International Law

Introducing an investigative humorist

The Washington Post profiles Adam Chodikoff, a researcher for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

So here's Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq four years ago, describing the situation in a TV interview in September 2003: "We're not in a quagmire," he's saying confidently. "The progress is unbelievable."

So what about that progress, general? Because here's Sanchez, now retired, talking about Iraq in a video clip from last October: "There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. . . . There's no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight."

The before-and-after videos didn't air on CNN or MSNBC or ABC. Instead, the revealing sound bites ran back to back on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." The satiric Comedy Central program regularly unearths telling footage ignored or overlooked by the real news guys.

Or, to be specific, Adam Chodikoff does.

Chodikoff, 37, doesn't perform on the show or write the gags that pepper Stewart's take on the day's news. But as the show's chief researcher and video wiz, he's the vital link in the program's comedic ecosystem. Chodikoff's job is to dig through the vast quarry of TV news footage to find the nuggets that form the program's pointed, often eye-opening "reporting." In a manner of speaking, he's an investigative humorist.

At its best, Chodikoff's work goes beyond satire and into the realm of cold truth-telling. The show has particularly made doublespeak about the Iraq war a continuing theme in a running segment called "Mess O'Potamia." After Vice President Cheney told ABC News last month that "you can't be blown off course" by negative opinion polls about the war, Chodikoff found the perfect counterpoint: Cheney, in a clip from December 2005, justifying the White House's Iraq policy by citing . . . an opinion poll.

"He has this amazing memory for sound bites about anything political or about policy," says David Javerbaum, executive producer of "The Daily Show." "What's remarkable is how many ideas he initiates because he remembered that this guy said this or that a year ago." While Stewart and the show's deadpan "correspondents" usually get the laughs, Javerbaum says Chodikoff is the program's "unsung hero."

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on May 03, 2008 (boomark / email).