I cannot live with people who turn off The News Hour for The Daily Show.

Jim Lehrer’s News Hour is the finest American news program, on cable or otherwise. The News Hour cuts the bullshit and gives you the news. It gives the real stories, avoids the human interest nonsense that’s replaced hard news, and addresses the larger and deeper issues in interviews for the body of the show. Lehrer’s program is not, in Paddy Chayefsky’s phrase, "accountable to Network." It stands with Ted Koppel’s Nightline (which ABC recently treated horribly in showing its willingness to ax the show, replacing it with David Letterman’s talk show, although Letterman gets lower ratings than Koppel, a sought move that ABC did not share with Koppel until an hour before the news was going to break) and Chris Matthews's Hardball (which, for all its yelling and inclusion of non-experts, covers politics, including important information others fail to cover, gives a voice to Christopher Hitchins and other intelligent but more marginal viewpoints, and shows real intellectual argumentation, in which casualties are taken) as one of the few fine news shows on the air in America. I guarantee that if you watch The News Hour, Nightline, and Hardball, you’ll be on top of American news -- and, I think, be entertained as well.

On the other hand, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is a cable show on Comedy Central. Its lame jokes fail again and again, the timing frequently ruined by the host. If you can’t write your own jokes in your head that respond to the news (and situations) given during the show, and if those jokes aren’t funnier, and quicker, than what’s given, I’d have a hard time relating to you. Moreover, because the news isn’t funny enough, The Daily Show has human interest segments and commentators, all of which can be called parody of the network news show -- except that by watching that parody every night, it ceases to comment upon that sad state of news and becomes just another replacement for that news, as indeed many viewers use it (frightening given that it has even less news time than network shows). Rather than sly satire, The Daily Show will be remembered as another attempt to make the news interesting, a stepping-stone to nude girls reading the news with explosions in the background. The Daily Show is one missed comedic opportunity after another, packaged to compete against "real" news shows, which themselves have slid into tabloids. It is irredeemable, unfunny, and desperately stale. Its viewers of above-average intelligence would be well-advised to drop this little embarrassing habit.

I just walked away from dinner because my father and brother made the wrong choice between the two -- an infuriating choice from two semi-intellectuals, I'm tempted to say, or rather two people acting as such, but a choice that recalls a similarly mentally-endowed or mentally-practicing friend’s great love (and pedantic praising) of The Daily Show (though she detested Hardball, an admission on which I have nothing more to say). I don’t know why it is that people of above-average, less-than-brilliant intelligence like this shit. It’s really an embarrassment -- and a frequent annoyance to me, not so much because of the show’s content (this is, after all, a world with Girls Gone Wild) but because people whose opinions I respect can watch this ill-prepared drivel.

If you like comedy with your news, watch Bill Mahr’s Politically Incorrect late at night on ABC. The show can be infuriating as asshole-idiots spout their nonsense (last night had someone who attacked vegetarians by claiming that Eskimos and other "races" live longer despite high-fat diets, as if other factors didn’t come into play, from exercise to pollution to health care, when talking about other cultures) - but the show has greatly funny moments, and Mahr, though I don’t always agree with him, is not only intelligent but rather informed. And watching the show would give you about as much news as you get from The Daily Show.

And last night Mahr had on Dennis Prager, one of the most intelligent "conservatives" you’re likely to ever find. His work is well worth a look. Even if you don’t agree with him, he’s highly logical in his arguments about often emotional issues. There's enough good in this country that's underappreciated to spend your time watching the rest.

But whatever you do, don’t watch The Daily Show -- if you do so to spite me, you’re bound to be bored (unless you’re just not that intelligent). The news is dumbed down enough as it is, from logos for every crisis to soundbytes (once known as "headlines," a term that implies there’s a body beneath them) scrolling at the bottom of the screen, telling us nothing of substance. If you want a good newspaper, The New York Times is all that’s left in America (while London’s Times is worthwhile but rather tabloid in nature, while Paris’s Le Monde is good if you read French). The situation of news in this country is bad enough without enjoying a stale parody of it every night.

By the way, Bill Mahr’s Politically Incorrect has been taken off the air. Go figure.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT THIS WEEK

Check out my new page of images and my improved page for Marvel Comics’ Daredevil. Then put down that detective or romance novel that you’re reading and go to a fucking library, browse the shelves for the great books you never read (or haven’t for some time), and feel a little more elitist because no one (and I say this coming from the upper echelons of the academy) is as familiar with the classics as they should be -- and because you did what I said like a good boy or girl.