eloquent final speech also reminded me that recognizing the problems of political discourse doesn’t have to come with only misery attached. It can come with pride in the collective acknowledgment of what is still just and a defiant spirit of hope (yes, I got a hopium contact high out there).

Again, I don’t expect a single change in the news media or politics or human relations in the wake of the Rally for Sanity. It really did just boil down to a party where we reveled in self-congratulatory agreeability for a little while. I do hope that I can carry the spirit it captured back home with me, though, and translate it into a renewed faith in the power of television shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to make us more self-aware of the discourses around us, both on screens and right next to us, and the power of sharing a public moment with strangers.

(This report was made possible in part by support from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame.)

1. In honor of Veterans Days (or Remembrance Day as the rest of the world knows it), a wonderful set of videos of dogs welcoming their owners back from military service. Get those tissues ready and enjoy.

2. The Daily Show skewered Sean Hannity for using footage from Glenn Beck’s “9/12” rally in DC to depict Michelle Bachmann’s much smaller rally. As departing White House Communications Director Anita Dunn pointed out, “Well that is where you are getting fact-checking and investigative journalism these days folks. It is a different media environment.” Nice to see the rest of the press prove their utter fecklessness once more. For his part, Hannity mustered the most pathetic of apologies, saying it was “inadvertent,” which led to this wonderful response from Stewart and his staffperson forced to watch Hannity daily:

3. Our own Liz Ellcessor offers two excellent posts on television’s encounters with people with disabilities, one a follow-up to her Antenna post on the Glee episode “Wheels,” and another on Brothers. Let’s hope it’s not another 300 years till American television offers us two shows with people with disabilities. Adding to Liz’s own links to other commentators on the episode, I’ll also note Myles McNutt’s piece at Cultural Learnings.

4. MediaCommons unveiled its new profile system, which is exciting and well worth reading about.

5. Jason Mittell continues his admirable process of discussing the job search at his department at Middlebury in as open terms as he’s probably allowed to. The job market scares people more than anything other than the tenure process, so it’s great to see someone opening up about it in something other than woefully vague terms.

6. In honor of Seth McFarlane’s bad week (Family Guy had its worst week in the ratings this year by 0.5 points, Cleveland Show by 0.6 points, and American Dad by a full point, while his Family Guy Presents Seth and Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show received poor reviews), here comes this explanation of how his shows get put together:

7. In the world of odd adaptations, it seems that Justin Halpern’s Twitter account, ShitMyDadSays, is being made into a sitcom by the Will and Grace creators and Warner Bros. TV. See here for more commentary, though I suspect I’ll discuss this soon over at The Extratextuals, cause it’s so wonderfully paratextual. Update: I’ve now done so here.

8. Annie Peterson talks about web traffic and star talk. I’m going to be very obtuse with details, since Antenna’s supposed to be under the radar right now, so we’re not ready to play with the fire she offers the kindling to build. But to see the evidence of her assertions, see her earlier post here too.

9. Timothy Burke discusses using Power Point in the classroom (though all PP haters should, as we learned at MCS colloquium on Thursday at Wisconsin, consult Kurt Squire for tips. Kurt, to be fair, credits Henry Jenkins with leading the way, a shout out that I’d echo).

10. Finally, in the blast from the past category, it’s old, but if you’ve never treated yourself to Real Ultimate Power and the wonders of all things ninja, do go here and enjoy.

Also, note that the new issue of Flow is out, and that it was Human Rights week on In Media Res