My Month of Zen - Part 2 (Jon's Last Day)

Dear friends,

Tonight is Jon Stewart's last episode as host of The Daily Show. I will never forget where I was on August 6, 2015.

As a part of my healing, and as a way to say goodbye, I have been binge-watching the past 16 years of The Daily Show for over a month now. 1999 and 2000 were silly years. 2001 through 2007 were very dark years (see previous post). But re-living the election of President Barack Obama in 2008 was euphoric! I was shedding tears of joy as I watched the episodes from the days after the 2008 election. I had forgotten how magical those days were. We really did believe that everything was going to be alright.

But I realized that I'm never going to feel that kind of euphoria about an election ever again. The exquisite joy of that night (and the following months) was a direct result of the feelings of fear and hopelessness from the previous eight years of the Bush Administration. You can't have the joy of an Obama election without the devastation of a Bush presidency. You can't have the rainbow without the rain.

However, the euphoria of the 2008 election was dampened by the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009. I was just starting graduate school, and it seemed like the world was collapsing around me. And Jon Stewart spoke for all of us when he interviewed CNBC host Jim Cramer about the role that people like him (and other economic reporters) played in the economic collapse. Please do watch all three parts of the extended Jim Cramer interview HERE.

2009 was also the year that The Daily Show sent Jason Jones to report on the presidential elections in Iran. Yes, Jason Jones was literally in Iran and not in front of a green screen pretending to be in Iran. Jones interviewed Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari (watch the full segment HERE). Bahari was imprisoned shortly after the interview. He was tortured and interrogated for 118 days. Bahari wrote a book about his experience in captivity called Then They Came For Me. Stewart and Bahari then wrote a screenplay based on the book, and Stewart directed the movie, later titled Rosewater (watch the movie trailer HERE). It's currently streaming on Netflix, if you haven't had the chance to see it yet. It's magnificent.

2010 was year of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the South African World Cup, and the year that I moved to London. Yup, I moved to London *ONE MONTH* before Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert came to Washington, DC for their "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear." I was heart-broken that Stewart and Colbert were coming to my town just after I had moved to another country! To this day, it still pains me that I missed this event.

In 2011, Senator Gabby Giffords was wounded in an Arizona shooting that killed six victims. An earthquake in northern Japan triggered a tsunami, leading to the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. Kate and William got married (I was there!). The Arab Spring brought uprisings to Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The Occupy Wall Street protests led to similar "occupy" movements around the world. And Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan. In 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban, Barack Obama was re-elected president, Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast, mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut shocked the country, and the Summer Olympics came to London (I was there!). And there was Jon Stewart, through all of it.

 
All of our lives were touched and shaped by these events. Just writing this blog post and listing all of these horrific events in sequential order is breaking my heart. The world is a horrible, horrible place! But that's why I needed Jon Stewart and the The Daily Show. I needed someone to help me laugh so that I wouldn't just give-up and cry. That's what Jon Stewart did for me.

Can I share with you my absolute favorite moment from all 16 years of Jon Stewart's time on The Daily Show? It's this: Michael J. Fox interview from April 2009.

Michael J. Fox was on The Daily Show to promote his new memoir, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist. Fox was confessing that it took him many years to come to terms with his Parkinson's disease diagnosis. At first, he didn't tell anyone about it. He drank too much, he went a little crazy. He said, "But once you can fix something in space and say, this is this, and this isn't going to change, then it opens up all these new possibilities around you." And I absolutely needed to hear that message at that moment. Because, in 2009, I had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I thought I was going crazy. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. And I kept hoping that it would just eventually go away. But after watching this interview with Fox, I finally "fixed it in space" and accepted that I had a problem and that I needed help. So I summoned all the courage that I could muster, and I found a therapist and a psychiatrist, and I got the help that I so desperately needed. And it saved my life.

So I owe a lot to The Daily Show. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Jon Stewart got me through some of the hardest times of my life.

And somewhere, deep down, I'm kind of afraid to move on with the next 16 years of my life without him. I don't know what I'm going to watch first thing in the morning while I'm getting dressed. I don't know who else is going to make me laugh at 7:00 AM so that I can face everything that life will inevitably throw at me.

But I think I can do it. I think I'm a big girl now. I'm not the 18 year-old that I was when Jon Stewart started at The Daily Show. I'm 34 years old. I think it'll be alright.

Thank you, Jon. Thank you.

Your biggest fan,
Leila

My Month of Zen - Part 1 (Starting to Say Goodbye to Jon Stewart)

Dear friends,

Wow! I MISSED THIS!!! I can feel my heart start to leap with excitement as I type these words. I missed my blog! I missed having this time to be with my thoughts and feelings! I forgot how much I loved this!

