How will we spend the dark nights of August, a distressingly empty place once Jon Stewart signs off Thursday?
Where will we put our energy, besides actively missing Stewart, TV’s best media parodist and all-around funniest fake-news host?
How will we fill the nights until Stephen Colbert steps in at CBS?
Moreover, how do we face the 2016 election cycle without the clear-eyed deconstructions of Stewart, turning politicians’ double-talk on its head, blowing holes in the punditry, and synthesizing the day’s photo ops and media machinations to make a mockery of the entire process?
Our guide to the irony of our times is taking his leave just as Donald Trump offers the lowest of low-hanging fruit.
Where will we get our intelligent snark laced with adolescent silliness presented broadcast news-style, and our egomaniacal bombast presented O’Reilly-style, now that the best political satirists of a generation both are moving on?
Stewart bids farewell Thursday in an extended 50-minute show (preceded by a day-long, best-of marathon on Comedy Central), and Colbert debuts Sept. 8 on CBS.
A few suggestions for how to fill in the time between:
1. Search on YouTube and get to know the South African who will take over for Stewart. Find comfort in the fact that the successor to “The Daily Show” anchor seat is being deferential to Stewart, saying his biggest challenge will be to live up to the hopes his predecessor has for him.
2. Check out the robust Colbert digital activity, launched in the run-up to his taking over “The Late Show.” His “daily week-long series” of one-on-one chats, took the excruciating loneliness of the cubicle to a new level.
3. Catch up on the best essayist in late-night television, John Oliver, whose half-hour series ” (Sundays at 12:30 a.m. on HBO), is usually a beautifully written single-issue takedown. Where Stewart’s expertise was instant dissections of the day’s hardest-spinning headlines, and where Colbert thrived on mimicking the persona of a Fox News blowhard, Oliver uses clever writing and a smart delivery to move from a general roundup of the week and onward to nail one large topic at a time.
4. Find the DVD of seasons 1 and 2, or at least check out her best bits . Then you’ll be ready for her wise feminist take when her first HBO standup special debuts later this year.
5. Finally — and here’s something I’m planning to do in addition to streaming the best of the satirists — put down the remote, get out and see more . We may still make it home in time for late-night with the DVR.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp
