Last night I picked up a book of essays at the local library entitled Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television by Lee Siegel. In the collection, Siegel, editor at The New Republic and frequent contributor to Harper’s and Time, considers 62 television shows and celebrities ranging from LOST and Tom Brokaw to Deal or No Deal and Johnny Carson. Most impressive is the writer’s lengthy essay on Oprah, which is simultaneously pointed and alarming (e.g., “Her empathy and moral growth seem to require human sacrifice. Yet watching Oprah does fill you with hope. It also plunges you into despair. She has become something like American herself”). True, but yikes.

Siegel’s essay on Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, however, is the complete opposite; it appears thrown-together and angry. For example, the author is “disappointed” that Stewart “aligns himself with an ideology, with a politics” as do Al Franken (now Senator!), Bill Maher, and Dennis Miller. Moreover, the comedian/host/satirist presumably “panders to the show’s [college-age] demographic” too much and would rather “educate his audience” than “skewer the conventional news.” Finally, Siegel claims that Stewart is “the only American comic [he’s] ever heard who can’t do a British accent” (even the writer’s Korean grocer can fake that).

But here’s the statement that seems completely misaligned: “The Daily Show’s intention of showing clips from the news in order to mock the conventional coverage of the news and get to the bottom of what’s really  going on in the world always seemed to me too dependent on the thing it derided–the comic equivalent of covering an old song.”

Yes, it is true that Stewart must rely on conventional news coverage for his humor and that his audience must be familiar with “real” news in order to get the jokes (Aaron McCain writes at length about this). But should these realities be labeled “disappointing” and/or “unfunny?”

No. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, sending up original material to an informed audience is a primary component of satire–the genre of comedy in which Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show have chosen to work, the genre in which they almost undeniably succeed.