Does the New York Times envy The Daily Show?

***UPDATE: Using some of the scattered ideas postulated in this post, I have an article up on NYU's blog based publication NYULocal, reproduced below:

Norman Solomon’s post “Dubious Praise for The Daily Show” (Huffington Post, Sept. 10) examines the enormous amount of love the mainstream media gives to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Referencing this NYT article, Solomon labels their “elaborate praise” as “a tacit form of convoluted self-loathing” and likens them to shackled journalists watching Superman up above. Basically, he thinks The New York Times is jealous of The Daily Show. I’m beginning to agree.

I’m sure Frank Rich wishes he could be as funny as Jon Stewart, but The New York Times doesn’t seem to praise The Daily Show’s humor as much as its ability to “speak truth to power.” Here’s Solomon’s key question: What does this admiration for The Daily Show say about how The New York Times feels about its own ability to speak truth to power? In other words, why can’t straight news coverage do that?

The main difference between The New York Times and The Daily Show is that one has the obligation to be “fair and balanced” (or at least try to be), and the other does not. Solomon’s Superman comparison gets right at this point: if conventional journalists are envious of Jon Stewart’s freedom, maybe they’re fed up with being fair and balanced.

Stewart and his staff consume the same information for their stories as other reporters. One can only assume that the blatant contradictions that Stewart highlights on his show every day are just as painfully obvious to his shackled counterparts. If I were them, I’d be sick of playing dumb.

Some broadcast journalists have already outgrown their objective shells this election season: when MSNBC’s anchors Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews tried to keep it real, they were banned from anchoring the presidential campaign coverage. Now they’ve been relegated to being “commentators.”

But for a print journalist, there’s no such thing as going off script. Are broadcast/online journalists the wild-children and print the suck-ups? Solomon describes The New York Times as a “circumscribed” and “lumbering” institution, too heavy to orchestrate an agile critical assault like The Daily Show, almost as if it’s weighed down by its own brand name.

Solomon’s conclusion regarding the media? “That’s the way it goes in medialand. What isn’t conspicuous is apt to be insidious.” That’s smart-talk for, “if it ain’t obvious, it’s probably bad for you.”