To catch you up on the past year (and to make a long story short), I now work at American University. I have a lovely admin job in AU's School of Communication (SOC), which is where I received my master's in 2010. I love being back at SOC. I love working in academia. I have put my creative endeavors on hold, but I'm starting to return to those as well. It's nice to have a full-time job again and not be worried about paying my bills. I'm not making great money, but the benefits are fantastic, and I'm making enough to live on (and pay my student debt), so I couldn't ask for anything more.

What inspired me to finally login to my old blog, after all of this time? This man.

Jon Stewart. A defining character in my life. I wanted to write a blog about Jon Stewart to say thank you...and goodbye.

In February 2015, Jon Stewart announced that he would be stepping down as host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show. I cried. Remember when Michael Scott learned that Toby had returned to Dunder Mifflin in The Office? That was my reaction. Punched in the gut. Knocked the wind out of me. So sad.

I was sad because, like many people of my very specific age range (too old to be a Millennial, too young to be Gen-X), Jon came around at a very formative time in my life. I went to college in 1999.  Jon Stewart took over The Daily Show in 1999. His show played in almost every dorm room at DePauw University from 1999 to 2003.

Jon won me over with his coverage of the 2000 Presidential Election. Like most of my friends in 2000, I wanted Ralph Nader to win and thought Al Gore was a bore (I hadn't even contemplated the idea that W. Bush would win). But, boy, did we all have a wake-up call the day after election night WHEN NO ONE HAD WON! And Jon Stewart nailed it!

"You know, guys, when we decided to call this thing Indecision 2000, we didn't think you would take us literally!"

I processed that insane election through the lens of Jon Stewart. I saw the absolute absurdity of it all because of Jon Stewart. And Jon has been a part of my life ever since.

Right now, the Comedy Central website is airing every single Jon Stewart episode of The Daily Show, from 1999 through the present day. It's call YOUR MONTH OF ZEN. And I am watching it every single free second that I get!!!

I am essentially re-living the last 16 years of my life. And it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. While I watch these episodes, I remember exactly what was happening in my own personal life. But I also remember what was happening in the world. And some terrifying things have happened in the past 16 years.

September 11, 2001:

Watching the episodes from 1999, 2000, and first half of 2001, The Daily Show is a goofy comedy, full of Bill Clinton sex jokes and superficial celebrity interviews. And I understand that. I relate to that. I was a college teenager during those years. My world was also full of crude jokes and celebrity news. That's exactly who I was, too.

But as I watch episode after episode from 2001, all I can think is, "I know what's coming." As I watch the episodes from 2001, and all the jokes about President Bush taking a month-long vacation at his Crawford ranch, I know that September 11th is going to happen. And I don't want to re-live those episodes.

Click here to watch Jon Stewart's monologue after 9/11. 

I can't watch that footage of Jon Stewart's monologue after 9/11 without crying. I remember watching that episode from a friend's dorm room. Jon Stewart articulated what we all felt. Jon Stewart got us through 9/11, and that is no small ordeal.

The Iraq War:

Starting in 2002, the Bush Administration started making their case for an invasion of Iraq. To make a long story short, The Daily Show was the only media outlet to question the Bush Administration's claims of weapons of mass destruction and a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Legendary journalist Bill Moyers reported extensively about the Bush Administration's use of propaganda in the lead-up to the invasion of the Iraq, and the media's unwillingness to question the propaganda. I advise everyone to watch Bill Moyers Journal: Buying The War.

Bill Moyers also reported on the brilliance and subversiveness of The Daily Show to question the Bush Administration at a time when people and news outlets were being calling un-American and un-patriotic for not supporting the invasion of Iraq. Click here to watch Bill Moyers' Interview with Jon Stewart.

My memories of the 2000 Presidential Election, September 11th, the War on Terror, the War in Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina are all associated with The Daily Show. Jon Stewart was a part of all of those moments for me. He helped me through all of those horrific events. He really did.

Right now, as I type this, Your Month of Zen is currently airing episodes of The Daily Show from March 2008. Great things (mainly, the election of the first African-American President, Barack Obama) are just around the corner. But more traumatic things (mainly, the collapse of the economy) are also around the corner. But I will write more about that in My Month of Zen - Part 2.

Jon, I miss you already. But I know that you will continue to be a part of my life for many years to come. Thank for getting me through it all. That's it - just thanks for getting me through it all.

Your biggest fan,
Leila