Earth (The Book)

I think it's fair to say that The Daily Show peaked somewhere around the middle of the decade, probably achieving its most consistent stretch of greatness during the 2004 Presidential race. It was toward the tail end of this high point that the show came out with America (The Book), a parody of a high school social studies textbook that ripped into the American political system from all angles - the structure of our government, the way campaigns are run, and even the media's coverage of the political process. Maybe I was overrating it in hindsight, being 16 years old when I read it, but I really thoroughly enjoyed America and thought it was a pitch-perfect assault on 21st century politics and government. Flash forward to 2010. The Daily Show simply ain't what it once was, frankly, but I still had plenty of interest in the release of Earth six years after the release of America. I didn't have very concrete assumptions about what the book would include, but naturally I figured it would treat the planet much like America treated the country. I expected a lot of international humor along the lines of The Onion's Our Dumb World, an atlas of humanity's follies all around the globe. Instead, Earth turned out to be a 230-page satire on 21st century Western culture. There were a few pages on sports, several on religion, one page about adolescent angst, a few more on sex, plenty on guns and violence, a few on art, and so on and so forth. I can't think of any real chunk of the human experience that was left out, actually. So, kudos to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show for capturing the vast majority of the human experience in little quips and jokes. My only problem with the pseudo-textbook was that it didn't carry the same kick that America did. Government ridicule and political satire are The Daily Show's bread and butter, and that's what made America so great. This book felt far more aimless and hit-or-miss. It mocked American culture, but without any of the angry undertones that made America work as more than just a source of laughs. Maybe the absurdity of our culture is just a tired target. For whatever reason, Earth just didn't work nearly as well for me as America did. But then, maybe 22-year old me and 16-year old me had different senses of humor or different standards for considering something entertaining or memorable. I'm not trying to say that Earth sucked. There were probably two or three good laughs per page, and that's no small amount of laughs at all. Just don't expect it to be America (The Book) 2, because it isn't.