Digg is accused of being run by an "inner circle" of extremely active users and those users have a predilection for considering things like The Daily Show "clever" and "intellectual." They are also the very specific audience who get their daily news from such shows. But all that is something of an aside.
Leave it to The Weirding to explain the difference between politicians and other public figures and celebrities:
Politicians are elected - or assigned/delegated - to their posts and have a responsibility to their constituents. You cannot libel a politician and that is why voting campaigns get so ugly. However, there is a huge difference between "public figures" and "celebrities," though the Western world has intentionally blurred this line over the last several years through litigious bullshit. See, this doesn't really come down to semantics; lawyers, paparazzi, and their ilk are the ones who are trying to insist that celebrities are public figures, but they are not.
Just because you perform a job which puts you in the public eye does not make you a public figure. Public figures are literally people who work for the public - not people who are in the public eye. That Jon Stewart doesn't know that should not surprise you - nor should it surprise you that he will insist he did know that and was only making a point through "entertainment." That's another distinction the Western world is failing to make in recent years, blurring the line between information and entertainment.
It is argued that individuals who are newsworthy are public figures but, again, this is a distinction made by those whom it benefits - namely, reporters and journalists. And if you think this is just a bunch of semantical pandering, then consider the fact that more and more people assume blogs are "news" and bloggers "reporters" - which means I could technically decide you are newsworthy and invade your privacy.
Of course, that's stretching things - but only slightly.
© C Harris Lynn, 2009
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