Naked Pictures of Famous People
A Review of Comedian Jon Stewart's Collected Ponderings
Jun 25, 2007
From rebranding Judaism for the American market to Larry King’s interview with Hitler, and from the Death of the Taco Bell dog to Martha Stewart’s unmentionables, the subject-matter of the various ‘what-if’ essays and far-ranging short fiction found in Jon Stewart’s Naked Pictures of Famous People is as seemingly random and blatantly interesting as the title itself.
Respected (often grudgingly) by the mainstream media and worshipped across campuses everywhere for his lead role in television’s The Daily Show, Stewart’s career has occasionally also taken on a literary bent, with other famous written work including The Daily Show-sponsored mock-textbook America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction.
The majority of Naked Picture’s sections are fairly brief (averaging about eight-to-ten pages apiece) making this the ideal book for slipping into a travel bag or folding overtop your open pol-sci text during that long evening lecture. The formats Stewart uses to frame his various musings are as diverse as their topics. In "Lack of Power: The Ford Tapes" readers are presented with the concocted transcripts taken from a few of Nixon’s Oval Office recording devices that were missed during the clean-up before his successor took over, in a brief script that will leave fans of American political history grinning, and those of Ford in particular sputtering. In another section, "Da Vinci: The Lost Notebook", faithfully rendered, authenticish drawings by the great artist that would have never seen the light of day, had he actually sketched them, will have you joyfully twisting and turning the book for a good few pages.
If you’ve a mind for religious reflection, consider "The Cult" and join Stewart in contemplating just how brief his existence would be, after his theoretical followers realized Captain Crunch would not be departing the cereal box in order to deliver their promised bliss-bound rocket ride. Meanwhile, the truth about Jesus – or at least about his tipping habits – is revealed in "The Last Supper, or the Dead Waiter".
Finally, if you haven’t got a clue what you’re after, check out "Local News" and mourn the loss of the beloved talking Chihuahua (of Taco Bell fame), perished after an alcohol-fueled bar brawl, or uncover the truth behind the arrangements binding Bill and Beelzebub in "The Devil and William Gates".
Despite a menagerie of topics, a clever humour remains present throughout and those familiar with Stewart’s sometimes dead-pan, often self-deprecating style will not be disappointed. It should be noted however, that the author has done away with jokes of the more blatant, uber-direct variety which usually set the crowd roaring during his onscreen appearances, in favour of a more subtle breed that will occasionally require some pondering. For example, "Breakfast at Kennedy’s" is entertaining enough, though likely loses some of its effect on a reader lacking a pre-possessed knowledge of the governing clan’s history.
That being said, for those in search of a book that can be opened during a brief bus ride or trusted to fill a single night below the reading lamp, and which will entertain consistently in either case, by all means, head over to your local store and ask where they keep Naked Pictures of Famous People.
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