Edd's+Civic+Hero+Page

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Civic Hero In the modern world of evolving media and technology, one man stands out among his peers as one of the most amusingly influential, readily recognizable and terribly intelligent civic heroes of the United States; that man is Jon Stewart. As laughable as such a statement may sound for certain people around the country (because of his many wonderful comedic performances and appearances on television and in films), his blend of public media, comedy and politics have lead him to a social standing and influence in the public mind which rivals that of many political figures throughout the U.S.

Born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz in 1962, “Jon Stewart” is an American political satirist, television show host, actor, writer, media-critic and stand-up comedian. Having graduated The College of William and Mary in 1984, earning a psychology major, Stewart held numerous jobs before starting his creative career as a stand-up comic at The Bitter End and Comedy Cellar. Five years later, he achieved his first television job as a writer for //Caroline's Comedy Hour// and over the following ten years, worked as a co-host and host for several different TV programs, including //Short Attention Span Theater//, //You wrote It, You Watch It// and //The Jon Stewart Show//. Despite having also released a book title //Naked Pictures of Famous People//, which reached the New York Times best seller list, and having appeared in various hollywood films, Stewart didn't obtain the majority of his success until //The Daily Show// began in 1999. (1)

The show is a unique blend of comedic satire on the day's top news stories, generally in politics, while simultaneously poking fun at politicians, newsmakers, and news media itself, creating a very relatable, accessible and fun way of conveying current events to the overall public. Ever since Stewart took over after the departure of Craig Kilborn, the show has been a huge success and has earned Jon sixteen Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards over the past 12 years; the most notable and civically relevant of them being the Peabody awards, which were earned for his coverage of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. (2) As the award itself suggests, being described as “ the oldest electronic media award in the world, recognizing excellence, distinguished achievement, and meritorious public service” (3), we can see that, despite it's reputation for comedy and entertainment, //The Daily Show// contains very reputable and informed journalism on the part of Jon Stewart and his fellow writers.  In fact, Stewart's show has made such an impression among the public that a laundry list of famous and powerful politicians have made guest appearances. Minds such as Tony Blair, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama have gone to speak on //The Daily Show// with this man, who is now a common name and face among American culture if not around the world. All of this fame came from one grand overarching source (besides Jon's own skill): New Media. From film and television to rallies and stand-up, this civic hero used many means to get his voice in the ears of the american people.  His most recent event, despite his ongoing television show, was the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” in 2010, which was ran alongside his counterpart Steven Colbert. Its stated purpose was to provide a venue for individuals to be heard over the 15% - 20% of americans who “control the conversation” of US politics. (4) The argument was that extremes demonize each other and engage in counterproductive actions, thus a restoration of sanity is necessary to promote reasoned discussion. The rally was nominated for four daytime Emmy Awards and serves as one of the many examples of positive social interaction we see with Jon Stewart.  Among rallies like this and many other creative tools, such as his two Grammy awarded audiobooks (//__America: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction__// and //__Earth: A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race__////)//, Jon Stewart has proven to be a huge media mogul, using his abilities to gain support among the public toward beneficial social change, namely the improvement of communication. As such, we can also say that he is succeeding in many ways. Someone only needs to look up his current ratings and see that //The Daily Show// averages approximately 2.3 million viewers, roughly half a million more then Fox News prime time and day time. If we then look at the 215,000 people who attended the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” and the fact thathis shows ratings are still increasing, we can see that his popularity and influence are substantial. So much so that Presidents of multiple countries (including the current US president) took the time to appear in his talk show. That fact alone speaks volumes for the impact such a man has made among the public.  <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Simply stated, everyone could learn from such a person and, in this case, perhaps many things are learned: the importance of improving communication, improving knowledge, looking at something from both sides, interacting with others in a peaceful and constructive manner and, perhaps most of all, the importance of laughter. Stewart's creative blend of comedy and politics made all of this possible, and perhaps the biggest accomplishment of all, made it fun. Using modern means of media (namely television, film and books), he created a hysterically amusing source of information, started a notably large following, put his voice into the mind of America and constructed a vessel of communication through which the public can be heard. Such accomplishments make him more then just a television show host; they make him Jon Stewart, a civic hero.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Bibliography
 * 1) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Gillick, J., & Gorilovskaya, N. (2008) . //Meet Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz (aka) Jon Stewart The wildly zeitgeisty Daily Show host//. Retrieved October 18, 2011, from __[]__
 * 2) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; text-decoration: none;">“Awards for Jon Stewart”. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved October 18, 2011, from http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0829537/awards
 * 3) <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Introduction of website. __[]__
