Today's Small Thoughts

Anyone who has stumbled across this blog knows that I am an admirer of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. One of the reasons is that he actually appears to have read the books written by the authors who appear on his show. I know that back in the days of Jack Paar and David Susskind, this was routinely expected to be true, but I don't know that there is another TV host out there today who actually reads serious books by serious authors before interviewing them.
Thank goodness for Jon Stewart.

*****

I don't think I've ever listed my favorite TV shows on this blog. Of course, you know that The Daily Show is right up there. But let me add Malcolm in the Middle, The Simpsons, and Everybody Loves Raymond. I'm a big sitcom fan. I also enjoy Will and Grace and Arrested Development, although I just had to look up the name of that last one. I don't see it every week.
Even Reba is a pleasure to me.
Among non-sitcom shows, count 24, The O.C., North Shore, Smallville, American Idol, any number of cooking shows on FoodTV.

*****

Increasingly, documentaries are a passion of mine. It's what I want to watch when I want to watch a movie. This has been a good time for documentaries. Capturing the Friedmans, Spellbound, the series of political documentaries by Robert Greenwald. Oddly, or maybe not oddly, I am increasingly disenchanted with news TV, which used to be something of a passion, at least during last year's presidential campaign. I don't even have the stomach for watching Bush be stupid anymore. And that's saying something, since he is often more comical than a sitcom.