In honor of the the Daily Cardinal's 110th anniversary, we sat down with one of our many distinguished alumni, Ben Karlin. Now the head writer for \The Daily Show"" on Comedy Central, Karlin has also written for The Onion, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and the movie ""Ice Age.""
Can you first just talk about your Daily Cardinal experience a little bit?
At the Cardinal, I pretty much wrote sports. This was about 1989 to 1992. Occasionally, I would do an editorial or something, but generally wrote sports.
How did you become a comedy writer, then?
When I was in Madison, The Onion was still in its early stages. The only reason I was writing sports was that seemed to be the place where I would have the most creative freedom. After a couple of years, I just got tired of that, so I submitted some stuff to The Onion. I got on the staff at The Onion, and that was more in my field of interest anyway.
When did you leave?
I left The Onion in 1996 and moved to Los Angeles. I teamed up with some old Onion people. ... The only thing that we really got produced and has been aired a lot was that we wrote a lot of episodes of ""Space Ghost"" for Cartoon Network.
One thing I've always wondered about ""Space Ghost"" is how much input the guests have on the final show.
None. They don't even know what is going on. They're asked random questions and then writers are given the raw tapes and allowed to rearrange them any way we want. There's usually no connection to what they answered and how they're depicted on the show, though.
That's what I always suspected, but I was never sure. Let's talk about ""The Daily Show,"" then. What input do the correspondents like Mo Rocca or Stephen Colbert have on the show? Do they do a lot of the writing?
It varies. Some people write more than others, some are more traditional performers, but in almost all cases input is pretty welcome. Anything that can help make it in their own voice. Stephen Colbert is the most experienced writer, so he writes or rewrites a lot of his own stuff. The other guys aren't as integrated into at least the initial, coming up with ideas.
When deciding what to make jokes about, are there any areas you just won't go, like sacred cows?
I don't know if there's any sacred cows. It's all an internal barometer, basically. You just have to trust your sensibility. I don't think we ever have any fear of offending anybody. Obviously, there's stuff that doesn't feel funny, like a plane crash or the recent stuff in the Middle East, because no one wants to laugh about stuff like that. As far as hard rules about what we can and can't say, they're almost nonexistent.
How did it go about that you guys started to book more serious guests?
We've always wanted to be less dependent on the Hollywood cycle of standard talk show guests, but it's kind of tough because our show isn't that big. It was a combination, I think, of the show making a name for itself during the elections as a place where politicians or journalists would want to come and talk. And then after everything went down in September, we just wanted to recalibrate a little bit and be a little more topical and relevant. We wanted to get guests to talk about things that, if not people in general are talking about, at least what we're talking about and what we find interesting.
Do you guys feel any responsibility to cover certain stories? I know a lot of people just get their news from ""The Daily Show,"" which is sort of odd.
Responsibility is not necessarily the word I'd use. I'd say we try to cover stories that are interesting to people and relevant. I think we'd be a lot more into finding something that's inherently funny and quirky, but you have to do a lot more informing of the audience then. Instead, we'd rather talk about what's on people's minds or what's particularly absurd of this moment or of this time. It's not a mandate, not a spoken thing but it's definitely at the heart of my sensibility, and Madeleine's and Jon's, is a desire to be as topical as we can be.
How much of the show is ad-libbed by Jon Stewart? Is it all pretty much scripted?
This show is pretty scripted, but he ad-libs whenever or wherever he feels necessary. What's more impressive than the ad-libbing ability is that he writes a lot of stuff. He's a great writer, one of the most prolific on the staff. He contributes a lot of the written stuff as well as whatever comes off the top of his head during the show.