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">"US comics unveil dueling DC political rallies,” September, 17, 2010, AFP.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Production Notes: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">1. Intent: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">-Written-  <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">For the written portion of this assignment, my intent was pretty straight forward. There were two main points that I wanted to get across: Jon Stewart as more then just a comedian and Jon Stewart as a politically and publicly active individual. Accomplishing this was rather simple; showing his awards, credentials, experiences and accomplishments were (in my mind) more then enough to complete the task. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">-Multimodal- <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">My intent for the multimodal portion of the project was quite straight forward as well. To keep things concise I wanted to focus on one main point, which I believe to be Jon Stewarts biggest concern: Communication. Now while my aims were quite direct, there was more information then I could handle for this portion of the project, and that became quickly apparent while I searched through video after video to find the clips I wanted. Safe to say, I found some clips that I believe not only convey his point of communication, but also show his ability to make it amusing and laughable. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">For me, the video works as additional concrete evidence for my claims within the paper and shows the connect between comedy and activism that Jon so brilliantly melds together. The video and text therefore work together, but don't overlay each other or become repetitive. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">2. Steps Taken: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">-Written-  <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This is probably rather self-explanatory for my text, but the first and most important steps I took where researching evidence and organizing ideas so that they'd flow well together. Once those steps were completed and I achieved the outline I wanted, I simply went at it and started writing. From there, I think we all the know the process. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">-Multimodal- <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">This portion is much more complicated. I went through many steps and will likely forget to name all of them here, but to start, the most important steps I went through were video research and archiving. To list just some of the videos I looked through, I watched Jon Stewart's hour long interview with Rachel Maddow, his appearance on CNN crossfire, his final speech at the //Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear//, and many, many Daily Show videos. In total, I archived about 3 hours worth of footage. Unfortunately, not much of the video proved as useful as I would have liked. I ended up using no Daily Show footage, since I couldn't easily find the types of clips and such I wanted, and no Rachel Maddow footage. That was my biggest disappointment since I thought Maddow's to be the most collegiate sounding footage and found it to be the most interesting video, but the language proved too sophisticated for the tiny clips I wanted, and the footage generally needed background information to make sense of certain topics of discussion. Despite this unfortunate circumstance though, I compiled more then enough video to get (more or less) the items I wanted. After the video, it came down to finding still frame photos to use during my narrations in-between the clips. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Obviously I wanted these photos to match with my narration and this actually proved to be the easiest part, since I wrote out my narration before finding photos. All the same, I compiled a couple dozen photos of Stewart with politicians, Stewart by himself and other such images before deciding on the ones I thought would fit best. From here, I placed the videos in the sections I wanted then proceeded to apply certain clipping and cropping dynamics. For this part, every piece was edited in some way (either fitted to the screen, timed to my dialogue, cropped, or given Ken Burns effects). This was probably the most entertaining part, and I tried to make some of them rather amusing (to fit with the Comedy theme), the most successful being the Ken Burns effect placed on the photo with Barack Obama and Stewart. Interestingly enough though, I set all this up before doing my vocal recording. I wasn't sure how long it would take and such, so i simply put the still frames in with rough time estimates, then did my dialogue and readjusted time signatures flow smoothly. This part probably took some of the most tinkering, since I had to keep slide transitions in mind for my timing. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Once that was completed, I had to make sure that the transitions had the sort of feel that I wanted. This was a very fun part as well, and I think I did a good job in not going to overboard with transition effects and such. To do that, I made a formula for my transitions. Here is a piece of it: //Fade to black// transitions from video to still frames, //Dissolve// transitions from still frames to video and //Spin Out// transitions from video to video. Still frame to still frames had no transitions. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Once all the pieces were together how I wanted them, it was just a matter of "cleaning" everything up. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Adaptations: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">-Multimodal-  <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Luckily I didn't have to make too many adaptations to my project. My main adaptations were for changing which videos clips I wanted to use for the presentation. Like explained above, the videos I wanted to use ended up not working how I expected, so I had to use other videos in my archive. Fortunately, I was expecting something like this to happen during the multimodal part of the project, which is why I archived lots of video in the first place. Beyond this, the only other adaptations I made were small "clean up" changes to the presentation. This was simply to make sure everything went together and flowed how I wanted.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">