they're coming back!

Starting in January my nightly routine will finally settle back into place! My future husbands, er, umm, my favorite fake news comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will resume their shows January 7th!!!! (strike or no strike) Until the bleak past two months of no new episodes of either show, I didn't realize just how dependent I was on the one hour of Comedy Central between eleven and midnight. But especially during the school semester it's as much a part of my nightly routine as brushing my teeth or a glass of milk and sugar-free Milanos (before the teeth brushing I assure you). The shows let me wind down in bed, giggle a lot and smack my head in mutual exasperation at the stupidity of the media and world leaders. Sure, I can get my news solely from other sources, but there's something about the Daily Show and the Colbert Report that supplements the regular news or at least softens it enough that I don't start immediately collecting items for my hermit hut. I can read the news online at ten p.m. and either cry, fume or cry and fume simultaneously (this combination seems to happen most often). But then like clockwork I can turn my television to the Daily Show and with one punch line or silly visual gag there's order in the world again. Because suddenly there's someone else out there to share my fuming/crying attitude, except this person is a talented and awesome comedian who can take all of that frustration and anxiety and expose the absurdity that's the source of it all (or if there's no absurdity in the situation itself then at least the media's reaction to it). The news often leaves me speechless and teetering on the brink of cynicism. And some might say that the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are products of cynicism and bitterness. But I disagree. These shows are vestiges of humor and sanity in a world very often lacking both. Satirists have thrived in society for a reason. A silly joke reveals folly to remind us of the opposite of that folly, the common human decency and hope that are often coated in so many mounds of (pardon my french) political and media bullshit. It's true that The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are ultimately just television shows. The world obviously runs along without them. But in my own little life, they allow me to go to bed most nights believing that maybe the world isn't so upside down after all. And on the really bad nights, the nights when even a funny show can't make a situation seem redeemable, they at least distract me with a laugh. So that is why I'm counting down until January 7th. Because my little life needs Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, or at least until world peace is established, poverty is eliminated, politicians become incapable of manipulations or deceit, the environment is saved and all of the nuclear weapons on Earth are dismantled and scientists discover how to turn the spare parts into cures for all of the world's diseases. So until all of that happens I'll prefer my nights capped off with Jon and Stephen. It's a little late so pardon the folksiness of my next sentence. But they are the proverbial sugar to make the medicine of the news go down. And with them I am able to go to bed drugged and happy.