Jon Stewart Want to reconnect with your smart-aleck high school self? Pick up America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, a new civics-text parody by Emmy winners Stewart and his writers on The Daily Show.
HOW DID THE BOOK COME ABOUT? We thought it would be a fun little project. But I think there's a reason why most TV shows' books are transcriptions of their best bits: because it's a giant pain in the ass to write one from scratch.
WHY A TEXTBOOK? It was a question of how do you get the sensibility of the show into paper form? The show has a sort of false authority, and so do textbooks. Pretension works beautifully in TV news, as well as in academia.
HOW DIFFICULT A PROJECT WAS THIS? Everybody worked very hard for a good nine months. During that time, we were able to completely ignore the show. That was the beauty of what we did: We sacrificed the quality and integrity of the program to do the book.
DID YOU EVER SEE YOUR FAMILIES? Occasionally, mostly because our families work at Kinko's. We would see them when we would bring things in to be printed. Yes, it was a relatively encompassing pursuit. What's the word I'm looking for...a drag. It was a drag.
IN YOUR TEXT, ITS'S CLEAR THAT YOU FAVOR ONE FORM OF GOVERNMENT, AND THAT IT'S... Democracy, baby. As we point out in the chapter [outlining all other forms of government], whatever imperfections in our system, have you taken a gander at the rest of the world lately?
DESCRIBE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE—THE RIGHT, THE LEFT, THE YOUTH OF AMERICA? People with $25.... This ain't government cheese.
Your Reaction
