Trevor Noah's Tame Interview
The beginnings of Trevor Noah's stewardship of The Daily Show were worrying. He seemed to ditch the constant intellectual rigor and occasional earnestness of Stewart for a more pop-culture focused, goofier show. Hopefully, his December 1st interview with Tomi Lahren will be a turning point. The quickly viral video shows Noah interviewing Lahren -- incendiary far right wing Facebook news commentator---on issues where they disagree (and where her views veer very closely to overt racism), Trump, Black Lives Matter, Colin Kaepernick.
If this was meant to be an earnest peak into the other side, Noah chose to focus on the most provocative stuff, stuff we (the sorts of people that watch The Daily Show) already know from Facebook (Lahren's stomping grounds). If this was meant to show
Lahren the light (a-la Jon Stewart's most memorable interviews) then it is somewhat successful and is a step in the right direction for Noah, but I don't think that's what he's going for.
Early in his interview, Noah tells Lahren that he is, "Trying to find some form of common ground here." I think we should take him at his word. I don't think he's necessarily looking to change her views or embarrass her in front of his loyal audience. I think he really is trying to find some common ground.. This has been a common theme after Trump's election, the search for some shared humanity between the Trump and
Clinton voter.
But, Noah quickly learns there is little common ground to find. When he presses her about her true thoughts on Trump's Entertainment Tonight Billy Bush tape, she refuses to side with Noah. When Lahren argues that Black Lives Matter is a dangerous, hateful group because of the occasional acts of violence committed in their - particularly the Dallas killing of five police officers-Noah reminds her that, "You're the same person who argued on your show that just because Donald Trump has supporters from the KKK doesn't mean he's in the KKK." This is more of what I wanted out of this interview, but less (I think) of what Noah wanted. He genuinely seemed to search for common ground. Maybe I'm unforgiving or just still too angry about the election, but I have no urge to find common ground with someone like Tomi Lahren. I'm much happier watching Noah explain to her that the same logic that says
BLM is hateful because of a few incidents is the same that says police are racist than search for mutual understanding on Trump's vile misogyny-something even his most ardent supporters don't totally deny.
Part of the trouble with Noah's search for connection across ideological is that Lahren is prone to lying-and rather disgustingly. "A black man is 18.5 times more likely to shoot a police officer than a police officer is to shoot a black man." This statistic is dubious at best and comes from a Washington Post article, which includes a key word that Lahren omits for whatever reason. The article states, "An officer's chance of getting killed by a black person is 0.000033, which is 18.5 times the chance of an unarmed black person getting killed by a cop." Unarmed! This is part of the danger of having someone like Lahren on your show in the hopes of finding some common ground-Noah is giving her a larger platform to spread her misinformation. If we believe however that The Daily Show's audience is too smart to fall for that, than why is she here? What Noah does not do is aggressively grill Lahren the way Jon Stewart was wont to do. I don't know how effective Stewart's style was in changing the minds of his guests (my guess is not effective at all), but it was exciting to see someone channel our anger at someone to their face. When Stewart interviewed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, he went at her for not being upfront about the fact that much of what she was reporting about possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was coming from the White House. Jon Stewart is us, his viewers, still angry about Iraq war. Consider this moments from the April 296 2015 interview (also remember that this is a late night comedy show):
Stewart: There's a phrase in your story where an unnamed source says, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Do you know where that phrase comes from?
Miller: No, because I only know that Condi Rice repeated it.
Stewart: Right, it comes from the White House Iraq Group 5 days before you write the article.
Miller: Well it's a very powerful line and it explains their thinking.
Stewart: But, it comes from [George W. Bush chief speechwriter Michael] Gerson, it's a political line directly tied to the White House. You said the information doesn't come from them.
Miller: Were we not supposed to report what was making the intelligence community so nervous about Saddam?
Stewart: No, you should've reported it though in the context that this administration was very clearly pushing a narrative and by losing site of that context, by not reporting
Miller: I think we did.
Stewart: I wholeheartedly disagree with you.
Miller: It's what makes journalism.
Stewart: It's actually not what makes journalism.
Noah never gives us this. It's harder with Lahren as she was not negating certain responsibilities of her job but he doesn't aggressively confront her racism and lies and hypocrisy the way Stewart does to Miller. We, as liberal angry Daily Show fans felt
Stewart's aggression not only warranted but unseen. We knew no one else was going to interview Miller like that and we felt she deserved it.
Similarly, in 2009, after the height of the '08 financial crash, CNBC host Jim Cramer came on the The Daily Show. He had been a frequent target of Stewart for inciting a carelessness around the stock market that Stewart felt led to the crash. Again, channeling our anger, Stewart tells Cramer, “I understand you want to make finance entertaining, but its not a fucking game and when I watch [your show], I can't tell you how angry that makes me . . . You can draw a straight line from those shenanigans to the stuff that was being pulled at Bear [Stearns] and at AIG and all this derivative market stuff that is this weird Wall Street side bet." This is what I wanted Noah to say to Lahren, he gets she wants to make politics entertaining, but you can draw a straight line from her shenanigans to hate crimes or the rise of Donald Trump--our overtly racist and misogynist president-elect.
Trevor Noah interviewed President Obama on December 12th. Responding to a question Noah asked the president negotiates the way he talks about race, Obama delivered an unintended (I think) endorsement of Noah, saying:
There have been very few instances where I've said, "Well that was racist you are racist." There have been times where I've said, "You know, you might not have taken into account
[laughs] the ongoing legacy of racism in why we have so many black men incarcerated and since I know that you believe in the constitution and believe in justice and believe in liberty, how about if we try this." Now some might say, "Well, you're not speaking fully truth to power because of that diplomacy" but I don't think that trying to appeal to the better angels of our nature, as Lincoln put it" is somehow compromise . . . trying to reach folks in ways that they can hear I think is important.
He is defending Noah's search for common ground over Stewart's indictments. In the Lahren interview Noah is trying to appeal to her, "better angels," when he references her video on Trump and the KKK he is trying to reach her ways she can “hear if” more than point out her hypocrisy. Stewart's aggressive, angry interviews feel better from the comfort of my couch but Noah's new quest for some understanding or common ground is probably more constructive. We should reach folks in ways that they can hear.