Jon Stewart is back on the air but without his writers. I watched him a couple of times last week, and man, if I were him, I would stay home until the writer’s strike is over. He delivers all the familiar John Stewart mannerisms and timing, he sounds like he ought to be funny, I even feel my laugh reflex tingling because I’m conditioned to chuckle at his quips, marvel at his insights, and gasp at his dead-on skewerings of public figures; and his mannerisms tell me when he’s delivering one of those. His bottled audience certainly laughs on cue. But my own impulse to laugh never develops, because he’s delivering only the mannerisms, not the insights, quips, or skewerings.

In fact, again and again, in the course of last week’s shows, his jokes strayed just enough off-target to make me wince.

In one bit, he reported on the interaction between an American naval ship and several Iranian speedboats in the gulf. With his usual wry, understated manner, Stewart showed us how the Bush administration reported the event—shaky videos taken from the deck of the naval ship showing the Iranian speedboats buzzing around in the open sea, with voice of American officers issuing warnings and discussing the Iranians’ possible intentions …

Then Stewart said, “Ah, but Iranian reports of the same event were a little bit different.” And then he shows us shaky videos taken from the deck of one of those speedboats, with the American naval ship in the distance, voice-over of Iranians saying something in Farsi. After which we come back to Stewart who has that familiar impish gleam in his eye and who, with that familiar I’m-not-going-to-comment-the-video-speaks-for-itself air, says, “What really happened? We’ll never know.”

What has he shown us? That if you’re on the American ship, you see the speedboats; if you’re on one of the speedboats, you see that American naval ship. The Americans speak English, the Iranians speak Farsi. So what? This makes no point, and it’s not funny.

Stewart is taking a big risk, going on the air without his writers. He gets exposed, and that can’t be good for his career. Of course I always knew that someone wrote his lines for him, but in the past, I simply experienced the package, and that’s a necessary illusion. I feel like from now on, however, when I watch him, I’ll always experience him as a face and a voice mouthing someone else’s words. The illusion has been broken. That’s why I say, Stewart go out on strike in sympathy with the writers.

In fact, everyone in the entertainment industry ought to do that anyway, because what the producers are trying to deny to writers is unconscionable. How can corporate interests dream of deny writers any profit from their works published in new media. Do they think they’ll be able to get writers to work for them without paying them? Or is it that they think they won’t need writers?

That question ought to interest the rest of us, because corporate entertainment producers have in fact found a way to dispense with writers. It’s called Reality TV. All those grinning fools lining up to pose as bachelors competing for sluts or capering for Tara Banks in hoping of becoming America’s next top model are being paid, as I understand it, rat droppings for compensation. They’re capering in hopes of getting to suck up some of America’s top drug out of this: celebrity-status. In fact,, of course, most of them will go out with yesterday’s garbage when the show is over, just so much more chum fed to the animals. Entertainment producers find Reality TV a viable substitute for art because so many of us are gobbling up the product: why wouldn’t they keep shoveling it into the trough for us if we’re eating it?

That’s what the writer’s strike is about, ultimately. Corporate interests feel secure in denying writers any share of the profits in their own work because they’re confidant that in the long run, they won’t need writers at all. They will be able to make money by marketing consumers to themselves: that is, by plucking out random consumers, putting them in front of the camera, and debasing them, for the amusement of the remaining consumers. That’s what Reality TV is all about, and if the writers lose this strike, a day will soon come when there won’t be anything but Reality TV.